My Sister's Keeper

BRIAN

WE NEVER KNOW, AT FIRST, if we are headed into a cooker or a smudge. At 2:46 A.M. last night, the lights went on upstairs. The bells went off, too, but I can't say that I ever really hear them. In ten seconds, I was dressed and walking out the door of my room at the station. In twenty, I was stepping into my turnout gear, pulling up the long elastic suspenders, and shrugging into the turtle-shell of my coat. By the time two minutes passed, Caesar was driving the engine onto the streets of Upper Darby; Paulie and Red were the can man and the hydrant man, riding behind.

Sometime after that, consciousness came in small bright flashes: we remembered to check our breathing apparatus; we slid on our gloves; dispatch called to tell us that the house was on Hoddington Drive; that it appeared to be either a structure fire or a room and contents fire. 'Turn left here," I told Caesar. Hoddington was only eight blocks away from where I lived.

The house looked like the mouth of a dragon. Caesar drove around as far as he could, trying to get me a view of three sides. Then we all piled out of the engine and stared for a moment, four Davids against a Goliath. "Charge a two-and-a-half inch line," I told Caesar, tonight's motor pump operator. A woman in a nightgown ran toward me, sobbing, three children holding her skirt. "Mija," she screamed, pointing. "Mija!"

"iDdnde esta?" I got right in front of her, so that she couldn't see anything but my face. "iCuantos anos tiene?"

She pointed to a window on the second floor. "Tres," she cried.

"Cap," Caesar yelled, "we're ready over here."

I heard the approaching whine of a second engine, the reserve guys coming to back us up. "Red, vent the northeast corner of the roof; Paulie, put the wet stuff on the red stuff and push it out when it's got somewhere to go. We've got a kid on the second floor. I'm going in to see if I can get her."

It was not, like in the movies, a slam dunk-a scene for the hero to go win his Oscar. If I got in there, and the stairs had gone… if the structure threatened to collapse… if the temperature of the space had gotten so hot that everything was combustible and ripe for flashover—I would have backed out and told my men to back out with me. The safety of the rescuer is of a higher priority than the safety of the victim. Always.

I'm a coward. There are times when my shift is over that I'll stay and roll hose, or put on a fresh pot of coffee for the crew coming in, instead of heading straight to my house. I have often wondered why I get more rest in a place where, for the most part, I'm roused out of bed two or three times a night. I think it is because in a firehouse, I don't have to worry about emergencies happening-they're supposed to. The minute I walk through the door at home, I'm worrying about what might come next.

Once, in second grade, Kate drew a picture of a firefighter with a halo above his helmet. She told her class that I would only be allowed to go to Heaven, because if I went to Hell, I'd put out all the fires. I still have that picture.

In a bowl, I crack a dozen eggs and start to whip them into a frenzy. The bacon's already spitting on the stove; the griddle's heating for pancakes. Firemen eat together—or at least we try to, before the bells ring. This breakfast will be a treat for my guys, who are still showering away the memories of last night from their skin. Behind me, I hear the fall of footsteps. "Pull up a chair," I call over my shoulder. "It's almost ready."

"Oh, thanks, but no," says a female voice. "I wouldn't want to impose." I turn around, brandishing my spatula. The sound of a woman here is surprising; one who's shown up just shy of seven A.M. is even more remarkable. She is small, with wild hair that makes me think of a forest fire. Her hands are covered with winking silver rings. "Captain Fitzgerald, I'm Julia Romano. I'm the guardian ad litem assigned to Anna's case."

Sara's told me about her-the woman the judge will listen to, when push comes to shove.

"Smells great," she says, smiling. She walks up and takes the spatula out of my hand. "I can't watch someone cook without helping. It's a genetic abnormality." I watch her reach into the fridge, rummaging around. Of all things, she comes back with a jar of horseradish. "I was hoping you might have a few minutes to talk."

"Sure." Horseradish?

She adds a good wad of the stuff to the eggs, and then pulls orange zest off the spice rack, along with some chili powder, and sprinkles this on as well. "How's Kate doing?"

I pour a circle of batter on the griddle, watch it come to a bubble. When I flip it, it's an even, creamy brown. I've already spoken to Sara this morning. Kate's night was uneventful; Sara's wasn't. But that's because of Jesse.

There is a moment during a structure fire when you know you are either going to get the upper hand, or that it's going to get the upper hand on you. You notice the ceiling patch about to fall and the staircase eating itself alive and the synthetic carpet glued to the soles of your boots. The sum of the parts overwhelms, and that's when you back out and force yourself to remember that every fire will burn itself out, even without your help.

