"Good," I said. "I'll...fill this out and give it back to you."

She patted my arm and left me there, pen clenched in my fingers, cheap plastic clipboard resting on my knee. Nearby, in the waiting room for the ER, a shabbily-dressed man was sleeping in a chair and a woman with three small children was plying the older ones with crackers and trying to rock the younger one to sleep. I set the pen down and twisted the hospital bracelet around and around on my wrist. I didn't really have any confidence that I could find someone who knew anything more about Lucas than I did – and I didn't think the doctor believed I could either. If I didn't know his last name, who in Low Ferry would?

Marjorie arrived while I was still pondering it. She looked worried and a little furious as she swooped down on me, hugged me, forced me back into the seat I'd just stood up from, and picked up my left hand, cradling it carefully.

"My poor Christopher," she said, wrapping her other arm around my shoulders. "What happened?"

"I was bitten," I said, wiggling my thumb. It burned a little.

"By what?" she asked. "A horse?"

"Another person," I answered.

"For god's sake, what do they do in that evil little village? I hope you've had all your shots."

"Yeah, they gave me a bunch," I said. "It's not what you think."

"Good, because my first thought on hearing that a presumable adult bit you in the hand is that you were nearly a sacrifice in some kind of ghastly Satanic rite," she replied.

"Did you bring the book?" I asked. She sighed, rummaged in a bag slung over one shoulder, and produced a small, paperback copy of Plato's Phaedo. I turned through the pages, searching for the passage I thought I remembered.

He walked about until, as he had told us, his legs began to fail. Then he lay on his back in the way he had been told, and the man who had given him the poison examined his feet and legs. Soon he pressed his foot hard and asked him if he could feel it, and Socrates said "No"; then he pressed his leg, and so upwards, showing us that he was cold and stiff.

And then Socrates felt for himself, and said "When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end."

"Fool," I muttered. "Classics for why to kill yourself; botany for how."

"Kill yourself?" Marjorie asked, really alarmed now.

"Lucas – the history scholar, I ordered that werewolf book for him for Christmas? He tried to. Kill himself. I think," I said.

"Oh, dear me." Marjorie looked stricken.

"It's a little more violent than Plato thinks it is," I added, closing the book and turning to meet her eyes for the first time. "I had to make him throw up, hence..." I held up my hand.

"You..." she pointed a finger at her open mouth. I nodded. "That requires a certain amount of fortitude. Not that I thought you'd have anything less," she said. "Will he be all right?"

"According to the doctors. He might not be once I get through with him," I said grimly. Marjorie laid a hand on my arm.

"Christopher, let me buy you something to eat," she said. "Somewhere away from here."

"I should stay with Lucas, I'm the only one he knows. Besides, I have to find out what his name is," I said.

"His name?"

"His last name, I mean, I don't know it and they need it for..." I gestured at the clipboard. She waved dismissively.

"They just want to know what insurance to charge. I imagine he hasn't got any."

"God, I don't know..." I rested my face in one hand, the injured one still half-holding the book. I have never felt so at sea – not after my father died, not when I first came to Low Ferry, not during the long malaise that was my life in the city.

If Lucas, who could control the rain and snow, who could grow ice where he walked, who spent his whole life making beautiful things – if Nameless saw the world so darkly that death was preferable...

"Come along, Christopher," Marjorie said. "Just for a few minutes. You've done enough for him."

She took my arm and led me out of the hospital, across the wet early-evening street to the warm yellow circle of a street-lamp. I stopped for a minute and turned my head to look up, but I'd forgotten that the light of the city eclipses the stars. Marjorie threaded her fingers in mine and tugged me gently onward.

We ate in a cheap sandwich shop near the hospital, drinking acidic coffee and speaking very little. I don't know what she must have thought, but my own thoughts were taken up with an endless cycle – he was in a hospital bed and not a morgue drawer, and I was proud to be the one who'd saved him. But at the same time I wondered if he wouldn't hate me for it. And I believed – I still do – in allowing another person to make their own decisions. Always within reason, of course, but that night I was so confused and tired and hurt that I didn't know where suicide fell on the scale of "within reason" anymore.

There was no doubt he was chronically shy and awkward, but not as Nameless; no doubt he stammered and fumbled for words, but Nameless was never required to speak. And these things, you know, are not things to kill oneself over. But the other dogs avoided Nameless, and even the people...

No one had tried to put a collar on him. No one had tried to own him. Not even me. I'd tried not to, actually.

When we returned to the hospital, Marjorie gave me a hug at the entry door.