Someone was breathing in the vent. Charlotte heard it, could hear each inhale and pained exhale. It reminded her of Aunt Maddie. Of when Aunt Maddie would chew on those strange white sticks, breathing that terrible smoke. Aunt Maddie always had a stick in her mouth. She kept them in her pockets, in her purse. Charlotte thought about the breathing. It wasn’t nice. It was horrid, a wheezing, hitching gasp; a grasp of fresh air. Like a squeaking toy. Like a broken, dying woman laying in a hospital bed. Charlotte couldn’t stop thinking of Aunt Maddie. Aunt Maddie with her eyes closed, head bare. Aunt Maddie whose finger, gray and wrinkled, would beckon her over. Aunt Maddie who breathed smoke. Breathed. Breathing. Charlotte noticed that the breathing was getting worse, much worse indeed. Just like Aunt Maddie. Aunt Maddie would stay in the white room. She never left. There was spittle flying out of the vent, then. It painted polka dots on the carpet. Charlotte pictured Aunt Maddie’s gown, a short white affair that exposed her backside. That gown. Hadn’t it been stained? Painted by polka dots? And Charlotte saw the finger emerge. A gray finger slowly slid out of the coughing darkness. Charlotte saw the nail, long and jagged; the skin had grown wrinkled. The nail wiggled. The nail wagged. The nail beckoned her over, over, over.