Here in the hospital, for four days and four nights, I do what I can to not think about my circumstance. Dehydration, the doctors say. The nurses take care of me, treat me like a child again, which is the thing I love most about illness. Two days, I spent in Arnold’s closet until finally managing to pull myself through the tiny window out into the yard, where someone called the cops, following which I was brought here. I can’t imagine what I must have looked like, crawling all dybbuk-like across the neighbors’ immaculately manicured lawns, lol.

