Looking at a white plastic digital clock/radio. 6:18 a.m. flips over to 6:19. My body hurts, and when I say this I mean it hurts everywhere. Where are my pills?

Wait for details to come back to me. None are forthcoming. I am under some sort of plush comforter, on sheets with unquestionably the highest thread count I have ever laid my skinny chassis on. I smell cigarette smoke. Reminds me that I like to smoke as well. Reminds me …

I lift my head, which is more difficult than it sounds, and peer over the bedding, past my feet.

“Well, you’re alive,” says Iveta Shapsko. She’s in a white terry-cloth bathrobe, legs tucked under her, sitting on a sofa chair next to a floor-to-ceiling window. Her hair is up in a towel. Knocks the head off her cigarette into a black glass ashtray to her right. “You, you are lucky bastard.”

I try and fail to speak.

“Must be a lot of pain.”

I croak, a single syllable.

Iveta takes a drag, inhales it sharply. “There was many things to clean up. You were like complete mess.”

She points her cigarette toward the corner of the room. I follow her gesture to the pile of bloody towels, my discarded clothing, bunches of duct tape, gauze streamers, and a pair of bolt cutters. Broken handcuffs, the leg bracelet in two pieces.

“Told you I was a nurse. Maybe you have internal bleeding but I don’t think so. I would get MRI. For your head. You seem to know the right people to get this firstclass treatment.”

I lift up my arm, hurts like hell, bandaged up, thick layers of gauze and duct tape on my forearm.

“You insist. Remember? Get this thing out of me! Waving your arm in my face. Then you pass out again, I don’t know what I’m looking for. So, I dig around. Should be okay.”

She crushes the cigarette. Smiles.

“Don’t worry, I threw this chip out, somewhere on West Side Highway, near these Chelsea Piers I think.”

I can’t manage to articulate anything.

“Saw this leg thing, yes, it’s tracking device too. And I think maybe you want it off, right? I will throw it away, later.”

Iveta yawns. I can’t get my mouth to behave. She cracks her knuckles.

“Okay, you rest more. Me, I’m tired too. Long night.”

She gets up, takes the towel off her hair and scratches her damp scalp. Looks at her nails for a second. Standing there in the robe. Then she moves over to the bed, hops in, rolls over with her back facing me. Her hair follows gravity and I’m looking at that mole again.

“It’s okay,” she says, sounding exhausted. “It’s safe, this place. I must sleep, you should too. Okay, just to rest, for a few minutes …” Iveta trails off.

I have serious questions. Plenty of questions. But I can hardly move my jaw. I don’t think I can sleep, but I close my eyes, listen to the pattern of Iveta’s light breathing.

It’s music, like rain.