Cordélia Owl plumps Simon’s pillow, smooths the sheet over his chest, draws the curtains, leaves the room, closes the door behind her, and walks toward the reception desk, tracing arabesques on the floor of the corridor—damn these tight, fitted scrubs: she would have liked more room right now, to be able to hear the rustling of the folds, feel the fabric rubbing against the bumps and indentations on her knees, which she knew to be supple and reliable. On the way, she puts her hand in her pocket and pulls out her phone: no messages. Nyet. Nada de nada. 2:40 p.m. He must be asleep. Yes, he’s sleeping. Lying on his back somewhere, bare-chested, abandoned. She smiles. Don’t call.

Underwear back in place, buttons rebuttoned, belt buckles adjusted, they stood facing each other on the sidewalk, well, I should go, wow it’s late, um it’s actually pretty early isn’t it?, yeah, okay bye, a kiss on the cheek, a kind smile, and then they separated, following the appropriate ballet steps—smooth balancé, dégagé arrière, tour piqué—and moved away from each other along the same line, before both melting into darkness. Cordélia had walked slowly to begin with, clacking her heels like a fifties starlet in a pencil skirt, one hand holding her coat collar tight to her throat. She didn’t turn around—absolutely not—but once she had rounded the corner, she began to spin like a top, face to the sky, mouth open to the wind, arms held wide like a whirling dervish, then, once she was facing the right way, started to run, speeding between buildings, occasionally leaping a gutter as if it were a river she had to cross, her arms waving like ribbons, the cold night air lashing her face, blowing open her coat, which she hadn’t buttoned up, and it was good, she felt beautiful, supple, felt like she’d grown at least seven inches taller since the two of them had gone clattering into garbage cans, since her panties had slid to the floor and he had put his hand under her mound, his palm hollowed so he could raise her up the wall, and she had lifted herself on the toes of one foot, wrapping the knee of her other leg behind his back and drawing him toward her, his cock inside her, tongues clamoring in their mouths like fire in furnaces, teeth finally biting into flesh. She laughed as she walked, the hot-cold shivers of a girl who had overplayed her role as a solitary heroine, in the eyes of the world, now thawed, the amazon of the city assuming her desire and controlling her actions, she moved forward through the windy boulevards, the deserted five a.m. streets, broke into a run, indifferent to the car that slowed down next to her, to the windows that lowered, to the sexual insult that was bellowed from within, hey slut, you want some?, devouring the space in front of her, burning it up, so she almost crossed Rue d’Étretat just as Chris’s van pulled out to her left on the Quatre-Chemins crossroads, stopping dead by the sidewalk, the fresco on the bodywork filling her vision—it seemed to her that the California surfer girls in triangular bikinis were winking and smiling at her as if she were a possible sister—and a few strides later, she was home, buried under the down comforter, eyes closed, although she couldn’t sleep. She had not asked anything of that guy who had been tormenting her for so long, had not posed a single question—brave girl.

*   *   *

She enters the glass-walled, aquarium-like room, grabs a chair and collapses, suddenly exhausted. Clown fish crisscross the computer screen. She checks her phone again. Zilch. Of course there’s nothing. An unwritten rule that she wouldn’t break, not for all the gold in the world. The idea that, however quickly and coolly she spoke it, the slightest word to come out of her mouth would inevitably be smarmy, fake, overbearing, that any sentence she might pronounce would reveal the anxious sentimental cretin that lurked inside her. Don’t move a muscle. Swallow some coffee, a few nuts, a vial of royal jelly, don’t do anything stupid. Switch off that damn phone. Fuck, I’m so tired.

