“The proposal. Of course,” said Rick. “I’ll e-mail it to you this afternoon.”

He stood up, broadening as he did.

“I can’t say this officially, of course, but I believe this is the fastest way to equity partnership for you,” he said. “I think you could expect that within a year, pending review.”

Ana nodded. This was what she had wanted. It looked duller up close.

“You’ve been away,” said Rick at the door.

“I’ve been sick.” Ana said it quickly.

“Nothing serious, I hope?” The inquiry was a rough, ill-fitting effort, a delicate glass object in a big hand.

“Just a cold,” said Ana. But his point had been made. The afternoon cleaning Sarah’s house; the illness. These were to be the last absences. She was being as measured and monitored as a parolee. She needed to be in the chair.

At 5:30, as the room darkened, Ana turned on her desk lamp and watched the man in the tower opposite hers reach around to turn off his computer. He buttoned his coat and flipped up the collar. Then, with his hand on the door and his back to Ana, he froze for a moment, as if steeling himself. He stood like that for long enough that Ana felt embarrassment and looked away, checking her e-mail for the first time in an hour.

Subject: You should know

She clicked.

I’m writing you this because I think you deserve to know. Your husband is not a good man. Ask him about the girl in the black coat. Your being made a fool of. I think you deserve to know but Im sorry to tell it to you like this.

Signed,

A Friend

Ana’s practical sense took over even as her emotions drained out of her body. She checked the return address—a 1234 Google account. Garbage. Then she read it again, annoyed by the spelling and grammar. For all the appearance of intrigue, it wasn’t much of a mystery, really, she thought, as she fumbled for her coat, her fingers sticking on the buttons, her breath short.

Where did Ruth sit? she wondered. She came out of her office. Most desks still had people at the helm, bent and clicking keyboards, murmuring into headsets. A few were in the process of gathering their things to leave. She gazed across the room to the small, exposed cubicle in the center. Ruth’s cardigan hung over the back of her chair, but her lamp and computer were off. The girl was gone.

A hand touched her elbow.

“Who are you looking for?” asked Elspeth.

Ana shook her head, offered a smile. “No one. I think I should go.”

“Lucky you,” said Elspeth. “I’m here all night. I just lost one third of my team.”

“Who?”

“Do you remember that blond girl? Sort of pointy?”

“From the party.”

“Right. Erin. She quit. She’s pregnant, so she quit. Can you imagine? The arrogance! She’s going to lose her mind. She has no idea what’s in store.”

Ana nodded. She began to cough violently, retreating to her office. She found her briefcase and, turning out her light, stopped and looked again out the window at the office opposite hers. She half expected the man to be standing there still caught in his reverie, but the lights in his office were out. Ana clicked off her own.

She decided to walk home, in the direction of the hospital. Ana couldn’t see the need for drama, for the rush home in the taxi. This uninvited e-mail would not ruin her plan for the early evening.

The sun had set, and once in a while she passed an office worker in costume: A witch carried a briefcase in one hand. A man in a suit wore devil horns.

The lobby of the hospital was crowded with people in face masks, and at first, Ana thought this was simply a part of Halloween. Then she realized they were real; was there a new infection for her to be afraid of? She couldn’t muster anxiety over theoretical viruses, even when the security guard insisted she accept a squirt of hand sanitizer. In the crowded elevator, every person but Ana had a white cotton mask across the mouth, staring straight ahead. Ana coughed. Around her, eyes cringed.

Ana found Sarah’s room easily. The other beds in the ward were empty; one was stripped to the mattress, another was missing an occupant but maintained the veneer of a dorm room, with magazines caught in the sheets and photos taped above the bed. Fresh flowers sat on the bedside table.

Sarah’s table was empty.

Ana’s eyes followed the path of the tube jutting from Sarah’s neck collar to the machine, blurting its rising and falling noises. Her jaw hung open, dry at the corners. But the stitches were gone, leaving a web of pale red lines.

Ana removed from her bag the two framed photos of Finn she had taken from Sarah and Marcus’s house those weeks ago. She placed them on the table next to the bed, adjusted the pictures so Finn was facing Sarah. Ana pulled a chair from the wall and moved close to the bed. It wasn’t only work that had kept her from the hospital until now. What she had feared the most was exactly what she felt, finally sitting next to her friend: that Sarah was a sign of Finn’s future sadness. This barely breathing body was an absence that Finn would have to endure, and Ana and James would never be enough to soothe that agony. All the warm rooms and square meals would never stand in for this body that made him, that loved him from that first breath.

Ana smoothed the sheet by Sarah’s face, pressing down on the cool mattress. She remembered the warm chaos of Sarah’s house, the dirt and disorder and Sarah’s huge, unplugged laugh. She wanted to tell her about the madness in her own life, but it was nothing compared to the madness that was waiting for Sarah if she awoke. She should tell her about Finn instead. But there was too much to tell, and around her, from the hallway, the murmurs of the ill.

Instead, Ana whispered: “I can’t do it.” And then: “I don’t want to do it.” And then: “I miss you.”

She leaned down and left a small kiss on her friend’s forehead.

“I’m sorry,” said Ana.

A nurse entered, black hair in cornrows.

“Are you James’s wife?” she asked. Ana startled at the familiarity, wiping her eyes.

“Yes.”

“She’s doing much better,” said the nurse. “Look.” Ana looked down at the bed. The second finger on Sarah’s right hand moved slightly, as if beckoning her. Ana gasped. The finger went flat again.

“She can hear you. At least, I think she can, and so does your husband,” said the nurse. “Your husband was right to hold off on moving her into long-term care.” Ana absorbed this information. She was quick to cover up her confusion—decisions, life-changing decisions had been made, and Ana, once again, not consulted.

“When was he—how often is he here?”

“He’s here every couple of days,” she said. “It does help her.”

Ana nodded. She pulled herself to a standing position, still nodding. The nurse suddenly seemed to realize that she may have betrayed a secret and mumbled a few incomprehensible words before rushing from the room.

Holding herself steady, Ana closed the door hard. Her vision blurry, she banged into the nurses’ desk on her way down the hall, and a plastic pumpkin came tumbling to the ground. She kept walking.

James took the call as he walked toward the daycare. He had a video camera in one hand, the cell in the other. Doug announced himself in his usual way: “Jaaaaaames,” he said.

“Hi, Doug.”

“How goes it? You didn’t come to dinner.”

James was tempted to scurry for an excuse, but he didn’t. He thought about the CDs at home for Finn. He wanted to see if they could find the song. “Yeah, sorry, man. Ana’s been sick. It’s busy.”

He shouldn’t have worried; that part of the conversation had been pretense. Doug said: “I have a proposition for you.” The words came at him in the same kind of indecipherable rush that his firing had: “We’re doing this doc and we need a producer.” James was nearly at the daycare. He could hear the shouting of children in the yard, mismatched sounds of terror and laughter.