The nurse pronounces her well enough to be badly behaved and notes that this is a good sign. He reiterates the general infuriating injunction to take it easy and departs. She waits until the Witness informs her he has left the building, then wraps both arms around the bucket and shakes it, watching the Ping-Pong ball as it clatters and jumps. It isn’t as satisfying as the long drop of her tennis ball or the tactile thud as it lands in her palm, but it won’t roll away if she drops it and force her to get up when she doesn’t want to. Nor does it suggest the flexible physical laws of dream. She puts the bucket aside and flicks on the pen torch. On, off. Once, twice, three, four, five times, because her instinct is to stop at three, and dreams use precisely the recollection of habit to construct a facade of the real.