Following an automobile accident, Pansy Vanneman remains bedridden in the hospital with broken bones. She receives news that the taxi driver of the cab she was in during the incident had passed away. Without movement, she stares through the window at the chilly outdoors and reflects on the past few weeks of her stay. Little has changed both in the hospital room and outside. Pansy takes pride in her body’s immobility and passive retreat into her own brain and consciousness. She finds pleasure in bewildering her nurses with her lack of reaction and spends most of her time thinking about her brain and its pink fragility.  She defends herself against Dr. Nicholas who works at her broken nose. In her eyes, he seems like a man lacking imagination. When he enters the room to prepare her for an operation, he greets her with reassurance and tells her not to be afraid. He stares at her in awe, intriguingly interpreting her passivity as having little awareness of her surroundings. Dr. Nicholas ponders about what goes on inside Pansy’s skull but cannot come to any conclusions.  Pansy feels intense pain that makes her crave death, as she fixes her eyes on Dr. Nicholas’s eyebrow. She wishes bad thoughts upon his bland unawareness of her interior state and wellbeing.  The nurses then strap her to the surgery table as the next operation begins. Pansy begins to feel immense pain and jerks her body, and causes the doctor to rashly tell her to be still. She feels her brain trembling for its life. Once the operation is over, the doctor leaves with glory, while Pansy feels empty and violated.