Rose doesn’t want her levels back on par. She had gotten out because her levels were below par, because, pathetic as the process is, without the “meds” she can think. She is thinking now. Not clearly, but, with concentration, she can feel her way from A to B.

The doctor and Wanda leave the room.

With more effort than she would have expected, Rose manages to keep her eyes open. She needs to see her body if she is to remain in it. An IV is plugged into her right arm, the long metal sharp taped down to her right wrist. Her eyes move to her crotch. White and gray, a hilly landscape of blankets obscures her body. Her feet are two hillocks away.

Risking the sirens’ song of oblivion, she lets her eyes close and focuses on the sensation between her legs. Moving her hips slightly, she feels a sting and a tug. A catheter, she guesses, its tube taped down to her leg to minimize irritation.

Fog slips into sinuous shapes, trying to lure her back into the deeps. Opening her eyes again, she takes in a breath, then sighs some of the mist out, winning a clear small space. Holding herself in that space, she studies her left wrist.

The padded cuff is firm but not tight. Gently she begins working, pulling her elbow up until the tether is tight, then, thumb tucked to palm, fingers gathered to a point, she twists her hand back and forth.

Right Intention: Free herself.

As her mind clouds and her vision grays, Rose clings to that with the desperation of a drowning woman clinging to a log.

Time flaunts its versatility, flying, passing in a petty pace, racing, standing still. Rose’s arm wrenches and turns. Rose remembers and forgets, pulls, twists, remembers, forgets.

At some point she realizes her left hand is free.

With a hazy sense of triumph, she lifts it and holds it before her sticky eyes. Behind spread fingers a monitor flashes a shard of green light.

Kryptonite, she thinks. Lex Luthor is keeping her prisoner with kryptonite.

Willing strength into that left hand, that free agent, she moves that marvelous hand across her body and watches as it pulls the tape off her right arm, then eases the needle from her flesh. Clumsy fingers claw at the buckle, scrape at the strap, and her right hand is free.

Exhausted, Rose lies back, eyes resolutely open, and waits for a semblance of focus to return to body and mind. Intention. Isn’t there something she is supposed to be doing? The Land of Nod calls seductively.

“No,” Rose whispers. A hand gripping the rail to either side of the bed, she drags herself into a sitting position. The room slides sideways, does a half turn, then settles. Her brain is clearer than when she was lying on her back, with it flattened in her skull like Silly Putty left too long in its egg.