Then, standing above the aged lady, she did something she hadn’t allowed herself to do since being accepted at the center as a volunteer. It wasn’t polite to stare at the infirm, and she’d been a model apprentice, sensitive to the patients and their need for privacy. But no one else happened to be in the room at that moment, and Mrs. McCarthy was, by all appearances, sound asleep. No harm could come of the innocent trespass of looking at her straight in the face. After all, she’d never seen someone this old up close. “Mrs. McCarthy?” she whispered. Yes, sleeping soundly. The girl leaned in near enough to count her wintry eyelashes. She marveled at the ravaged skin, a watercolor version of a river delta painted pink on white paper, the fissures above her apricot mouth. Her delicate nose, the cartilage so thin that the sun afforded it a rose shade, the same color she’d seen in her own hand once when she cupped a flashlight against her palm in the dark to reveal her bones and veins.
