Out of a coil of snaking dreams an answer rises, floating into a window as small and dark as that of a Magic 8-Ball, a child’s toy. Rose doesn’t know what the question was. The answer is consciousness. Rose is conscious.

Barely oblivious, she thinks vaguely.

Fog curls around the tiniest thread that is her and carries it away into the darkness.

An hour, a day, a year later, voices call her back. Not by name, but by shared humanity. Or maybe merely noise different from the humming of her brain.

Voices in her head.

Voices in one’s head is always bad.

Open your eyes, she thinks, and tries. No dice. Panic lends her strength. With a mighty effort, she wins a narrow slit of vision, red-rimmed top and bottom and sliced by blades of black, as if she peers through a prison window at sunset. Above is a colorless sky. Glare from an unseen source backlights tombstones leaning precariously over her. Rose considers screaming, but can’t remember how that is done.

“How in hell did she get out?” a woman asks.

“She wasn’t in lockdown. They moved her to general when she got the stomach flu,” another woman answers. “Her medications got flushed from her system. She must have woken up and decided to leave us.”

“See that it doesn’t happen again.”

Not markers of the dead, these are people. The voices aren’t in her head. This is a good sign.

Rose feels as if she should recognize the speakers. They are somebody. Who exactly drifts in the fog clogging her mind. Turning from the slit of vision, she closes her eyes, trying to penetrate the mist. Each tentacle of thought unravels like smoke in the wind.

“Too bad it didn’t turn into pneumonia, the old person’s friend.”

“Stomach flu rarely turns into pneumonia,” a woman says dryly. “The point is, she vomited up her meds. These don’t stay in the system long. They need to be kept to a certain level. Besides, these things can happen too fast and too often. We need to be careful of our special needs patients. When we get her back in the Secure Community, and get her medications stabilized, I’ll be a lot more comfortable.”

Rose collects a few available words and attempts speech. Air whispers over the cracked desert of her tongue, puffing like dust between stiff lips. “Thirsty,” she tries to say. The knack of speaking eludes her; she only manages a small sighing sound.

“She’s coming around.”

“I’ve been here too long as it is. I need to get back to the office.”

Rose wanders back into the clouds roiling in her skull.