Strangers

institutions, like public institutions everywhere, were a grim joke that the average citizen had to accept for a lack of alternatives.
        If he had not been a skilled and highly successful thief, he would not have been able to pay the sanitarium's exorbitant monthly charges. Fortunately, he had a talent for larceny.
        Carrying his visitor's pass, he went to another elevator and rode up to the fourth of six floors. The hallways in the upper levels were more reminiscent of a hospital than the lobby had been. Fluorescent lights. White walls. The clean, crisp, minty smell of disinfectant.
        At the far end of the fourth-floor hall, in the last room on the right, lived the dead woman who still breathed. Jack hesitated with his hand on the push-plate of the heavy swinging door, swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and finally went inside.
        The room was not as sumptuous as the lobby, and it was not Art Deco, either, but it was very nice, resembling a medium-priced room at the Plaza: a high ceiling and white molding; a fireplace with a white mantel; a deep hunter-green carpet; pale green drapes; a green leaf-patterned sofa and a pair of chairs. The theory was that a patient would be happier in a room like this than in a clinical room. Although many patients were oblivious of their surroundings, the cozier atmosphere at least made visiting friends and relatives feel less bleak.
        The hospital bed was the only concession to utilitarian design, a dramatic contrast to everything else. But even that was dressed up with green-patterned designer sheets.
        Only the patient spoiled the lovely mood of the chamber.
        Jack lowered the safety railing on the bed, leaned over, and kissed his wife's cheek. She did not stir. He took one of her hands and held it in both of his. Her hand did not grip him in return, did not flex, remained slack, limp, senseless, but at least it was warm.
        "Jenny? It's me, Jenny. How are you feeling today? Hmmmmm? You look good. You look lovely. You always look lovely."
        In fact, for someone who had spent eight years in a coma, for someone who had not taken a single step and had not felt sunshine or fresh air upon her face in all that time, she looked quite good indeed. Perhaps only Jack could say that she was still lovely - and mean it. She was not the beauty she had once been, but she certainly did not look as if she had spent almost a decade in solemn flirtation with death.
        Her hair was not glossy any more, though still thick and the same rich chestnut shade as when he had first seen her at her job, behind the men's cologne counter in Bloomingdale's, fourteen years ago. The attendants washed her hair twice a week here and brushed it every day.
        He could have moved his hand under her hair, along the left side of her skull, to the unnatural depression, the sickening concavity. He could have touched it without disturbing her, for nothing disturbed her any more, but he did not. Because touching it would have disturbed him.
        Her brow was uncreased, her face unlined even at the corners of her eyes, which were closed. She was gaunt though not shockingly so. Motionless upon those green designer sheets, she seemed ageless, as if she were an enchanted princess awaiting the kiss that would wake her from a century of slumber.
        The only signs of life were the vague, rhythmic rise and fall of her breast as she breathed, and the soft movement of her throat as she occasionally swallowed saliva. The swallowing was an automatic, involuntary action and not a sign of awareness on any level whatsoever.
        The brain damage was extensive and irreparable. The movements she made here and now were virtually the only movements she would ever make until, at last, she gave a dying shudder. There was no hope. He knew there was no hope, and he accepted the permanence of her condition.
        She would have looked much worse if she had not received such conscientious care. A team of physical therapists came to her room every day and put her through passive exercise routines. Her muscle tone was not the best, but at least she had muscle tone.
        Jack held her hand and stared down at her for a long time. For seven years, he had been coming to see her two nights a week and for five or six hours every Sunday afternoon, sometimes on other afternoons as well. But in spite of the frequency of his visits and in spite of her unchanging