ONE DROP A DAY TO help the pain, and another drop of something else to keep my pupil dilated so that there won’t be rebleeding. Somehow I register the word rebleeding, and I wonder, vaguely, what that means. The nurse might be trying to tell me what it means, but I can’t really understand what she’s saying. I see her mouth moving, and I see my mother’s listening face, and I even hear words, but it’s like I’m underwater on Mars. Everything is blurry and foreign and floating. Things get slightly more clear and still and in focus after my mother leaves me to call my dad and check on what’s happening with him and Jack. I wobble out into the hallway and ask another nurse where intensive care is, and she tells me, even though I think she won’t. While she’s saying I should go back to my room and wait for my mom to come get me, I get myself into the elevator and hold on to the metal bar on the way up to the fifth floor. Right as the elevator door opens I see the Gersons rushing down the hall in the opposite direction from me, so I make my way to the end of the hall where they were coming from, and I check a few doors, and the third door is where I find Ellen.
