His dream of the old man and the fire was far away; his head hurt, and he drifted in and out of consciousness. He had been drugged hard, so he kept falling back to sleep, the pain ringing in his bones—his skull, his cheeks, his jaw—each time he woke. When he touched his face, he found a bandage there, and beneath the bandage a tight, aching pain he could not escape, not even in sleep. He forced himself to sit up, but a nurse came and forced him back down. He slept some more, his sleep no longer black and seamless but filled with dreams, fragments acted by a kaleidoscope of interchangeable players. Tenace lumbered in bed with Amanti; Maureen and Brunner went off together. Finally, he pulled himself up again—the pain was fading—and he saw the nurse, a brisk older woman who took his pulse with a professional, almost distasteful air. He asked her what day it was. “Go back to sleep. You have a concussion.” Lofton was in a large room. There were other beds nearby, and he could hear, aside from the footsteps of his nurse, hard breathing and moaning.
