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legs. She put the magazine down, carefully away from the splashes by the sink. “It’s a pterodactyl,” she said. “I’ll tell him what it is.” She got down, sliding the cat along the counter, and took the pterodactyl. Clara held the door open for her, and Darlene ran down to the lounge, her bare feet making no noise, the hospital already home.
    Lorraine’s bed was rumpled and she looked ugly and uncomfortable. A nurse was settling an older woman back into the bed to the left of the door. Lorraine strained herself upwards, trying to get into a half-sitting position.
    “Some kind of lymphoma is what they think,” she said.
    Clara nodded.
    “It’s weird to say it out loud,” Lorraine said.
    “I know.”
    “It’s a shock. They tried to tell me about it last night, they sent in an older doctor in the evening. The little bruises, those are petechiae. I just thought they looked kind of pretty, like a brooch of moles.”
    They were pretty. Little constellations, a sweet dark splatter of paint on Lorraine’s arm, another patch on her leg just above the knee. Now they seemed hostile as snake bites.
    “I hadn’t heard of them before,” Clara said.
    “Me neither. Or I’d have known to go get looked at.” Lorraine moved fretfully in the bed, tugged at her pillow. “These are lumps of dough. I wish I had my little pillow out of the car.”
    They were silent.
    “I’ve got this fever,” Lorraine said, after a moment. “They left me a bunch of pamphlets. Your Cancer and You .” The stack of papers sat, radioactive, on the night table.
    “You look a little flushed,” Clara said, hating the sound of her own voice so falsely, unspontaneously cheerful.
    “They want me to stay in till they can get it down. There’s—a bunch of more tests to do, there’s—” Lorraine stopped talking.
    The woman in the other bed moaned behind the curtain. Then she was silent too.
    “Ovarian,” Lorraine whispered. “She had a rough night.”
    Clara’s head was aching badly. She couldn’t seem to stop hearing her own words, and Lorraine’s too, repeated in her mind during the silences. Fever, fever , fever, more tests , more, a little flushed, a little flushed.
    “I think they’ll probably let us stay here—them, I mean—one more night, but it isn’t too good for the kids, in the lounge. I want them to go. There’s some kind of a—some accommodation, Clayton’s getting the details, if there’s room.”
    Clara murmured something, one of those noises which encourage further conversation without committing the speaker to an exact opinion.
    “They shouldn’t of seen any of this.”
    No. Clara could see the dark circles under Trevor’s eyes. Even the baby Pearce seemed lethargic, less comfortable and safe than right after the accident. Lorraine’s distress infected them all, she thought. And nothing to do all day but wander from the TV lounge to the room.
    “It’s hard on everyone,” she said. Innocuous enough, but the husband, coming in, took exception to it anyway.
    “Hard on you?” he sneered. “Hard to sit and watch the results of what you did?”
    Lorraine pushed him with her pale hand. “Quit it, Clay,” she said. “She didn’t give it to me.”
    “This whole thing,” he began, and then petered out, his face pulling down in the chin. He had a sharp face, almost good-looking, with smooth beige skin. His chin was as small and rounded as a girl’s, and he could look defeated in an instant. It must make him seem vulnerable, Clara thought, trying to make out what Lorraine had seen in him. He was not big, but had a springy build with muscles stretched over his bones. He looked strong but unhealthy, surly and eager at the same instant. A dog who’s been badly treated, and has gone vicious, but wants you to fuss over him anyway.
    The minutes stretched by in a silence that Lorraine seemed to want.
    He sat quietly enough on the end of her bed, but couldn’t settle. He shifted and re-crossed his legs every