A sharp intake of breath from one or both of them greeted this move of mine. So they were watching me closely, whoever they were. And they were impressed that I could move.

What was going on here?

I touched my chin, ran my hand up along my cheek. I had shaved that morning, I remembered. Sometimes I skip a day, if all I’m going to do is stay home and write somebody’s thesis and answer my mail, but I’d definitely shaved before my visit to Harald’s house, and my beard had scarcely grown since then. There was a little stubble against the grain, but at worst I’d look like Richard Nixon ten minutes after he left the barber’s chair. So I couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a dozen hours, a whole day at the absolute outside.

They still hadn’t said anything. They’d seen me move, and they’d since watched me trying to tell time by my five o’clock shadow, but they hadn’t been willing to comment.

Up to me, evidently.

First I took a quick inventory. I wiggled my toes to make sure I still had them. I tensed muscles here and there, just to assure myself that everything still worked.

Then I opened my eyes.

There were two of them, the man a stocky fellow about my age, the woman a sallow blonde a good deal younger. They were both dressed in white, and the room I was in looked to be a hospital room, and what the hell was I doing there?

I decided to ask them. “Where am I?” I said. “And what am I doing here?”

They exchanged glances. The man – the doctor, I suppose – ignored my question and asked one of his own. What was my name?

I hesitated, not because I didn’t know it but because I wondered if there was any reason to keep it to myself. None I could think of, I decided.

“Evan Tanner,” I said.

“Good,” he said. Not that my name was Evan Tanner, I gathered, but that I was able to supply it. For God’s sake, what did they think was wrong with me?