Sleep effortlessly overtakes her. When she wakes it takes several minutes to put herself, the place, and the plan back together. Outside it is still night. Rose hasn’t been asleep too long. At length, she rallies and attacks the body of the robe with her pathetic instrument, cutting it off at what should be just above the waist.

Again she interrupts her task to listen at the door: snores, the muted tick of the wall clock, the air conditioner roaring on and dying off, nothing from the nurse.

On her umpteenth visit, Rose dares a quick look.

Still in front of the computer, the nurse rests her chin and cheek in her left hand, elbow braced on the desk, the plump cheek pushing up in a roll above the fingers.

Rose can’t tell if she is resting, cogitating, or napping.

She goes back to work. Another blister forms on her index finger. The one at the base of her thumb is oozing blood. Each snip seems to do more damage to her than to the robe.

Around midnight, drenched in sweat and biting back whimpering noises, Rose finishes the final cut. As she is tiptoeing to the door to listen, she hears a loud thump. Rose peers around the jamb.

The cola-loving nurse has vanished. Her chair is rolling away from the desk into the archway to the activities room. Rose wants to scream. After ruining her hands and becoming a criminal, something tipped the nurse off. She’s bolted.

Without her keycard? That is hidden beneath the pillow on Rose’s bed.

Stepping out into the hall, Rose takes a better look. Fingers. Four of them lie on their backs, looking like fat pink sausages against the vinyl. They are protruding from behind the desk.

The night nurse is down.

A rush of relief buoys Rose up. She wasn’t mistaken. The pills are a drug, and a powerful one. The night nurse weighs close to twice what Rose does in her newfound scrawniness.

From the heights of relief, Rose plummets to the depths. The cola-loving nurse looks fairly dead.

“I’ve killed her,” she whispers, and stumbles down the hall, her legs wobbly as a new colt’s. The nurse is on her left side, one arm stretched out. Her legs tangle around each other. Her eyes are not quite shut; narrow crescents of white show above the red of the lower lids.

“No, no, no,” Rose murmurs. She drops heavily to her knees. Snatching up the woman’s outflung arm, she feels desperately for a pulse. Her own heart is beating so wildly, she can’t tell if she feels the other woman’s or not.

“I’m a murderer,” she gasps. Her karma is going to suck for all eternity. “Please, can you hear me?” she whispers urgently into the ear below the dead eyes.