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x-rays from when you were hospitalized for pneumonia—there’s evidence of some tuberculosis activity. It wasn’t picked up at that time, so of course you weren’t treated with the appropriate drugs. You recovered and the disease went dormant for some years, but without proper drug therapy…” He spreads his hands and shrugs. “Reactivation was always a possibility. So. Here you are.”
    Just one of those things.
    They didn’t pick it up? What does he mean—didn’t pick it up? What kind of clueless fools were reading my x-rays? Who can I sue for gross incompetence? Who can I kick in the shins? Punch in the nose? I want names and addresses.
    I was four years old when I was hospitalized with pneumonia. I’d been miserable and feverish for a week, and the doctor came by the house one night and suddenly they were packing my suitcase and bundling me into the car. I’d been a trouble, I thought. I’d been bad to get sick, and now they were punishing me by sending me away. They put me in a small white room, in my pyjamas, gave me new books and a pair of red velvet slippers with bells. Then they left me.
    When I was alone I cried a little—softly, so no one would hear. I wasn’t a baby and I wouldn’t let them see me cry, even when they gave me monster needles full of milky white penicillin. There were lots of those, too. I thought I’d die. After a week of torture, they sent me home.
    â€œWhat would have made it reactivate?” I ask Dr. Robichaud.
    â€œWell, there are any number of causes. Primarily it’s the result of a depressed immune system. You get run down, and the disease takes hold again. The bacilli are just waiting for an opportunity, a bad cold, fatigue, stress…” He pauses, then hurries on. “Any number of things.” He’s uncomfortable, and well he should be. Stress—he didn’t mean to say that, how indelicate of him. Yes, I’ve been under a hell of a lot of stress. The Family Tragedy. Poor Little Gwen MacIntyre. There, I’ve said it, but not to the indiscreet doctor. For all I know he could have been trying to trick me, to get me to “talk about it.”

CHAPTER 5
    She comes for you at dawn.
    She calls your name, taps you on the shoulder. Shakes a little harder when you don’t respond, or try to shrink deeper into the mattress. Open your eyes, and she’s standing there, all in white: white dress, white shoes, white stockings, white hat with a black band, white sweater draped over her shoulders because the windows have been open all night and it’s cold, as usual, in your room. In China they wear white for funerals, I’ve read. The wheelchair is pulled up to the side of your bed.She’s in a hurry; there will be others she must hunt down and haul off before breakfast.
    Get up, slide into your robe and slippers, get in the chair. Pull the comb out of your robe pocket and drag it through your hair as she wheels you down the dim corridor. One quick pee stop. She and the chair wait outside the stall door—this is to prevent you from making a bolt for freedom or, more disastrously, drinking an unregulated and unapproved amount of water. Brushing your teeth is strictly forbidden. A stray swallow of minty foam will skew the results and—think about it—do you want to do this any oftener than you have to? You do not.
    You’re off to the elevator, a creaky beige enamel job that would be in a museum if the directors of the Museum of Elevators knew this model was still in existence. The doors lurch open, crash shut. The cables moan their little paean to senile dementia.
    There are a few moments to ponder the irony of the fact that the more you heal, the more likely you are to require this procedure: gastric lavage. That’s nurse talk for gastric washing. Gastric washing is patient talk for suck out your stomach.
    We are all required to gather everything that comes out of