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guy who’d walked into your bar like a doof and asked for a Sex on the Beach with a tropical umbrella. The ambulance worker (Mike?) and Sarah walked away, and then suddenly we were the only ones left in the room.
    God, I had no idea what I could even say to you, and I remember how unbelievably uncomfortable that silence was because I was racing through my mental log of thoughts, trying to find something acceptable. You, of course, just stared at me, because you’re brave like that. When you continued to stare for about thirty seconds straight, I realized that I was going to have to initiate conversation. And then I had to take a moment to mourn the automatic nature of my old existence again, the way I was before the attack. I used to thoughtlessly walk into a party and have something to say to everyone, but now that I think back on it, maybe I just had something to tell everyone about me. The first time I looked at you, I couldn’t even begin to guess what you’d want to know.
    So even though I was on all those painkillers, I remember saying something very retarded. I said, “I learned tonight, and I don’t mean to make this sound too emotional, but I learned that we’re never really alone.” It took my brain so much effort to release that thought that it still haunts me.
    You swung your feet over the side of your bed and leaned forward. “That’s not true,” you said. “I was alone until about five minutes ago.”
    Holy shit, I was taken aback by that. I tried to turn onto my side so I could read the expression on your face, to see if you were playing. I couldn’t turn, though, because I hadn’t learned how to maneuver my legs. “Is that a swipe at me?”
    â€œNo, not a swipe. Before you got here I was lying in this room alone. Now I am not alone because you are over there, in one of the other beds. I was making an objective assessment of the situation.” You said these things simply and purely, whereas with anyone else, they would have been delivered with sarcasm and bite. Your eyes didn’t twinkle, and your mouth didn’t curve itself into flirtatious shapes.
    Then you asked me, “Were you here last night—in the infirmary?” and I sank even lower, thinking that over the course of one night, I had become so unremarkable that you couldn’t tell me apart from another random patient. I told you, “No. I just got here now,” and wanted to know who you were confusing me with, and you just told me it was a “long story.” I left that alone, but I still think about it now. I always had the sense that there were a lot of “long stories” I never heard.
    There was another silence then, and I borrowed some of your comfort with it to take the time to evaluate you. You were so miniature perched on the edge of your bed. Your arms were all bone—I hope you realize that’s not an insult—but your face was complete transparency. I thought I could see everything inside of you, everything essential you were made up of, on your face. And then my world, which felt like such a jumble, met with yours, which seemed so clear, and I thought, “If you were mine, I would have a living compass.”
    â€œSo anyway. Anyway,” I said.
    You smiled. “Are we moving onto a new topic?”
    â€œWe can.” I squinted and pointed across the room like—okay, to extend that bar analogy, which seems particularly apt to me—I was that drunk trying to name an actor in a late-night movie while sitting below your small, fuzzy bar TV. I remember asking at some point, “Hey, am I talking coherently? Because I’m on a lot of painkillers, and I can’t tell. And I think you might have an unusual accent except I can’t tell that either.”
    â€œI can understand you perfectly, but I don’t have an accent. That might be the drugs affecting you,” you suggested.
    â€œIs