It's fatigue, she finally recognizes. How each limb seems to acquire additional heft and her senses become muted, a layer between her and the world. It's the human body's built-in mechanism for protecting itself. How quaint. She doesn't need it anyhow, and it's telling from how the noise of her mind (the shriek of cicadas, faint overhead announcements echoing in a linoleum hallway) rise and fall as if through a swinging door, that she continues to struggle against the lethargy.

Now, Elliot's arrival and the following question -- anything he can do -- is the lifeline she can grasp and latch on to. She doesn't grip him physically, only mentally, by the weight of her attention on him. He is loud. That's telling too.

"You can tell me what it's like being new."