After the disheartening discovery of my office door having been pried open sometime during the night and the locks smashed well beyond repair, I moved my things down to the hospital accounting office. Without a safe office of my own, it was just as well that I should leave the floor while the investigation was still pending and assist in sorting out the security receipts from last year with the rest of the overworked accounting staff, many of whom were not very familiar to me. I was given a small desk alongside Mary (someone that I did recognize), where the two of us were charged with restoring damaged security-cost documents, primarily in regard to preparing a fiscal budgeting system for the next two years that would both predict and accommodate the rising costs of subduing violent encounters within the hospital. Mary’s hands were shaking so badly that I called up to the cafeteria for some coffee and muscle relaxants for her. Her long hair fell in front of her face, hanging there motionlessly until the pills could arrive. Once they did, she parted it down the middle like the curtains of a movie screen, lay one of the pills delicately over the pointed tip of her tongue, then leaned back to swallow it down with a sip of coffee.

At the beginning of the day, the sun came into the room through the windows’ thin curtains and spread soft amber light over the patients in their many beds. I stood there quite movelessly, curious of almost nothing, just soundless and thoughtless, hovering like a picture in its frame on the wall.

When I pull its paw through the crack at the bottom of the door, it yelps, stunning me so completely that I let go of the paw and it disappears back underneath the door. It’s the last time I was ever that fast.