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trying to back away so I could roll into a protective ball, shielding my soft innards from this mad woman. Beneath all this was another recognition—one that kept me from screaming for help—I deserved this.
    I wanted her husband.
    I loved Detweiler. I could lie to myself all day, but in my heart of hearts, I hoped he’d walk away from his marriage. Once he had admitted to me his marriage was troubled, I allowed myself to daydream about us, even though there was no “us,” and the result had been to weaken my resolve to stay clear. I’d allowed myself the luxury of fantasy. I’d experienced the delicious and unrestrained joy of imagining a future, together. The barricades of my psyche crumbled. All my wildest hopes bloomed and flourished, exploding and expanding, moving from small shapelessness to a larger solid form, like those silly toy capsules that grow into huge sponges when exposed to water.
    This was my punishment.
    I was no better than my dead husband. George Lowenstein cheated in the flesh, but I’d cheated with my heart, hadn’t I?
    So I quit fighting Brenda. I went limp as she shook me. I took the abuse, absorbed the pain.

But like a decapitated body keeps twitching, my fingers mashed the call button repeatedly. Meanwhile, the ridiculousness of the situation played out in my mind—I was here in the hospital, supposedly to get well, but I wasn’t safe. Brenda Detweiler aimed to kill me. A part of me repeated, “You have this coming to you,” while another voice responded, “Fight! Fight back!”
    My head flopped like a crash site dummy’s, snapping back hard as she shook me first this way and then that. The room swam in a fast spinning circle. A sparkling constellation danced across the blackness of my vision. Through all the sensory chaos, came a weak voice, pleading, but distinct.
    It was mine.
    “Stop, please. Stop hurting me.” I managed to add, “I promise.”
    “What’s going on in there?” A voice called from out in the hallway.
    The charge nurse must have heard the commotion.
    Brenda realized her predicament. She turned loose of me immediately. She jumped back, making it to the end of my bed just as the door flew open. The light revealed Brenda standing there, shoulders hunched as she blinked and shaded her eyes.
    The newcomer rounded the corner, her figure haloed in the light. She was nobody’s fool. Quickly, she surmised that something—goodness knows what—had happened. “What’s going on? Did someone call out?”
    Brenda was unable to look the other woman straight in the eye.
    I couldn’t either. I adjusted my gown so the spots where Brenda had grabbed me wouldn’t show.
    The newcomer stood in the pie-wedge crescent of light, staring at me, then Brenda, and back again at me. Her voice became more soothing. “Mrs. Lowenstein, are you all right? Is there a problem?”
    “Yes,” I managed. “Fine. I’m fine.”
    “You sure?” the woman’s voice probed as she picked up my wrist and put her fingertips on my racing pulse. “Your heartbeat is elevated. Your face is flushed.”
    She turned narrowed eyes on Brenda. “What are you doing here?”
    Brenda stared down at her hands. “Um.”
    “We’re old friends,” I suggested, tentatively at first. “Brenda came by to say hello.”
    “Really?” The expression on her face told me the floor manager wasn’t buying any of this. “Is that so?”
    A long silence followed. I debated what to do. Brenda stood frozen at the foot of my bed.
    As Shakespeare would have said, the worm had turned. She was entirely in my power.
    I could report Brenda Detweiler. No doubt she’d lose her job. As well she should. She had no right to touch me the way she had. No right to bully me while I was here in her care.
    She knew all this. Her face tightened, her mouth turned tremulous, and her hands balled up at her sides. She could tell that I was deciding her fate.
    I could get her back. I could make her pay. I could punish her.
    But I’m not