A soothing voice murmurs in the crests and troughs of inflection, sound separating itself into words. The psychiatrist is about five years younger than I am, and very pretty. Her long hair hangs down when she bends over my bed. Swedish blonde hair. At Burger Barn they make you wear a net.

"I'm going to leave this mirror right here by the bed," she says. "I want you to look whenever you feel ready. If you don’t want to do it by yourself, push the button and call a nurse. Okay?"

And I want you to go away, I would say, if I was speaking. But when I think I am speaking, I am not. Her dark eyes, not matching the Swedish blonde, are full of concern.

"You're so much better now," she is saying, and I wonder, better than what? But if I could say anything at all, I would ask her for more Percodan, please, and when it came, I would swallow it dry and lick my fingers and wiggle my toes with the sweet anticipation of relief, assuming of course that those things, fingers, tongue, and toes, are all still there, and I would ask for someone to bring me my chenille blanket from home instead of this thing woven from horsehair and fiberglass. Chenille, please, I would ask at the bar, and they would serve me a drink made out of moonlight and whispers.

Please. Please. The word in my head that has outechoed all others now. Please was the first word I said to the monster, in the whimpering days when he first touched my naked flesh with his blistering fingers here, and here, and here, and here, when his shape flared and faded, and the days melted together into a charred lump, and sometimes when I was waiting for the morphine, he would put his finger on the clock and make the hour endless. That was when I first made out his red eyes glowing in the confusion of images beyond the gauze, when the weeping was a fury past the climax of any climax of endurance, and the nurses shuffled about, spurting liquid from the tips of their long needles into the air, preparing for the lovely piercing relief. And later, the hour of Percodan came. Percodan, please. A welcome sting, and a flush in the blood, and then distance would spring up between us, between me and the monster, which would fade away until only the Cheshire smile was left, reminding me that at some point the clock would outrun the Percodan, and slow, and stop.

Drifting earthward on Percodan parachutes, towards the light, I see the shape of the monster darkening into existence. Two doctors are having a little argument outside our curtains; her voice is low and reasonable but his is high with anger. Real danger of addiction, she is saying, and he says bullshit, people in her condition only live because of morphine and wet packs, and she says, but at this stage of her recovery, and he says, try holding your hand over a candle for five minutes and see how reasonable--

I make the Percodan-please sound, and the curtain squeals back and two faces peer in with guilty expressions.

Percodan in a cup now; I have graduated to swallowing. Swallowing is very important. Every swallow matters, like every sparrow, falling from the trees splat on the sidewalk under His everwatchful eye. So busy watching swallows fall He didn't see the fabulous handstand-cartwheel-flip-and-roll performed across all six lanes of the I-45, spraying rainbows of Good Gulf gasoline and then bursting into light, which made Him look around just in time (almost) and with a flick of Divine thumb and forefinger roll one of the bodies all the way across the yellow lines of the feeder and into the extinguishing wet grass.

Thank you very much, Almighty God. Say, is that barbeque I smell?

The out of oblivion, the monster unmasked, the creature born of lungs of smoke, to remind me that I am still alive, and what life is about.

Percodan. Percodan. Time swells and falls, then draws out in a low vibrating hum. The monster smiles with its teeth, sharp teeth, taking little love bites like a swarm of nibbling fish, but he can't chew through the layers of gauze and morphine, so he waits. Two pretty Percodan and we smoke the pleasepipe full of opiates and drowse away the hours together, while he waits full of patience for the blood to empty itself of relief.

He waits even when most of my head is unwrapped and I can breathe without making that noise. He waits even when the Percodan wears off and I can think without screaming. He waits because he has memorized the names of the other people in the car, which I seem to have somehow forgotten, and when the time comes right he is going to lean over and whipser the name of each of those people in my ear, one by one.

Oh yes, there are here, still, the ears. Two of them. Mouth, nose, cheeks that glow as if I had been out too long in the sun today. When I put the mirror back, clumsy with my mittened hand, it slips quietly onto the seat of the chair by the bed. The monster, with his head like a raw fist made of hambuger meat, bends over the mirror and looks at itself. It doesn't cringe back, as it did from the kick of the drug, but seems to take on a more fearful form.

The curtains flutter a little as it moves away from me. That thin chain of smoke that connected us is rising into the air, dissipating. I see the shadows of his bony fingers waving to me from the other side of the cotton curtain.

The pyschiatrist puts her hand where he has touched her, muttering something about migraine, and the internist gives a little twitch of surprise and shifts his weight off his football knee, the one that tells him when it's going to rain.

Swaddled in drugs, I feel sleep swell up to claim me, and like a tender mother I shoo at the monster with my apron. Run along now. Run along.

Golem, waiting in the hallway. Smelling the cooling flesh, smelling the things in the hospital air, the rich potential of the dark corridors beyond this place.

I wonder what he saw in the mirror.

The little hand on the clock reads two hours to Percodan time. Golem moves away, drifting, an inevitability. People in gowns thrash and moan in distant rooms beyond salvation.