He held it up, and she unwound the tape without much interest and applied a fresh strip. “I’ll write a prescription for pain pills too,” she said, “just in case you need them.”

She dumped the old dressings, the paper wrappers, and even the scissors into a red plastic bin. The scissors clattered so loudly that they hurt his head. Such wastefulness! Not even recycled! But he had more important things to discuss. “Is it all right to go home in a taxi?” he asked.

“Absolutely not. Somebody should be with you. Do you not have anybody? Should we be getting in touch with the social worker?”

For a minute he thought she was referring to Xanthe, who happened to be a social worker herself. When he realized his mistake, he flushed and said, “Oh, no, that won’t be necessary.”

“Well, good luck,” she told him. She picked up her box of supplies and walked out.

As soon as she was gone, he pressed the call button on his bed rail.

“Yes?” a voice crackled from some invisible spot.

“Could I have a telephone, please?”

“I’ll ask.”

He sank back on his pillow and closed his eyes.

How could he have ended up so alone?

Two failed marriages (for he had to count Millie’s death as a failure), three daughters who led their own lives, and a sister he seldom spoke to. The merest handful of friends-more like acquaintances, really. A promising youth that had somehow trailed off in a series of low-paying jobs far beneath his qualifications. Why, that last job had used about ten percent of his brain!

And he should have stood up for himself when they fired him. He should have pointed out that if they really needed to reduce the two fifth-grade classes to one, he ought to be the teacher they kept. He was way, way senior to Brian Medley. Brian was hired just two years ago! But instead he’d tried to put a good face on it. He’d tried to make Mr. Fairborn feel less guilty for letting him go. “Certainly,” he had said. “I understand completely.” And he had packed up his desk drawers when no one else was around to feel discomfited by the sight. Why make a scene? he had asked when Bundy voiced his outrage. “No sense clinging to resentments,” he’d said.

He must not even have clothes to go home in. Not day clothes, at least; just pajamas. He was naked and alone and unprotected and unloved.

Well, this was just a mood he was in, created by current circumstances. He knew it wouldn’t last.

Before they could bring him a telephone-if they ever planned to-his ex-wife arrived. Cheery and purposeful, hugging a paper grocery bag from which his favorite blue shirt poked forth, she breezed in already talking. “My goodness, what it takes to track a person down in this place! The switchboard said one room, the reception desk said another…”

Liam felt so relieved he was speechless. He stared round-eyed from his bed, clinging to the sight of her.

She was a medium sort of woman, medium in every way. Medium-length curly brown hair finely threaded with gray, medium-weight figure, and that lipstick-only makeup style that’s meant not to draw attention to itself. Her clothes always looked slightly unkempt-the belt of her shirtwaist dress, today, rode inches above her waistline-but she would have gone unremarked in almost any gathering. He used to have trouble recalling her face when they were dating. This had seemed a plus, he remembered. Enough of those lovely, poetic, ethereal women who haunted a person’s dreams!

“It’s good to see you, Barbara,” he told her finally. Then he had to clear his throat.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay.”

“Awful experience,” she said blithely. “I can’t imagine what the world is coming to.” She sat down on the green vinyl chair and started rummaging through her bag, producing first the blue shirt and then a pair of over-the-calf black silk socks, not what he would have chosen to wear with the khakis she drew out next. “If you can’t sleep safely in your own bed-”

Liam cleared his throat again. He said, “I don’t think it was Damian, though.”

“Damian?”

“Xanthe believes Damian was the one who clobbered me.”

Barbara waved a hand and then bent to set his black dress shoes on the floor beside the bed. “I’m sure I brought underpants,” she murmured, peering into the bag. “Ah. Here they are. Well, you know Xanthe. She thinks pot’s the first step to perdition.”

Barbara used to smoke a bit of pot herself, Liam recalled. She could surprise you sometimes. For all her medium looks and her stodgy school-librarian job, she’d had a fondness for rock music and she used to dance to it like a woman possessed, pumping the air with her soft white fists and sending her bobby pins flying in every direction. This was back in the days when they were still together, before she gave up on him and filed for divorce. Strange how distinctly, though, that image all at once presented itself. Maybe it was a side effect of the concussion.

“Do you still like Crack the Sky?” Liam asked her.

“What?” she said. “Oh, mercy, I haven’t listened to Crack the Sky in ages! I’m sixty-two years old. Put your clothes on, will you? Heaven only knows when they’ll spring you, but you might as well be ready once they do.”

From the way she held out his underpants, stretching the waistband invitingly and cocking both her pinkies, it seemed she might be expecting him to step into them then and there. But he took them from her and gathered the rest of his clothes and padded off to the bathroom, clutching his hospital gown shut behind him with his free hand.

“After we get you settled at home,” she called from her chair, “the girls and I will keep in touch by telephone to see that you’re okay.”

“Just by telephone?” he asked.

“Well, and Kitty’s going to come spend the night with you as soon as she gets off work. She’s found herself a summer job filing charts in our dentist’s office.”

“Your dentist’s open on Sunday?”

“It’s Monday.”

“Oh.”

“We’ll phone and ask if you know your name, just to make sure you’re compos mentis. Or where you live, or what day it is…” There was a sudden pause. Then she said, “You thought it was Sunday?”

“That could happen to anyone! I just lost track, is all.”

He had to sit on the toilet lid to put his socks on; his balance seemed a bit off. And bending down made his head throb.

“They told us you should be under constant observation, but this is the best we can manage,” he heard through the slit in the door. “Xanthe works such impossible hours, and Louise of course has Jonah.”

She didn’t say why she couldn’t do it, with her luxurious summer schedule, but Liam didn’t point that out. He shuffled from the bathroom in his stocking feet, holding up his trousers. (Barbara seemed to have forgotten his belt.) “Could you hand me my shoes, please?” he said as he sat on the edge of the bed.

“Forty-eight hours is the amount of time they told us,” she said. She bent for a shoe and, without being asked, fitted it onto his foot and tugged the laces snug and tied them. He felt well-tended and submissive, like a child. She said, “I did call your sister. Has she been in touch?”

“This room doesn’t have a phone.”

“Well, she’ll probably call once you’re home. I told her you’d be discharged today. She wants you to get a burglar alarm as soon as possible.”

He nodded, not bothering to argue, and raised his other foot.

Then there was a period of limbo while they waited for his paperwork. Barbara took a crossword puzzle from her grocery bag, and Liam lay back on the bed, shoes and all, and stared at the ceiling.

The few times he’d been hospitalized before, he could hardly wait to leave, he remembered. He’d pressed his call button repeatedly and kept sending whoever was with him out to the nurses’ station to see what the holdup was. But now he was grateful for the delay. At least here, he wasn’t alone. He felt lazy and content, and the sound of Barbara’s pencil whispering across the paper almost put him to sleep.