A feverish energy inched itself into Jessica Rubenstein's state of mind. She was not the same young woman at the beginning of the week as she was at the close of it. She would not go gently into the night, consolidate. When possible she reduced her hours at the hospital and, when working, her thoughts were rarely directed towards her patients. They were all dead or dying she judged. Such was the potency of this new determination to survive, save her family, that Jessica even began to steal from the hospital to supplement her rations. She needed her strength and wished to look as attractive as she could again, which meant trying to put on some weight and regain her figure. Sometimes, in her free hours, the possessed girl could be seen, as if sleep-walking, making her way towards one of the sections of wire fencing on the edges of the ghetto. Her purpose, embracing a phantom-hope, was to catch the eye and make contact with her would-be saviour. She had not seen Thomas for what had seemed like an age.
