Days and weeks and months passed. Gumm ate his cutlets and swallowed more teaspoons of green syrup. His nurse performed her duties with polite boredom. Eventually she replaced the name tag she had lost with a new one, which read ASK FOR HALJA. THANK YOU!

Gumm would often try to pick the door lock with the pin on the nurse’s misplaced tag. He would twist bumps and bends into the pin, hoping to replicate the actual key. He failed each time, but found the endeavor to be a pleasant, even exhilarating diversion.

During one meal period, Nurse Halja informed him that there was to be a change in his medication. “We favor an aggressive pharmacodynamic approach, Mr. Gumm,” she said. Gumm noticed that the back of her neck was heavily speckled, but couldn’t tell if these were age spots or freckles. “From now on, you shall take your medicine by the tablespoonful.”

“What exactly does this medicine do for me?” Gumm said.

The nurse sighed with either impatience or indifference. “It helps you to get better. You had a nasty fall, you know. You have experienced severe physical and psychological deconditioning. Take your medicine and rest. Rest is so important, Mr. Gumm. You wouldn’t want to addle your brain all over again.”

“How long have I been here?”

The nurse sighed again. “Not long enough, I’m afraid.”

Gumm stared at his half-eaten cutlet. “I want to see my doctor.”

“Your doctor is a very busy man. Simply too busy for words.”

The nurse turned and moved his meal tray to the nightstand. She leaned over him and felt his jawline and forehead with her cold hands. Never before had Gumm been this close to her. Her flesh did not appear to have pores. A faint, foul current of air issued from her nostrils.

She touched the lower lid of his right eye and tried to push it down. Gumm shook his head a bit. She tried the left eye next, but he slapped her hand away.

“I’m not a puppet,” he said. “I demand to be treated with respect.” He stared up into her shiny face with defiance. Then he saw the shadowed gaps between her eyeballs and their lids, and he gasped.

The nurse spun away from him. “With or without respect, you shall be treated,” she said. She stood completely still for a moment, thinking or perhaps waiting for a comment, before leaving the room.

Gumm’s heart pounded so fiercely that it pained him. So the nurse wore a mask. Was she ugly? But why did she turn away from him to speak? Perhaps she had a facial deformity, and her mouth didn’t move well with the mask. Or perhaps her mouth didn’t move at all.

He removed the name tag from its hiding place in one of his slippers. He shaped the pin into a new configuration (three tiny bends instead of four), inserted it into the lock and twisted. Nothing happened, so he twisted again with more force.

Within the lock’s workings, a decisive clack sounded.

Gumm eased the door open.

The hall outside of his room was long, white-washed, and lined with doors. Across the hall, twenty feet to the left, he saw a half-open door, leading into darkness.

He moved slowly and quietly through the hall. He peered warily into the shadowed doorway. He saw dozens of jackets, coats, dresses... Only a closet. He reached in and grabbed a dark green overcoat. He tried to shut the closet door, but the catch was broken.

He continued down the hall. Soon he would be with his family! He wondered how old Anthony would be... He heard a faint scratching behind him. He turned just in time to see a black and white cat emerge from the closet. Gumm found this terribly amusing. A cat in a hospital? How woefully unprofessional. The piebald creature began to slink toward him.

Gumm walked for several minutes. In the distance he saw a red sign hanging in front of a door. He walked faster -- yes, the sign read EXIT. The cat had caught up with him and was pacing by his side. Gumm didn’t want to carry the animal, but he hoped that it would follow him out of the building. He could give it to Elizabeth. Elizabeth loved cats! He remembered that Elizabeth used to call her cats her real family, since Anthony was so damned moody and she needed someone, something to love her-- But no, no, no, that memory couldn’t be right. Gumm took a deep breath. He felt dizzy now, even a bit nauseous. He suddenly realized that he was standing in front of the red sign.

He slipped on the overcoat. It was far too big for him; its owner had to be an incredibly fat fellow. He was about to open the exit door when he heard a sound...a sort of bubbling.

He listened closely: yes, something was bubbling and gurgling in the room to his immediate right. He thought for a moment of the lapping sound he had heard beyond his window. He looked up and down the hall -- no sign of Nurse Halja. He bent down for a quick peek through the keyhole.

He saw the back of a woman in white. Was this Nurse Halja? Why, yes: even from this distance, he could detect the spots on her neck.

