Rose squeezes her eyes shut. A blanket and a heavy sigh settle over her shoulders.

“Sleep tight, Ms. Dennis. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” Rubber-soled shoes squeak softly from the room.

The cola-loving nurse is going back to her poisoned beverage. Guilt pours ice-cold into Rose’s pounding heart and slows it. Karen is so nice. Where is Nurse Ratched when one wants her?

It will be okay, Rose tells herself. If the pills are antidepressants, they won’t hurt Karen. If they are toxic, well, then the nurse has it coming.

“We all have it coming,” Clint Eastwood says from some neglected corner of her cerebral cortex.

For a while, Rose remains in the fetal position waiting for the outcry.

None comes.

Eventually she dares to inspect her prize. The scissors are still in her right hand. In her left, held so tightly her fingers cramp, is the cola-loving nurse’s keycard, ribbon ends trailing from the severed lanyard.

Rose hides it under the pillow. Lying back, she gazes at the ceiling, trying to calm herself. She has poisoned a soda pop, deceived a medical worker, committed physical assault and theft.

Her family is afraid she won’t last long … absolutely terrified … won’t last out the week.

That hardly sounds like a threat anymore. It sounds like a family member, worried that Grandmother’s delusion has taken a severe turn for the worse, sharing her concerns with medical staff.

Negative thoughts equal negative emotions. Negative emotions equal suffering, Rose reminds herself and lets the thought go.

An hour passes. Nine o’clock; not nearly late enough, but Rose can no longer stand the suspense. She maneuvers around the safety rail and out of bed. Padding to the door, she peeks out. Showing no visible signs of mental impairment, the nurse is at her desk studying her computer screen, the poisoned Pepsi near to hand.

Refusing to ponder what that means about pills, paranoia, or her chances of escape, Rose takes off the white cotton robe. The bedclothes straightened, she lays the robe out flat on the bed, the sleeves extended. She begins cutting. The scissors are made for four-year-olds, the blades dull, the tips blunt. They don’t so much cut the fabric as chew it. Before she has one sleeve severed at the elbow, a blister forms at the base of her thumb.

Every few minutes, she stops, moves to the door, and listens to see if the muffled sound of scissors munching cloth has penetrated to the nurse’s desk. She doesn’t peek out again; should the nurse glance up and see one of her charges out of bed, it will warrant an immediate visit.

Both sleeves shortened, Rose drops into the room’s one chair and rests. She longs to soak her hands in cool water but doesn’t dare risk the sound of the tap.