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had dressed today. I don’t know what the day nurses thought they were doing. There was no afternoon therapy group. I’ve got a 180-pound woman in lock-up. She’s worn out but we’ll be hearing from her. And my orderly’s hung over.” It helped, if the load was heavy, to have David come in for part of the evening shift, and Marge had an understanding with the hospital that she could use him so many hours a month. Sometimes she came home with bruised shins and scratches on her face and arms. She liked to talk with David about the patients. She thought he had a knack with them. They could tell he was interested in them; he might be the only person they knew who was. David had said, “It’s more fun than church,” which made his mother smile. Her sister was hardshell Baptist, but Marge had quit religion after her mother died.
    Benke rolled a woman by in a wheelchair and pushed her up to the table, then turned and trudged back down the hall. The woman laid her face on the table. Marge gently pulled her by the shoulders back to a sitting position.
    â€œGo get the girl in seven,” she said. “Take a wheelchair.”
    David was surprised to hear his mother refer to someone as a girl. He hurried to find out who she was. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at her lap, her head ducked so that he couldn’t see her face. She was a little thing, with light fine hair and wrists like sticks. He asked her if she was hungry. He said, “I didn’t see what supper was, but the carts are here. I’ll sit with you while you eat, if you want.”
    She looked up. She really was just a girl, maybe only fourteen or fifteen. It took him an instant to register the familiarity of her face. Of course! She was the girl on the highway, the girl with the rabbit. Without the blood, the rabbit, the dirty hair, she was nothing but a waif, someone you would never notice. He thought he had seen her at school, too, though in a bleached blue hospital gown and scuffs, he could not tell much about what she really looked like. She had a little sunburn across her nose and cheeks. He held his arms out and helped her into the chair. “My name is David,” he said cheerfully. He had often thought that you could get along with disturbed patients by treating them a lot like you did teachers, with hearty good spirits, a false but well-meaning respectfulness. You had to make them think they were okay, no matter how much they were not. The ones who saw things, though, the ones who thought you might do them great harm, were different. They were not in the hospital very long; they had to be moved along the system.
    She began to scrub her arm vigorously. She held it out in front of her and ran her other hand up and down the length of it. By the time they were near the day room she was making squeaky sounds as she rubbed.
    Marge hurried over and knelt by the chair. “Sissy, dear, I want you to eat your supper. We’re having macaroni and cheese, everybody likes that.” She stood up. “If you don’t eat, I’m going to have to do something.” David looked at the girl again. Sissy. He thought being forced to eat must be one of the worst indignities a patient could suffer, and he resolved to keep it from happening to her. Her arms were relaxed now, but the one she had been rubbing was a bright chafed red. He thought again how mild and unremarkable she was. She was the kind of girl who grew up and became a clerk at Woolworth’s, a girl you would never consider had a complicated or errant mind.
    He pulled a chair up for himself and set it alongside hers, then went to get both of them a Coca-Cola from the refrigerator behind his mother. The woman from the couch, now at the table, pointed a long finger at the Coca-Colas and screeched, “Mine!” David ignored her and she screamed again. Benke pulled her arm back and spoke sharply. “Your dinner is right in front of