though bad enough to keep her out and away from that painy damaged thing in the metal-framed bed , sides coming up like fences around it as if it might bolt and had better be corralled ; hovering slightly above itthat thing , that wilted thing , now so hooked up to iv and other tubes and a pump that fed her oxygen through her nose or mouth and not nearly as well as the beech forest had so long , long ago that it struck hergod knows from wherelike a tiny processor on some mother board , this tiny thing with all these connections : to feed it , to keep it alive : the center of all this mechanical attention .