The woman finishing the daytime shift had put her left glove on backward. I noticed because she used that hand to push the payment envelope toward me, and the empty thumb pointed into the room.
"He talks sometimes," she said. "If you hear words, wake him."
"What sort of words?"
"Any."
She showed me the chair four feet from the bed. A square of blue tape marked each leg's place. Mr. Bellam wanted somebody nearby after dark, she explained, but he disliked being startled. His written instructions described how to say his name, pause, repeat it, and touch his shoulder only if the second repetition failed.
"He wrote all that?"
She nodded without looking at the sheet. Her other hand kept squeezing the backward glove.
I had spent the afternoon carrying chairs at a conference. Sitting through eight hours in a quiet hotel suite seemed almost like being paid twice for resting. Mr. Bellam was courteous when he came out of the bathroom. He showed me where the tea was and asked whether I needed money for a taxi home.
"I live near the station."
"Still. At that hour."
He added a note to the envelope. I liked him for doing it without making me ask.
By midnight he was asleep. I read an old magazine about places with private beaches. At half past one I stood to relieve the ache in my knees. His breathing altered before my chair stopped creaking. I sat back down.
"Leave it running," he said.
A fine black wire appeared between his lips.
It emerged slowly, with a wet clicking noise, and crossed the space to my arm. I felt pressure beneath the skin halfway between elbow and wrist. The wire entered there without leaving a mark.
"Mr. Bellam."
His eyelids moved. In the silence after his name, the wire tightened.
Something closed around my little finger. I could see the finger lying loose on my knee, but I felt it caught in a narrow metal groove. The nail whitened.
I said his name again, too loudly. He frowned in his sleep.
"No, that's the wrong feed."
My finger bent. There was no visible hand or machine touching it. I caught it with my other hand and tried to straighten it, and the pressure traveled into the next finger. Both began to move away from the rest of my hand.
I seized his shoulder.
He was warm and heavy, a sleeping man in a good bed. Shaking him made the wire tremble. Pain ran through my wrist so sharply that I bit the inside of my cheek. I shouted at him to wake up, dropping the honorific, then his name altogether.
His eyes opened.
The wire withdrew into his mouth. It moved too fast to catch, though I would have caught it with my teeth if that had given me something to hurt. My two fingers remained bent across each other. One hung by a white strip. The other lay in my lap, inside the fold of my trousers.
Mr. Bellam stared at me.
"What happened?"
I tried to tell him while he called reception. He gave the room number clearly and asked for an ambulance. Then he brought towels from the bathroom. He was brisk and frightened and useful. When he saw the finger in my lap, he sat down abruptly on the end of the bed.
"You were dreaming," I said.
"I don't remember."
"A machine. You said to leave it running."
He shut his eyes. I struck his chest with my good hand.
"Don't."
He kept his eyes open after that.
The receptionist came with a first-aid box. She asked what had cut me and looked around the spotless suite. Mr. Bellam said he didn't know. I said there hadn't been anything to see. She accepted that for the moment and helped me hold the towels in place.
On the bedside table was a photograph from a birthday dinner. Mr. Bellam stood between three people dressed as carers, although he seemed capable of doing everything for himself. The woman from the shift change was nearest him. She had her left hand turned toward the camera. Two fingers were missing.
I asked when the photograph had been taken.
"Last month," he said.
"She told you about her hand."
He nodded. His face changed in a way that made him suddenly older. He took the contact book from the drawer and turned pages with his thumb, searching for her number. A line had been drawn through it. Beside the line he had written UNAVAILABLE NIGHTS.
"I thought she meant her other job."
The receptionist went to meet the ambulance. Mr. Bellam stayed beside me, holding the towel when my good hand began to shake. He said he would pay for whatever I needed. I watched his face while he said it, waiting for his eyes to close.
