We drove out to visit Vania.

Again, she was not in her room when we got to her floor, so we set out in search of her. We found her in one of the common rooms, between two female attendants, each of them holding one of her hands so her arms were extended at full length on either side of her. She seemed upset, but calmed when she saw us, and the two attendants dropped her hands.

Speaking to her was much as it was on the last visit. Our presence seemed to relax her, but otherwise she did not appear to derive much comfort from it. On the other side of the room, one of the attendants was instructing a few of the patients in the story of Thanksgiving, holding up an illustrated book, pitching her voice high and keeping the words simple, passing the time by pouring into the leaky sieves of their minds information that has already spilled out and will only dribble away again in the next few days. A white-haired woman who looked like a retired schoolteacher stood in an enclosed walker, smiling at me and nodding eagerly when I smiled back. Another exchanged a word or two with me, then wandered off with a vague hopeful smile. The patients seemed to like attention, but did not persist, seemed content if you just interacted with them in a friendly manner.

But Vania was not content. She is no Alzheimer’s patient and knows it. She can see the fog that surrounds her and she hates it and keeps trying to walk out of it, find some place where things are clear to her again. When we were trying to lead her over to a chair, Michael asked one of the attendants, a husky white girl, to help us. The girl moved forward to help us but said apologetically, half jokingly and in accented English, “She will scratch me again.”

Eventually we took Vania back to her room in a wheelchair we found in the hallway. I pushed her past the doors of other rooms where the inhabitants’ pictures were posted next to their doors. Many of them had plainly been taken before things had gotten too bad, when the eyes were still sharp, the smiles still intelligent.

In her room, Vania seemed a little calmer but still restless. She wanted chocolates, she was sure there were some in her bedside stand, but after finding one Snickers bar, there were only wrappers left. We assured her that her husband would bring her more when he came, but she wanted us to look under the furniture and into other drawers. She was sure there must be more.

“I’m so ashamed,” she told me.

What good did it do her when I asked “why?” as if the thought of shame shocked me. What good did it do her when I kissed her and told her it was all right?

A brisk, middle-aged black woman came to fetch Vania to dinner, firmly but not unkindly. (I could not imagine this woman saying to anyone, “she will scratch me again.”) When we left, Vania was making her way slowly down the hall, the black woman not touching her but staying close, ready to prevent Vania from wandering away again in search of her old world.