“Nana,” the child says, her hand hesitantly tugging on the bedsheet.

“Hmm?” the old woman hums. Her eyes open slowly, as if it takes all her remaining strength to move her eyelids.

“Why do you wear that?”

She points a tiny finger at the scarf tied around her grandmother’s wrist – red silk laying against the hospital-white sheet.

“Ah.” The woman swallows, a dry, scraping sound. “This is for my friend. Jodie.”

“Jodie?”

The child reaches out a hand, fingers absently brushing the red silk.

“Yes.” The old woman’s voice is a papery whisper. “So I can keep her with me.”

Her eyes drift closed. They open again with visible effort.

“What was she like?” The child’s fingers play with the tails of the bow.

“She was….” The old woman swallows again, but there’s not moisture in her throat anymore. “She was wonderful. She had the most brilliant blue eyes…”

As her voice fades, a machine somewhere in the room lets out a long, monotone beep.

The child, though young, knows this sound means her grandmother is gone.

Fingers still on the scarf, she tugs the red fabric. It unwinds from the woman’s wrist like thread from a spool. She wants a memento of her grandmother.

Like her grandmother had of her friend, Jodie.

As the silk slips from her pale wrist, the woman’s arm falls limply off the side of the hospital bed. Blue veins trace the inside of the forearm, a river-like map of tributaries that once carried the blood in her body. At the wrist, the child notices a small slit.

She peers closer, her nose almost touching her grandmother’s cooling palm.

The slit snaps open and a single, brilliant blue eye blinks at the child.