Chapter 21: Dialysis

They had her in the dialysis unit at Greenwich Hospital by the time I got there.

It was a long room of reclining chairs and humming machines, with a window onto the parking structure.

Lila lay in the last chair with two tubes in her arm and her blood running out of her and back in again.

Her skin was the color of candle wax, and her friend sat beside her holding a paper cup.

"They said four hours," the friend whispered. "I have to go to work. Will you stay?"

I looked at the empty plastic chair.

"I'll stay," I said.

The friend squeezed my arm and went out, and the nurse adjusted a dial and left us.

Lila's eyes opened slowly.

"You came," she said.

"I came to sit."

"Is that a kindness or a verdict?"

"It's a chair."

She smiled with half her mouth. "That's the Wynne I've been hearing about."

I sat down and put the bear on my knees, because I had not put it down in three days.

It had one ear and one glass eye, and Lila stared at it for a long time.

"I remember that bear," she said. "He's the one you wouldn't lend me."

"He was mine."

"I know." Her eyes filled. "I asked once, when I was six, and you said no and gave me your socks instead."

"I don't remember that."

"I do. I remember everything about you. It's all I had."

I watched the blood move in the tube.

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