Katherine is a very young girl who has been in the hospital for a long time. Her family was once proud of the fact that their daughter had a private room in the hospital, but since the strangeness of her illness changed her, they do not visit any more. The doctor is patient with her, but when she speaks, he no longer listens. He is painfully aware of the fact that her youth makes it nearly impossible for her to articulate what she wants - or even understand what is to come. There is a priest who comes to pray for her, but even he finds himself at a loss, unable to think of anything to say about God to this little girl who is sick and will likely not improve. Katherine dreams of nurses dying in their uniforms like angels, and in their absence, she is the only one who can play with the infants on the floor. When the nurses speak to her, she cannot express what she wants, and they are offended. At last, she asks for Jimmy, a boy that she had played with when she was healthy, and he arrives with two cones of chocolate ice cream. They eat in silence; Jimmy is terrified of the hospital and of Katherine, while Katherine realizes that she is not the only one who has changed. Nothing is as she remembers it - Jimmy is not big and strong like she thought he was. No one visits her anymore because they cannot stand how strange she has become; but Katherine, after having Jimmy visit, realizes that the reality does not meet her expectations, either. She refuses her medicine when the doctor offers it. The priest, walking down a street somewhere, realizes that the hour of death is upon her, as it will someday come upon everyone. Katherine, dying now on the hospital bed, asks the doctor to lift her up. He does so and believes he can feel her soul leave her body.