These days, I'm fighting fire on six sides. I look in front of me and see Kate sick I look behind me and see Anna with her lawyer. The only time Jesse isn't drinking like a fish, he's strung out on drugs; Sara's grasping at straws. And me, I've got my gear on, safe. I'm holding dozens of hooks and irons and poles-all tools that are meant to destroy, when what I need is something to rope us together.

"Captain Fitzgerald … Brian!" Julia Romano's voice knocks me out of my own head, into a kitchen that's rapidly filling with smoke. She reaches past me and shoves the pancake that's burning off the griddle.

"Jesus!" I drop the charcoal disk that used to be a pancake into the sink, where it hisses at me. "I'm sorry."

Like open sesame, those two simple words change the landscape. "Good thing we've got the eggs," Julia Romano says.

In a burning house, your sixth sense kicks in. You can't see, because of the smoke. You can't hear, because fire roars loud. You can't touch, because it will be the end of you.

In front of me, Paulie manned the nozzle. A line of firefighters backed him up; a charged hose was a thick, dead weight. We worked our way up the stairs, still intact, intent on shoving this fire out the hole Red had put in the roof. Like anything that's confined, fire has a natural instinct to escape.

I got down on my hands and knees and started to crawl through the hallway. The mother said it was the third door on the left. The fire rolled along the other side of the ceiling, racing to the vent. As the spray attacked, white steam swallowed the other firefighters.

The door to the child's room was open. I crawled in calling her name. A larger shape at the window drew me like a magnet, but it turned out to be an oversized stuffed animal. I checked the closets and under the bed, too, but nobody was there.

I backed into the hallway again and nearly tripped over the hose, fist-thick. A human could think; a fire couldn't. A fire would follow a specific path; a child might not. Where would I have gone if I were terrified?

Moving fast, I started poking my head into doorways. One was pink, a baby's room. Another had Matchbox cars all over the floor and bunk beds. One was not a room at all, but a closet. The master bedroom was on the far side of the staircase.

If I were a kid, I'd want my mother.

Unlike the other bedrooms, this one was leaking thick, black smoke. Fire had burned a seam at the bottom of the door. I opened it, knowing I was going to let in air, knowing it was the wrong thing to do and the only choice I had.

Predictably, the smoldering line ignited, flame filling the doorway. I charged through it like a bull, feeling embers rain down the back of my helmet and coat. "Luisa!" I yelled out. I felt my way around the perimeter of the room, found the closet. I knocked hard and called again.

It was faint, but there was definitely a knock back.

"We've been lucky," I tell Julia Romano, quite possibly the last words she'd ever expect to hear me say. "Sara's sister watches the kids if it's going to be a long haul. For shorter runs, we swap off—you know, Sara stays with Kate one night at the hospital, and I go home to the other kids, or vice versa. It's easier now. They're old enough to take care of themselves."

She writes something down in her little book when I say that, and it makes me squirm in my seat. Anna's only thirteen-is that too young to stay alone in a house? Social Services might say so, but Anna's different. Anna grew up years ago.

"Do you think Anna's doing okay?" Julia asks.

"I don't think she would have filed a lawsuit if she was." I hesitate. "Sara says she wants attention."

"What do you think?"

To buy time, I take a forkful of eggs. The horseradish turned out to be surprisingly good. It brings out the orange. I tell Julia Romano this.

She folds her napkin next to her own plate. "You didn't answer my question, Mr. Fitzgerald."

"I don't think it's that simple." I very carefully set my silverware down. "Do you have brothers or sisters?"

"Both. Six older brothers and a twin sister."

I whistle. "Your parents must have a hell of a lot of patience."

She shrugs. "Good Catholics. I don't know how they did it, either, but none of us fell through the cracks."

"Did you always think so?" I ask. "Did you ever feel, when you were a kid, that maybe they were playing favorites?" Her face tightens, just the tiniest bit, and I feel bad about putting her on the spot. "We all know you're supposed to love your kids equal, but that's not always how it works out." I get to my feet. "You got a little extra time? There's someone I'd like you to meet."

Last winter we got an ambulance call in the dead of winter for a guy who lived up a rural road. The contractor he hired to plow his driveway had found him and called 911; apparently the guy had gotten out of his car the night before, slipped, and froze right to the gravel; the contractor nearly ran over him, thinking he was a drift.

When we got to the scene, he'd been outside for nearly eight hours, and he was nothing more than an ice cube with no pulse. His knees were bent; I remember this, because when we finally pried him out and set him on a backboard, there they were, sticking straight up in the air. We got the heat cranked in the ambulance and brought him inside, starting to cut off his clothes. By the time we had our paperwork in order for the hospital transport, the guy was sitting up and talking to us.

I tell you this to show you that in spite of what you'd think, miracles happen.

