THE SKY WAS BLACK AND TURNED TO BLUE JUST BEFORE A RIBBON OF bright coral opened like a cut on the horizon. At the edge of the parking lot, on the other side of a tall wooden fence, were juniper trees planted in a yard. The grass was thick and short, and there was a sandbox and swing set and jungle gym all made from dark beautiful wood—redwood, or maybe cedar. The house was beige stucco with a sienna tile roof and a low wide deck only a step off the ground, no railing, and four white plastic chairs around an umbrella table. Beside them, a child’s plastic wading pool covered with smiling spouting blue whales, and I watched from the other side of the fence, two stories up, each swallow a hook in the stitched belly of my throat.

At seven, a male nurse brought me orange juice, coffee, and a bowl of soupy Cream of Wheat. But I didn’t touch it and not long after, the back door of the house opened and a tiny brown-haired boy came running off the deck to the sandbox and blurred. I wiped my eyes. He put his hands in the sand, then lifted them over his head and let it sift down onto his hair. His mother set a mug of coffee or tea on the umbrella table, her long red hair catching the sunlight. She wore shorts and a loose T-shirt, and when she stepped off the deck and squatted at the sandbox I could see her thigh muscles. She was laughing, frisking the sand out of her son’s hair, then she turned and went back to her coffee, sat at the umbrella table and started to read. The little boy sat with his back to the fence and the hospital on the other side, his thick hair sticking out in curls behind his ears. I stared at the miniature blue-and-yellow-striped shirt he wore, at his small bare arms and hands, at how big his head looked on his shoulders. Each swallow was thumbs crushing my Adam’s apple all over again, and so I swallowed more than I needed, pictured the toddler in the yard growing into a boy with blue jeans and a red bike, then a teenager with a skateboard or maybe a beat-up car, and I swallowed twice and finally saw him as a man, a tall young man with a wife and child of his own. He’d drive up to that house across the parking lot and visit his mother and father—but the image wouldn’t stay and instead I kept seeing Mrs. Behrani’s son as I last saw him, climbing out of my car into the sunshine, glancing at Lester the way I’d seen high school boys wait for instruction from their coaches.

The boy lifted a truck over his head, dropping it onto something metal I couldn’t see. The mother glanced up at the sound, then went back to her newspaper, and the door behind me opened and the deputy sheriff stuck his head in, saw me sitting at the window in my hospital gown. He looked at me like he was trying to figure out what else I might be doing besides sitting, then he closed the door.

Yesterday, in another hospital, I woke to see Lester standing at the foot of the bed, my throat swollen and so dry it had cracked. His uniform was clean, his dark hair seemed too short, and he’d shaved his mustache, but I wanted him to come closer. I tried to speak but a nurse put her fingers on my wrist and told me to stay quiet. She was old and slender. I looked back at Lester, but it wasn’t him. This man was younger. His black hair was almost shaved and his eyes were not brown, but blue. I tried to sit up but the nurse put her hand on my shoulder, then showed me the button, and I pushed it and the mattress raised me forward and the nurse left the room. The deputy walked around to the side of my bed. There was another man in the chair behind him, older, with sandy hair and a tanned lined face. He had a piece of paper in his hand and he stood, introduced himself and the younger deputy, then opened it and read what I was being charged with: Aggravated Kidnapping, False Imprisonment, Brandishing a Weapon.

The young deputy leaned forward. My nose felt stopped-up, but I could smell his aftershave. “We know you’re not able to talk right now, Mrs. Lazaro. Would you like us to call your lawyer?”

I remembered the screech of tires in my driveway, the front door swinging open. I had expected to see Lester first, but when I saw the colonel, his bald head silhouetted against the sunlight in the yard, I knew he was alone and then I couldn’t move and his hands were around my neck, shaking me, my hair in my face, and I couldn’t breathe and a buzzing darkness was rising up inside my head.

I nodded at the deputy. He handed me a small notepad and pen and I wrote Connie Walsh’s name and number, then: What about Behrani? What’s he being charged with?

The young deputy read my note, then showed it to the older one, who looked right at me, his eyes green and full of something that made me look down at his arms, at the thick tufts of hair on them. “Mr. Behrani’s deceased.”

I was lying down and they were standing there but the room felt so suddenly still and quiet I started to feel too far away to see and hear what would come next. I took the pad from the young deputy: What? I wanted to ask about Lester. Why hadn’t he come back? Then I thought if they were calling me a kidnapper they had to be calling him one first, but I couldn’t be sure so I didn’t write any more. They didn’t answer me anyway. The older one seemed to be in charge. He stepped away from the bed and told me to get the facts from my lawyer. Then the younger one called Connie Walsh’s office and explained where I was and what I was being charged with. I heard the crimes again, and except for Brandishing a Weapon, pulling Lester’s pistol out of my bag at the gas station, I had a hard time matching up Kidnapping and False Imprisonment with me. The older deputy held the door open for the younger one, then they were gone.

There was another bed in my room, but it was empty with no sheets, just a white plastic mattress cover, a TV suspended in the corner of the ceiling, the dark screen watching me: The colonel was dead. On the serving table was a pitcher and a short stack of paper cups. I poured water into one and drank, each swallow a spiny sea urchin in my throat. My window shade was pulled and I could hear the sounds of traffic nearby. I scooted to the side of the bed. I was dressed in a hospital johnny with nothing underneath. I moved to the window but my legs felt shaky. I opened the shade. Ten feet down was a flat tar roof with big air-conditioning or heating units on it. And on the other side was more building and windows. In one of them was the colored flickering of a TV. I couldn’t see the sky but the daylight was overcast. I wondered if it was morning or afternoon. My neck was stiff and I could hardly look down or to the right and left. I remembered seeing the colonel’s yellowed teeth grinding together, the flare of his nostrils, feeling my feet lift off the ground. I got back into bed and lay down, but it suddenly felt like a dangerous place, as if the bed were a thousand feet off the ground and if I turned over too fast or even reached for water, it would tilt and fall to rocks below; if Behrani was dead, I was sure Lester must’ve killed him.

Less than an hour later the deputies came back, told me I’d been classified a flight risk and was being transferred to San Mateo County Hospital. The older one rode in the back of the ambulance with me. He sat across from my gurney chewing gum, looking around at all the medical equipment. Sometimes his eyes would look into mine. The sky was growing dark as they wheeled me here and at the elevator an older woman with too much blush on her cheeks held the doors for us and she smiled down at me and said, “You are going to be just fine, dear. You’ll see.” There was a smear of lipstick on her front teeth, which were perfect and false, but I wanted to believe her.

The older deputy stayed here in my room until the nurse left, then he stood close to the bed and looked down at me like he was waiting for me to finish answering a question he’d never asked. I swallowed and had to close my eyes a minute. When I opened them he was shaking his head like I’d disappointed him. “Les Burdon and I used to be partners before they divided us up into single units. He was sheriff material, but he’s all through now, I hope you know that. They’ve got him in Protective Custody, but that won’t last. They’ll throw him to the hounds.” He stepped back from the bed and moved to the door. “There’ll be a man outside till you’re okayed to leave, then you’re going right to holding in Redwood City. Think about that.”