She tried to sit up and found it too hard to do. She was too weak. And she was starving. She tried again and let out a little moan. The young woman at the window put her book down and looked up.
“Oh, my goodness,” she said. “You’re awake. I’d better call the nurse.”
“Accident?” Eve asked.
The young woman had come up to the bed and begun to ring the buzzer there. She shook her head at Eve’s question and said, “No accident at all. Spinal meningitis. Very nasty. I was worried about you for a while there yesterday. Do you remember who I am?”
“No.”
“I’m Grace Feinmann. I live across the hall from you in Watertown. You came out into the hall, and you were really feeling awful—”
“Yes,” Eve said. She did remember. It was fuzzy, but she could remember. Lying on the carpet in the hall. Feeling that it wasn’t possible to stand up. Feeling that she had to get to the hospital and that she would never be able to drive. And then this young woman had come and taken her to a car.
“Eve,” Eve said.
“Oh, I know,” Grace said. “Your name is Eve Wachinsky. We had to go through your wallet to find your information. So that we could check you into the hospital. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No,” Eve said. “Hungry. I’m—hungry.”
A nurse came to the door and looked in. “Oh, wonderful,” she said. “You’re awake. I’ll call Dr. Carpenter right away.”
“She says she’s hungry,” Grace Feinmann said.
“I can get her some chicken broth. That’s on the chart. For more than that, we’ll have to talk to the doctor. I’ll be right back.”
“I hope chicken broth is okay,” Grace said.
Chicken broth was fine. What Eve really wanted was to sit up. She tried again, but fell back almost as soon as she got up. She shook her head.
“I—want to—sit—up,” she said.
“Oh, I can do that,” Grace told her. She fumbled around at the edge of the bed, and Eve heard machinery under he whirr. The top half of the bed slid upward. It wasn’t exactly like sitting up, but at least it wasn’t lying flat on her back, either.
“There,” Grace said. “I hope that helps.”
“Yes,” Eve told her. “Thank you.”
“We really have been terribly worried. Nobody knew exactly what was going to happen to you. It was very frightening. The doctor said you must have been having symptoms for at least twenty-four hours. Meningitis doesn’t hit like this without a day or so of feverishness and achiness that comes before. But I told him, people just don’t go to the doctor for things like that. Not unless they have just tons of health insurance, and I couldn’t find any health insurance for you at all. I hope you don’t mind that we went through all this stuff. We didn’t mean to invade your privacy. We were just trying to do what was best—”
“It’s all right,” Eve said.
A tall nurse’s aide came into the room, carrying a tray with two Styrofoam cups full of chicken broth on it. The cups had white plastic lids on them. The nurse’s aide put the tray down on a rolling table and pulled the rolling table over to the bed.
“You can have ice water if you want. To go with the broth. Mrs. Corcoran said it would be all right.”
“Yes, please,” Eve said.
The nurse’s aide disappeared and appeared again a few seconds later with a plastic pitcher and a small glass. She put them down on the rolling table next to the broth and disappeared.
“Here, I’ll pour some water for you,” Grace said. “This seems like a really strange hospital to me. It’s almost as if it were empty. The hospitals I’m used to always seemed crammed full of people.”
Eve managed to drink some water. Her mouth felt instantaneously better. She hadn’t realized how dry it was. She reached for one of the Styrofoam cups of broth and tried to get the lid off. She cup was warm to the touch. The lid wouldn’t budge.
“I’ll get that,” Grace said, and did. Then she handed Eve the opened cup of broth and stepped back. “You’re going to be weak as hell for a week, Dr. Carpenter said. Oh, I’m sorry about the language. I mean, I’ll be more careful if you want me to be. I keep forgetting that not everybody talks like a bunch of graduate students.”
The broth tasted wonderful. It felt wonderful, too. Eve could practically feel her mind clearing and the fuzziness draining away. She tried sitting forward again and found that this time it was not impossible. It wasn’t easy, but at least it wasn’t impossible. She took another long sip of broth and then a deep breath. It only hurt a little.