The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

that we’ve got this money, but I like seeing the boys. They’re good kids, and they’re already so big, I mean, practically grown-up. I want to be around them while I can. Her older son is Howard Junior, for his dad, but her younger boy’s named Guy. Kitty named him for her brother. Now, there’s something I bet you didn’t know.” Something caught her eye in the dim light. She was looking in Sabine’s lap. “What did you do to your hand?”
    Sabine looked down at it herself. She had been trying not to think about it, but it was throbbing as if she were holding a small heart in her fist. Perhaps she’d wrapped it too tight. “I cut myself,” she said.
    Mrs. Fetters reached down into Sabine’s lap and brought her hand up to the bar. “Either you don’t know anything about bandaging something up or this isn’t just a cut.” Then she took the hand as if it were something not connected to Sabine, a wallet or a comb, and held it closer to the light over the bar. “Jesus,” she said. “This thing is soaking through.” She reached into her purse and tossed some money on the bar. “Come on in the bathroom and let me have a look at it.”
    “It’s fine,” Sabine said.
    But Mrs. Fetters wasn’t listening, she was off the bar stool, pulling Sabine along like a woman with vast experience in flesh wounds. In the bright light of the bathroom, things didn’t look very good. She had the Ace bandage halfway off before they were down to a solid red wetness whose color matched the flowers in the wallpaper. Sabine felt suddenly dizzy, and she didn’t know if it was from the loss of blood or the sight of it.
    “Do you want me to take all of this off and tell you you have to go to the hospital or do you want to save the time and just go now?”
    “I’d really rather not,” Sabine said, but in her own voice she heard doubt. She was moved by the sight of so much blood. Part of the cut, she knew, was in her wrist, that delicate network of things not meant to be severed. “I hate that hospital.”
    “Well, it’s a big town, there has to be more than one.” Mrs. Fetters looped the bandage back around carelessly. “Come on,” she said, leading again. “I guess it’s a good thing I called you. You probably would have bled to death in your own bed.”
    Sabine stopped her at the door. “If I have to go, that doesn’t mean you have to go. I’ll be fine.”
    Mrs. Fetters looked at her, puzzled. “You don’t think I’d have you going to the hospital in the middle of the night by yourself, do you? What do you think your mother would say if she ever found out?”
    My mother, Sabine thought, would be too busy asking you questions about how you raised your own children.
    Good Samaritan was less than a mile from the hotel. There was no need to drive all the way to Cedars Sinai. Could a person really bleed to death from sticking themselves with an X-acto knife? Probably not, but she liked the thought of it, committing suicide while she slept with no intention of doing so.
    The lights of the emergency room blazed. The electric doors flung themselves open at the slightest touch. They wanted you here. They pulled you in.
    Children lay flushed and dozing in their parents’ laps, a woman with her arm slung in a piece of floral sheeting stared straight ahead, a man with no shirt and a large piece of cotton padding on his chest lay on a gurney in the hall, a woman with blood-matted hair and bruises only on one side of her face sat away from the rest with a police officer. People cried, sweated, and slept. Some people sat next to suitcases and watched through the window as if they were waiting for a bus. Two old men who looked like they should be at Canter’s talked and laughed aloud at each other’s stories. Sabine went to the front. She filled out her forms, had her insurance card copied, and was not reassured that her turn would be soon. She went and sat beside Mrs. Fetters in the waiting area.
    “Do you think there’s