Daphne could not be kept out of Tubby's recovery room. Somehow she had internalized the idea that Tubby was nearby, but could never remember having seen her recently, so was constantly popping by for a visit. Once, overdue for a Percocet, Tubby found herself on an incoherent and terrifying rodomontade moving fluidly among the topics of fucking Ohm's Law, the fucking Europa cells, bio-fucking-electricity, and the felonious uselessness of elected fucking officials that sent Daphne fleeing, weeping, from the room. She was back in fifteen minutes, not even realizing that her eyes were still red, but the nurses glared at Tubby for hours.

Quinn and Taisheng came by to try to explain. Tubby could not speak to them the first time, or the second. By the third, she had ground her speech on Ohm's Law and Europa to a fine edge, and she deployed it with a killer's zeal. The fourth time, the three of them, scarred, wept together.