Something about Phoenix put her at ease. Meche had had a run of good luck with meeting friendly patients today, but Manny's roommate seemed especially good-natured. And she appreciated the cautious handshake; she'd been going through a pattern all day of almost forgetting about her injuries until she did something that made her yelp in sudden pain. With Manny's salesman charm, she could imagine them getting along pretty well together.

Too bad his news wasn't as pleasant as his manners, she thought.

"The infirmary? Sick?" she repeated. "Boy, they've got a lot of nerve if that's what they told you. Guess they'd have to call it something nice-sounding, though, wouldn't they?" She curled her left hand into a fist, feeling the still-strange warm contact of skin on skin. That was the problem with being alive, wasn't it? When you were dead, there was only so much else anyone could do to you. In the Land of the Living, you were fair game to be bruised, beaten, even tortured. Just how 'sick' was Manny?

This could mean one of two things: either they really had decided to let Manny go but he needed time to recover from the injuries they'd given him, or they were just lying through their teeth to everyone. Meche was making a conscious choice to believe the former. "Did she say anything about how soon?" she asked.