A nurse glided by. Kip reckoned it may have even been the same one.

"Excuse me?"

White cap turns.

"What happened?"

The cap turned again, like it hadn't heard, and walked away.

Kip sighed. He leaned back in the bed; stared at the ceiling; counted the bugs in the fluorescent lights, so many dead little husks of things, ugly things, rotten things; wished he was holding Katrina's hand, wished Katrina had never been born, wished he had never met her, wished he was kissing her, wished she wasn't just a dead, ugly, rotting husk of a thing. His eyes brimmed, flooded, tasted salty to the thousands of bacteria thriving on his eyelids, recently migrated from the scratchy sheets, alive and well, alive and well, alive and well.

Something shattered on the floor down the hall. He stirred, heard nothing, wiped his face, fell asleep.