She had the little bottle under the blanket, she was thinking. A few drops of that and—the Bryd was positively flabbergasted. The girl was getting ready to kill herself. The Bryd probed into her mind for an instant and discovered that she wasn't being a martyr and had no complexes; she was just trying to straighten things out for Dale and Ann.
Oh, beans, thought the Bryd. If humans weren't the dumbest beings ever! It watched Marillyn raise the bottle to her lips. It simultaneously took the form of a nurse, standing there at Marillyn's side, and Marillyn gasped and said, "Oh, nurse, I didn't know you were there."
"I am," said the Bryd in its best contralto voice. "Did you wish something, Miss?"
The hand with the bottle of poison fell back under the blanket. "No, I didn't call."
"May I move your chair out of the sun, Miss?"
"It isn't in the sun," Marillyn said.
The Bryd raised its eyebrows. It did some quick work on the wind, and there was the sun, shining steadily through an opening in the magnolia trees.
"Perhaps it is too bright," said Marillyn. "If you'd just move it over there—"
The Bryd was delighted. In the process of moving the chair, it got its figurative hands on the bottle and disintegrated it. Then it said, "Miss, don't you think you will get well?"
Marillyn said calmly, resignedly, "There's no chance. None whatever. When brain-tissue is gone, there is nothing medical science can do. They can't build tissue, you know."