Evidently she was on excellent terms with this gentleman. She had seen fit to remove an item of personal attire in his presence. This smooth, rubbery item stared at Gumm with eyeless sockets from atop a side table. The nurse was pouring green syrup directly from the bottle down the throat of the patient. The poor fellow appeared to be suffering from some sort of severe skin condition. His flesh was green, puffy, damp -- actually, a bit liquescent, a bit frothy...

Gumm recoiled from the keyhole with a cry of revulsion. He staggered to the exit, opened the door, and rushed down and down a stairway lit with small red bulbs.

“Mr. Gumm!” The voice of Nurse Halja echoed above him. “Mr. Gumm! Come back here immediately! Think of your condition! I insist: forget this foolishness and return to your room!”

Gumm ran down stairs of carpeted wood, then bare wood, then stone. “Elizabeth!” he cried. “Anthony! I’m coming!” Tears were running down his cheeks. Strangely enough, his impending escape did not cheer him. In fact, he felt sadder than before.

The red bulbs were soon replaced by small metal lanterns. He came to the base of the stairs; from this point on, all was darkness.

He took one, two, three steps into the dark. How sad he felt...he found himself clenching his fists. Clenching and unclenching. Squeezing.

“Oh God, Elizabeth,” he whispered. “Oh God, Anthony. My poor little Anthony.”

He heard a ferocious slapping of waves. He returned to the staircase and removed two lanterns from their hooks on the walls. He then walked back into the darkness.

He found himself standing on the banks of a roiling green river. He could see long arms rising from the waters, only to melt and fall back into the current. Countless faces swirled in the green river. Each face was happy, deliriously happy.

A tap on the shoulder startled him and he dropped the lanterns. They rolled a short distance before they were pulled into the waters by green hands. Gumm was enveloped in endless night.

“Oh, poor Mr. Gumm,” Nurse Halja whispered. “We’re beyond secrets now, aren’t we?” She pressed her mask into his hands. He felt the sleek nose, the rubbery lips.

“I’m sorry,” Gumm said. “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“You know now, don’t you, Mr. Gumm?” The nurse sighed with emotion. “Memory can be such an awful inconvenience. You were not a nice man, Mr. Gumm. If only you had completed your medicinal regimen. You could have had oblivion. Lovely, lovely oblivion.”

Gumm caught a whiff of the nurse’s animal breath. “What’s going to happen to me now?” he whispered. He felt something moving around his ankles, and heard a low, velvety purr.

“My pretty kittykins.” Nurse Halja’s voice turned childish. “Mama’s precious little baby.” The movement at his ankles went away. He heard the purring again, closer this time; he guessed that the nurse had picked up the cat.

“To answer your question...” Nurse Halja continued, “we shall proceed with another form of treatment. A more radical procedure, perhaps; but we shall see what we shall see. I want to help, Mr. Gumm. And so does your doctor.”

Gumm felt the rasp of a dry tongue on his chin. He couldn’t tell if he had been licked by the cat or its mistress.

The nurse took hold of his elbow and began to lead him through the dark. He thought that she would escort him back up the stairs; but after a moment, he noticed that the lapping of the green waters was coming from his left. She was leading him along the river. It then occurred to him that the nurse did not need light to see.

As Gumm walked with Nurse Halja, he tried not to think of poor Elizabeth, poor Anthony. What a wicked, wicked man he was. He resisted a sudden urge to gnaw off his own hands...

“Here we are,” the nurse said at last. “On the table, please.”

Gumm reached out and felt a hard, cold platform, waist-high, before him. Tapping it with his knuckles, he heard the dull, echoing clang of metal. He removed the overcoat, folded it, and set it on the ground. He then climbed onto the table and laid on his back.

Gumm felt something brush by his arm...his shoulder...his neck. The cat was walking around his body. Hands began to unbutton his shirt; other hands removed his shoes.

“Who else is here?” Gumm said.

“Your doctor,” the nurse whispered in his ear. “It was very naughty of you to take his coat. Do not speak to him. From this point on, you must be silent. Absolutely silent.”

Hands removed his clothing, piece by piece. Hands swabbed his body with a soft, wet wad that reeked of chemicals. The cat curled up next to his head and began to purr, purr, purr. He found the purring quite soothing. So soothing, in fact, that he really didn’t mind when the slicing began.

He wanted to ask Nurse Halja whether they going to put something in or take something out. Of course, he dared not; he had been warned. And really, there was no need for him to worry. He was in the hands of caring medical professionals. He smiled as the purring dissolved his thoughts into a lazy vortex of liquid sable.