Maggie had a hand to her mouth and seemed to be physically trying to stifle her revulsion.

“Jesus, Jimmy,” she managed. “What the hell did she do?”

Hopewell held his bad eye to the light; even as he stood on the brink of collapse, his contempt was barely held in check.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to explain,” he said. His voice was no less chilling than the swollen bubble of pus that had developed around the outer rim of his eye. He looked like he’d stumbled off a battlefield, Maggie thought, his face raked by shrapnel; the worst of it digging out one of the only two features on his unremarkable face worth preserving.

She leaned towards him, braced herself to support his weight, and led him into the front room.

“We’ll get it cleaned and dressed,” she said, suddenly assuming control of the situation. “Have you taken anything for the pain?”

Hopewell closed his eyes, shook his head. He looked relieved to finally be in her arms.

“Then we’ll take care of that, too.” She eased him onto the couch and arranged a large cushion behind his head. She disappeared into the kitchen and returned five minutes later with a wooden tray. She had piled it high with supplies: a glass of water, a bottle of pills, a first-aid kit, scissors and clean towels.

“Lie back,” she said.

Hopewell rested his head against the cushion. Maggie placed the tray on the carpet and knelt on the floor beside him. She handed him the water and gave him three white pills.

“Swallow.”

She opened the first-aid box and began rooting through it. She placed a number of items on a white towel she had laid on the floor beside her. Hopewell could see bandages, cotton wool and lotions, as well as a number of sealed instruments in clear packaging.

“No more pain,” Hopewell said. “It might be better just to leave it.”

“That seems a little unlikely.”

Maggie returned to the kitchen and reappeared moments later with a bowl of steaming water and a bottle of antiseptic. Hopewell had already closed his good eye and was beginning to drift. He was picturing Kate and thought he could see a flickering silhouette of her in the dull space where his optic nerves were misfiring. She was sitting in a room with an open fire. The window behind her was stained glass.

“This might sting,” Maggie said, drawing him back from the wavering image of Kate. She held a ball of cotton wool to the mouth of the antiseptic bottle and tipped it upside down. She then applied the sterilized wool to the inflamed socket and cleaned the area as gently as she could.

Hopewell sucked in a deep breath and gritted his teeth. He could feel the solution eating away at the secreted matter distending his skin. He could also feel Maggie’s long fingers probing at the circumference of the hollow pit, and he found himself admiring her resolve. Her face bore the harrowed expression of a woman drafted into duty against her will. As her fingers made fleeting contact with the attenuated tissue around the wound, he wanted to ask her if she could feel anything; a kiss of cool air, maybe, grazing her hand, as though it had been inadvertently turned towards a vent. Hopewell imagined her fingers recoiling from the displaced air; could sense Maggie’s fear as she tended the edges of the eye. He wondered if she appreciated, just as Hopewell himself did, that something within the cavity was emitting a faint pulse. As though the shaft of darkness narrowed to a second sight, deep down, where a shadow was beginning to stir.

The smell of the antiseptic was making him feel light-headed and Hopewell turned his face to one side. He could barely remember what he’d just been thinking; only knew that the sense of it was less than secure. Perhaps the blow to the head had caused more damage than he was prepared to admit. He recalled the silver steak mallet lying on the floor of the kitchen, how one end bore the clotted sod of his own blood and hair. He closed his right eye; his head began to spin.