Her head is wrapped in clean white bandages.
Her skin is like paper.
Beside her a machine outlines her heartbeat –
alive,
alive, still alive.
I sit by her bedside.
She doesn’t wake up.
I’ll have to go away, I say.
I can’t stay in the house when you’re not there.
It wouldn’t be OK.
Marla?
Behind me a nurse is checking
another patient’s chart, tutting.
Marla moans in her sleep.
What?
Stay, she says.
Here or at the house? I ask.
Stay, she repeats.
And that is when Peggy appears by the bed too.