Held by Edeet Ravel

too long, in case I got worse. Maybe he also wanted to make sure the other man wouldn’t come again, even if he’d changed the lock.
    He made me potato soup, which I ate with salted crackers. I swallowed the pills and the pink medicine. Every few hours he handed me the thermometer.
    I liked the little stuffed monkey. He had brown fur, worried eyes, a happy, friendly smile, and long, spindly arms. I held him next to me, and even talked to him a little. “Poor you,” I told him. “You’re stuck here with me now. We’ll make the best of it.”
    My hostage-taker had also brought me a man’s watch, which I asked him to set near the bed. The watch anchored me, reminding me that in the outside world time was passing.



CHAPTER 11
    On the fourth or fifth day I began to feel a little better. My appetite returned and I ate bowl after bowl of vegetable stew and rice. I was learning to read my hostage-taker’s body language and his movements, and I could tell as I ate that he was relieved. His face remained expressionless, but his eyes seemed full of hidden messages, and his body was as expressive as an actor’s, though I felt sure he wasn’t aware of it.
    The next evening he brought a stethoscope and asked if I would let him listen to my lungs. A surge of panic tore through me. There was something unspeakably creepy about that stethoscope, and all my distrust returned. He must be psychotic , I thought, imagining he’s a doctor .
    “How would you know how to use a stethoscope?” I asked. My stomach was doing somersaults and I knew I looked as frightened as I felt.
    He said, “It’s not complicated.”
    “I don’t know … It’s scary. I mean, if you’re a kidnapper and also … like a double personality.” It didn’t make sense, looking for reassurance from the person I needed to be reassured about, but there was no one else.
    He didn’t answer. He looked at me steadily, waiting for me to decide.
    “I don’t know what to think,” I cried out, tears coming to my eyes. “The only person I can ask is you, but how can I believe anything you say?”
    “Yes, it’s a hard situation for you.”
    “Why do you need to listen to my lungs?”
    “I’m worried because your fever is not going down. Maybe you’ve contracted pneumonia.”
    “How would you know if I had pneumonia?”
    “If you had fluid in your lungs I might hear a crackling sound. You could try to hear yourself, if you like. You know, it would help me very much if you told me what happened.”
    “Why don’t you ask your friend?” I said angrily.
    “I can’t explain that to you,” he replied.
    “I can’t believe you don’t know.”
    “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you. The pail was overturned, the floor was covered with water. That’s all I know. I can imagine some things, but I don’t know.”
    “I may have swallowed some dirty water,” I relented. I felt degraded, talking about what happened—as degraded as I’d felt when it happened.
    “From the floor?” he asked, his rage returning.
    “The floor? No, in the pail …”
    “He dunked you?”
    “Yes.”
    He folded his arms and his body was tense with disgust. But his voice was unaffected. He asked, “Anything else?”
    “No.”
    “Well, do I get to listen to your lungs?”
    “All right.”
    He sat behind me and I felt the cold stethoscope on my back. “What if you’re some sort of schizophrenic pretending to be a doctor?” I asked. “Isn’t there a movie like that?”
    “There are probably many movies like that.”
    “Horror movies,” I said. “What do you hear?”
    “I can’t hear anything if you talk. If you just inhale deeply, that will help me.”
    I breathed for him, and he listened to different parts of my back for a long time. He seemed to know what he was doing after all, and I began to relax. I couldn’t be so unintuitive that I wouldn’t know an ordinary person from a psychopath.
    “Your lungs sound okay,” he said. “Have you any pain