Night at St. Pierre Hospital 2020

She keeps close to the courtyard window she came through, her ears tuned to nurses’ flats slapping down the hallway. Her brother’s shaky hand reaches across the tray for a water glass. Floating above his heaving ribs, she searches the room for things to ground her: his name on the whiteboard, the sac of pink urine weighing down his bed. She observes his watch orbiting his wrist like Saturn’s rings. She’s become a spacewalker. She’s forgotten her mask, her shoes, her age.