“Really now, it’s very rude to try and leave without even hearing what we have to say.” “I didn’t ask to be here,” Camilla answers sullenly. She walks without needing to be pushed, or threatened, or restrained. She doesn’t doubt that they will if she makes them. “I know. But I think you will find our offer worthwhile.” “I was happy.” “Running will do you no good,” he tells her. “We will just find you again, which will be a waste of everyone’s time. It’s not as if you can go anywhere. You are tethered to your, hm, co-workers, after all.”

The room is white. The walls are white. The floor is white. White lamps are set in the white ceiling. The bench she sits on is white plastic over white-painted metal. The white door has no handle on the inside.

Camilla wonders what all this white is meant to make her think. Clinical, perhaps? Evocative of scary hospitals and dentist’s surgeries? She works in a hospital. Perhaps it is white for the same reason that the hospital is white, to make the blood nice and easy to spot and clean. She wonders, if they cut her, will she bleed?

Perhaps it’s meant to evoke a blank slate, instead. The unknown. Potential? She certainly has no clue what to expect. Perhaps it’s just meant to bore her. To ensure that she has nothing to distract herself with from anxiety about what might happen next.

Wait here, he said. She wasn’t given another option. So she is waiting.

The boredom isn’t so bad. She still feels so alive, so grounded in herself. She can amuse herself for a long time just by studying the lines of her hands, the edges of her nails. She’s still delighted by herself, she could do twirls if she weren’t sure that they must be watching her. She can’t see a camera, but she doesn’t really know what to look for. She is afraid, but she is not bored. She knows boredom, and loneliness, and emptiness. This white room cannot faze her that easily.

When the door finally clicks and begins to open, it suddenly occurs to her that she is alone in here. Will it be the man who brought her here? Or will it be someone else, someone who doesn’t know her? It might not be enough, she is very real these days... But for perhaps the first time in her life, she hopes that perhaps someone might not see her.

And when the door swings fully open, that hope surges, because the man in the doorway is a stranger. He is dressed just like the other, in an unremarkable grey suit. And to her satisfaction, he looks deeply confused as his eyes flick around the “waiting room”. Heart thudding - heart thudding! - she hops to her feet and approaches with a few quick steps. If she could just get past him...

He’s still blocking the doorway. Come on, just a step one way or the other! She doesn’t know what would happen if she tried to push past and touched him. She hasn’t tried anything like that since.... since a long time ago, a time when she was a little child. It’s too uncomfortable. Too much a reminder of her otherness. Would he feel it at all? Would he suddenly notice her? Would she be able to move him? Or would she be weightless, powerless, without strength?

She isn’t brave enough to try. But she doesn’t have to, because he takes a single step back to look over his shoulder in concern, perhaps looking round for someone he can tell that she’s missing. Camilla steps neatly through the gap and bolts off down the corridor.

But she doesn’t get far before a voice stops her in her tracks. “Ah, Camilla. I’d thank you not to take flight so soon.”

Camilla is grateful every day, when she ends her shift at the hospital and takes the bus home to her apartment. Her apartment! She's grateful for the way her sunny smile for the bus driver earns her a grudging one in response. She's grateful that she can wave at little children and have them wave back. She's grateful not to have to worry every day about where her next boost will come from. To be able to put her headphones in and listen to her favourite tunes and not feel empty all the time.

The wounded man is a godsend. Camilla doesn’t know it at first. But she has needed something like this for a long time.

He is limping through the darkness towards town and rescue. She is out for a walk. She often goes walking in the small hours, wandering the winding, high-hedged lanes until daylight. She doesn’t really sleep any more, and it’s something to pass the time. Less lonely out here than in town amongst the empty streets with their closed-up shops and their flickering lamps and the weary-eyed vagrants who look right through her.