Lucy’s son swallowed three ounces of drain cleaner and was rushed to the hospital. In the emergency room they pumped his stomach and intubated. Later, when he’d been moved to a private room, Lucy called her mother and cried. But mom was elderly, and in Florida, and so this was Lucy’s problem and no one else’s.
         Sam was tranquilized and the nurse had left for a moment, so Lucy sort of collapsed into a chair and felt blank. Soon the nurse was back with the doctor and a middle-aged lady a little overdressed for the hospital, Lucy thought.
         The doctor went over the next steps: an endoscopy, a chest x-ray, various tests. He didn’t think Sam needed to be on an IV drip at this time. While he talked, and the nurse typed reports, the strange lady stood silent by and listened. When the others had left, she unclasped her small fashionable handbag and handed Lucy a kleenex.
         He did it on purpose, Lucy told her. The kids at school.
         The lady nodded in sympathy. Lucy couldn’t see her face behind the lacy veil.
         Lucy fell asleep in the chair.
         In the morning she felt a little better. Sam had slept through the night and the doctor said that was a good sign. The nurse brought her some food. The lady with the pillbox hat and the alligator purse stood in a corner and watched. Lucy offered to let her sit down for a while, but the lady shook her head. Lucy felt embarrassed.
         A little while later Sam woke up but couldn’t speak. Lucy explained it all to him. They cried. Sam reached over and held the lady’s gloved hand. He was in a lot of pain, so they gave him something that made him loopy.
         They pulled one tube out of his throat and sent a different one down. Sam, even with the painkillers, whimpered. The lady stood behind Lucy and hugged her shoulders with her strong white arms. They drew his blood and collected urine. They wheeled him into x-ray: Lucy and the lady watched him through the glass. All back in the patient’s room, Lucy started talking about her divorce, she didn’t know why. Sam was more lucid now; he rolled his eyes at his mother’s story, which he’d heard a thousand times.
         Then things started looking up. Minimal esophageal and stomach damage; no evidence of further penetration. He would be here for a few days still, though, and tomorrow the chaplain would visit. Lucy was a little surprised: she had sort of assumed the strange lady was the chaplain.
         That evening a policeman came. Lucy told him everything: I just went crazy, she said. I never wanted to do this alone. It’s so hard. I put it into a water bottle and squeezed it down his throat.
         The cop took a step toward her. Don’t you fucking touch me! Lucy shouted. I’m not leaving my son! Don’t you dare touch me! She shrank away from the policeman, she pushed away the doctor. She pushed away the nurse. But she never laid a finger on the lady with the alligator purse.
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