Pierre Révol walks in as she is examining the purplish marks on her neck, twisting herself in front of the Photo Booth app on her computer. Seeing his face appear in the image, leaning over her shoulder like an indiscreet neighbor reading her newspaper on a metro ride, she cries out. So, you were saying you’ve just started in the department? Révol stands motionless behind her as she jumps up and turns around, her head swimming, a black veil obscuring her vision, I need to eat something. She pushes her hair behind her ears in an attempt to clear her messed-up face—yes, I started two days ago—and with a firm hand she adjusts her collar. I need to talk to you about something important, something you’ll have to face here. Cordélia nods, okay. Now? It won’t take long, it’s about what just happened in the room back there, but at that very moment—bzzz bzzz—Cordélia’s cell phone vibrates inside her pocket and she stiffens suddenly as if she’s been electrocuted, oh God, no, I don’t believe it, fuck! Révol sits on the edge of a table and begins to speak, looking down at the floor, arms crossed over his chest, legs crossed at the ankles: The boy you saw in a state of brain death—bzzz bzzz—Révol is articulating very clearly, but for Cordélia his words are like a phonetics exercise in a foreign language. No matter how hard she tries to focus all her attention on that face, to make her brain concentrate on what that voice is saying, it’s as if she’s swimming against the current, against that warm wave that swells against her hip at regular intervals—bzzz bzzz—that runs between her thighs, into the hollow of her anus. She fights against it, trying to return to that man who seems to be growing ever more distant from her, as if she’s caught in rapids, becoming ever more inaudible as he explains: So, that young man is dead; now, grasping the reality of that death is difficult for his parents, because the appearance of his body seems to contradict the facts, you understand? Cordélia makes an effort to listen, articulating a yes like she’s bursting a bubble, I see, but in truth she doesn’t see anything, the scatterbrain, in fact there’s a stampede inside her head now—bzzz bzzz—the tiny vibrations of the phone provoking a flood of sexual images, frames from the movie of the night before—that oh-so-soft mouth open on the nape of her neck, the breath warm, and now her forehead, her cheek, her stomach, and her breasts are being scraped against the wall, skin reddened by the contact with the grainy mortar, the jutting bricks, while he moves behind her, and her hands grab his butt to pull him even closer, even deeper, harder—bzzz—the final palpitation, that’s it, she doesn’t blink, swallows before replying, tight-voiced, yes, I understand exactly what you mean. Révol glances at her a little suspiciously before concluding: So, when you’re looking after a patient here, please don’t talk to them the way you did to Simon Limbres: his parents were in the room, and for them it was a contradictory signal in an extreme situation; such words, spoken in the context of treatment, blur the message we are trying to communicate to them, when the situation is already upsetting enough, okay? Yes—Cordélia’s voice, agonized. She is waiting for only one thing now, for Révol to leave the room, go on, get the hell out of here, I get it, just go, and then suddenly, without warning, she balks, lifts her head: You didn’t involve me in the patient’s care; you saw the parents on your own; we’re not going to work like that anymore. Révol looks at her, amazed: Oh? So how are we going to work? Cordélia takes a step forward and replies: We’re going to work as a team. The silence lengthens. They look at each other, then the doctor jumps back to his feet: You look a little peaked, do you know where the kitchen is? They have cookies there. You need to be careful, young lady; twelve hours in the ICU is a marathon, not a sprint, you need to stay the distance. Yeah, yeah, okay. Finally, Révol leaves the room and Cordélia shoves her hand into her pocket. She closes her eyes, thinks about her grandmother in Bristol, whom she talks to every Sunday evening—it can’t be her, she tells herself, it’s too early. She would willingly undergo a superstitious test (he loves me he loves me not) before opening her eyes and reading the numbers on the touchscreen. She would willingly put all her money, as on a roulette board, on a single number, a room number, would throw a ball of paper into a wastepaper basket or simply call heads or tails on a coin toss. Oh, don’t be an idiot—what’s the matter with you?

*   *   *

Cordélia Owl stands in the center of the room, head high and shoulders back, and slowly lifts up her fingers, one by one, to reveal the number of the person who called her. Unknown. She smiles with relief. In fact, she is no longer so certain she wants him to contact her, no longer so eager to hear his voice again. Suddenly she feels cruel; thinking of him, she is lucid and cheerful. She is twenty-five years old. With a feeling of disgust, she anticipates the gradual loss of romantic tension, this mountain of fatigue—exaltation, anxiety, craziness, squalid impulsiveness—and wonders again why this intensity remains for her the most desirable part of her life, then suddenly spins around and turns her back on this question, the way you might remove your foot from the muddy pond where you’ve just put it, felt it being sucked down. Unable to rest, what she must do is prolong the previous night, let it infuse her, celebrate it. Maintain her girlish grace and irony. When she reaches the little kitchen, she takes a packet of raspberry wafers from a cupboard, tears open the paper, which rustles like silk under her voracious fingers, and slowly devours every single one.