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muffins, had already sunk a turkey breast in a bucket of brine, she felt a shiver of recklessness and knew she wanted to do exactly that. Alfred put his hands on her waist and made her look at him. “Leave it,” he said. So she left the batter to harden on the counter and walked with him to the train station. Along the way, he sang a German folk song and danced along the sidewalk to make her laugh. Miraculously, the family never told the agency, or else the message got lost, because the same agency placed her in a new situation the very next week.
    She imagined Alfred storming through the main entrance of Willard Parker. If they block him at the front door, she thought, he’ll come through the back. If they lock the back door, he’ll build a tunnel, he’ll scale the walls, he’ll drop in from the sky to fend them off so that I can get home. Alfred, she thought, willing him to hear her. It was something she used to do when she began getting more jobs that took her out of town and away from him. She’d take her break on a quiet back porch and think hard on his name. She’d crawl into bed at night and extinguish every other thing in her mind except for him. Later, when she was back home, she’d tell him what she’d done, and he’d sit up taller and ask which days, exactly, what times, because there was one afternoon when he was walking through the park and had a feeling she was there, trying to tell him something.
    “They can, Mary. And once you’re on North Brother it will be more difficult to . . .”
    “To what?”
    “To get back.”
    “Miss Mallon,” a nurse called from behind them. “It’s time to give another sample.”
    “I’ll be back in a few days,” Dr. Baker said, placing her hand lightly on Mary’s arm.
    “Wait,” Mary said, and heard the panic in her own voice. “Don’t forget to tell the nurses. About the pen. About posting my letter.”
    “I won’t forget.”
      •  •  •  
     
    When Mary got back to her room, the paper and envelope were gone. She opened the small drawer next to her bed. She dropped to her knees and searched the floor. She checked under the pillow, inside the pillowcase, under the top sheet, down by the steel casters in case they’d been carried in a draft.
    “Did anyone take the paper and envelope that were left here for me?” she asked, looking from cot to cot to decide which among them was healthiest, which among them would have the nerve. “They were mine and I’d like them back immediately.” Her voice was the loudest sound the women had heard since arriving at the hospital, and some of them who had not stirred in days turned to look at her.
    “One of the doctors,” the girl by the window said. “He came in and put them on his clipboard when he saw you weren’t here.”
    “Which?”
    “Him,” the girl said, pointing.
    “Miss Mallon,” Dr. Soper’s voice came from behind her, and when she turned he was backlit by the lamps of the corridor. “Did Dr. Baker speak to you about surgery?”
    “Can I have my paper back?”
    “Not until we’ve talked about surgery.”
    My God, she thought, pressing her fingertips to her temples. Didn’t these people know when a subject was closed? Had she not made her position clear? Or did they mean to drive her insane with the same questions over and over and over? Everything in the room seemed to slide to the left. She walked quickly to the window and pushed it up. She had a birthday cake to make. She had a man who had no idea where she was. She had to find a new job. There was a quartet playing at Our Lady of the Scapular in two weeks time and her friend Joan had offered to make her a dress. The cold pushing in through the open window was a salve on her hot skin and she could hear someone whistle for a taxi. The music of a banjo floated through the air from some point north of the hospital. Passing under the light cast by the single streetlamp were a few feathery flakes of snow.
    “Dr. Baker