It was almost sweet the way they worried about me.
'You're so pale,' the nurse said. 'You must keep quiet until your colour returns.'
'I'm always this colour,' I said. 'Because I used to be made of stone.'
The woman smiled vaguely, pulling up the blanket. My husband had warned her that I was fanciful, that my illness made me say things that would sound strange to her.
'Just lie back and I'll bring you something to eat,' she said. She had a mole on the side of her lip and I liked to watch it while she talked. Some moles are beautiful and distinctive, like dappling on a horse. But some have hairs in them, and look pulpy like worms and hers was this kind.
‘Lie back,’ she repeated, because I hadn’t.
‘You know what I think would be good for my colour? A walk,’ I said.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Not until you’re better. Feel how chilled your hands are?’
‘That’s the stone,’ I said, ‘like I told you. It can’t get warm without sun. Haven’t you ever touched a statue?’
‘You’re chilled,’ she repeated. ‘Just lie back, and be good.’ She was rushing a little by then, because I had mentioned the stone twice, and this was gossip for the other nurses, and a breathless reason to speak to the doctor. They were fucking, that’s why she was so eager. I could hear them sometimes through the wall. I don’t say this in a nasty way, for I don’t begrudge her a good fuck, if it was good, which I don’t know. But I say this so that you understand what I was up against: that I was worth more to her sick than I was well.
The door closed, and the room swelled around me like a bruise. When she was here, I could pretend it felt small because of her, but when she left the four wood walls seemed to press towards me, like lungs that had breathed in.