Like someone held a splitting wedge along her brow and was smacking it with a sledgehammer. She closed her eyes again and hoped to God she would die. Someone said her name and shook her. She squinted and saw a black man in a white coat. She tried to tell him to leave her alone, but her mouth was too dry to work. Reaching up to push his arms off her, she got tangled in something—tubes or wires—and gave up. Too weak to put up a fight and too numb to care. Sleep was all she wanted but they wouldn’t let her. Cruel, that’s what it was. But she’d messed it up, got greedy with the vodka and then forgot about taking the rest of the pills. This was her punishment, lying in this bed, tubes stuck in her body, head split in two, being shook awake by a black man who knew her name but not a blessed thing about her. He was making it his job to keep her on this earth, as if he was her creator and the decision was his. She cursed him. • • • A woman bent over her and pulled the tube out of her nose, then stuck a straw in her mouth.
