Nine thirty p.m. Past midnight in Damascus and Amman. It is dark there, and in a windowless room on the tenth floor in Massachusetts General Hospital.

From my window, another lamp-lit living room across the street in a brick town house. It looks like a reflection, fourth floor up, except this apartment would be to the right. Except in that living room, over a sleek black leather couch, facing TV, there are two heads. One is nodding off and snapping up. Nine thirty-one. Moonlight, tonight, is particularly insolent and harsh.

Nine thirty-two. Still past midnight in Damascus and Amman. No one to call, there, here, in Boston, anywhere. What would I say? Still, I put the phone to my cheek, for the cool, plastic, material feel of possibility: that it might, just might ring.

Nine thirty-five and it does not, but my hand will not drop. The phone suspended, on the hope… Nine thirty-nine.

Phone and heart drop to the sofa without a sound. The fall should have made one. Nowhereness should have a sound, like a gavel, a slamming door, thunder. But no. Nine forty-four.

Suddenly, out of that nowhere, some evolutionary force:

Keys! Phone! Coat!

The pressure eases the second I open the door. Down and onto the street, I burst like a bird from a cage. Left, to the amber lights of the main road, toward the river. I gulp in wind, wet and cold. Not sharp enough. Right, past the Dunkin’ Donuts, too painfully bright; too orange and pink, still; in it, life still unfolding too innocently.

“Taxi! Mass General, please!”

I could have taken the T. Not fast enough. The driver steps on the gas. The road is empty. Monday night. Still not enough.

“Sir, can you go faster?”

Eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror.

“It’s an emergency!”

A nanoscopic moment. The back of his head is bald, badly combed over. The few remaining hairs are moon silver. Like the eyes and lashes. I don’t know what he sees in the mirror and in the same nanoscopic moment, immense, but—

“You’ll be there in four minutes.”

We fly—he didn’t lie—for four minutes.

Four minutes we spend in silence, I holding my breath, he the wheel. Four minutes is too short for talk; our lives just graze each other. He will not know what the emergency is. I will not know his name. How fragile, transient, shape-shifting, our little human existence.

Mass General. I burst out of the car, which drives on, to pick up another stranger. I run. Revolving doors whirl, propelled, like me, by something great and urgent.

Security. Elevators. Tenth floor. Hurry. No one in the hall. I tear past doors through which flash mothers, fathers, incubators, lives, other people’s. Room 1013. Door open.

Naseem. Arrival, breathless arrival. My heart swells, soaked in warm honey.

It expands, overflows. Something pure, like an essence, flows out, through my pores, infusing the room with light. Transcendent and gold.

I have arrived. Naseem is asleep, dime-size chest rising, falling, barely, hovering like a feather on a breeze. The lights are off. I don’t need them, not in here; I can deal with semi-dark now. A small blue vinyl couch against one of the walls. I curl into a ball.