It's a cliche, but the reason I became a firefighter in the first place was because I wanted to save people. So the moment I emerged from the fiery arched doorway with Luisa in my arms, when her mother first saw us and fell to her knees, I knew I had done my job and done it well. She swooped down beside the EMT from the second crew who got a line into the girl's arm and put her on oxygen. The kid was coughing, frightened, but she would be fine.

The fire was all but out; the boys were inside doing salvage and overhaul. Smoke drew a veil over the night sky; I couldn't make out a single star in the constellation Scorpio. I took off my gloves and wiped my hands across my eyes, which would sting for hours. "Good work," I said to Red, as he packed up the hose.

"Good save, Cap," he called back.

It would have been better, of course, if Luisa had been in her own room, as her mother expected. But kids don't stay where they're supposed to. You turn around and find her not in the bedroom but hiding in a closet; you turn around and see she's not three but thirteen. Parenting is really just a matter of tracking, of hoping your kids do not get so far ahead you can no longer see their next moves.

I took off my helmet and stretched the muscles of my neck. I looked up at the structure that was once a home. Suddenly I felt fingers wrap around my hand. The woman who lived here stood with tears in her eyes. Her youngest was still in her arms; the other kids were sitting in the fire truck under Red's supervision. Silently she raised my knuckles to her lips. A streak of soot came off my jacket to stripe her cheek. "You're welcome," I said.

On our way back to the station I directed Caesar the long way, so that we passed right down the street where I live. Jesse's Jeep sat in my driveway; the lights in the house were all off. I pictured Anna with the covers pulled up to her chin, like usual; Kate's bed empty.

"We all set, Fitz?" Caesar asked. The truck was barely crawling, almost stopped directly in front of my driveway.

"Yeah, we're set," I said. "Let's take it on home." I became a firefighter because I wanted to save people. But I should have been more specific. I should have named names.

JULIA

BRIAN FITZGERALD'S CAR IS FILLED with stars. There are charts on the passenger seat and tables jammed into the console between us; the backseat is a palette for Xerox copies of nebulae and planets. "Sorry," he says, reddening. "I wasn't expecting company."

I help him clear off a space for me, and in the process pick up a map made of pinpricks. "What's this?" I ask.

"A sky atlas." He shrugs. "It's kind of a hobby."

"When I was little, I once tried to name every star in the sky after one of my relatives. The scary part is I hadn't run out of names by the time I fell asleep."

"Anna's named after a galaxy," Brian says.

"That's much cooler than being named after a patron saint," I muse. "Once, I asked my mom why stars shine. She said they were night-lights, so the angels could find their way around in Heaven. But when I asked my dad, he started talking about gas, and somehow I put it all together and figured that the food God served caused multiple trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night."

Brian laughs out loud. "And here I was trying to explain atomic fusion to my kids."

"Did it work?"

He considers for a moment. "They could all probably find the Big Dipper with their eyes closed."

"That's impressive. Stars all look the same to me."

"It's not that hard. You spot a piece of a constellation—like Orion's belt—and suddenly it's easier to find Rigel in his foot and Betelgeuse in his shoulder." He hesitates. "But ninety percent of the universe is made of stuff we can't even see."

"Then how do you know it's there?"

He slows to a stop at a red light. "Dark matter has a gravitational effect on other objects. You can't see it, you can't feel it, but you can watch something being pulled in its direction."

Ten seconds after Campbell left last night, Izzy walked into the living room where I was just on the cusp of having one of those bone-cleansing cries a woman should treat herself to at least once during a lunar cycle. "Yeah," she said dryly. "I can see this is a totally professional relationship."

I scowled at her. "Were you eavesdropping?"

"Pardon me if you and Romeo were having your little tete-a-tete through a thin wall."

"If you've got something to say," I suggested, "say it."

"Me?" Izzy frowned. "Hey, it's none of my business, is it?"

"No, it's not."

"Right. So I'll just keep my opinion to myself."

I rolled my eyes. "Out with it, Isobel."

"Thought you'd never ask." She sat down beside me on the couch. "You know, Julia, the first time a bug sees that big purple zapper light, it looks like God. The second time, he runs in the other direction."

"First, don't compare me to a mosquito. Second, he'd fly in the other direction, not run. Third, there is no second time. The bug's dead."

Izzy smirked. "You are such a lawyer."

"I am not letting Campbell zap me."

"Then request a transfer."

"This isn't the Navy." I hugged one of the throw pillows from the couch. "And I can't do that, not now. It'll make him think that I'm such a wimp I can't balance my professional life with some stupid, silly, adolescent. . . incident."

"You can't." Izzy shook her head. "He's an egotistical dickhead who's going to chew you up and spit you out; and you have a really awful history of falling for assholes that you ought to run screaming from; and I don't feel like sitting around listening to you try to convince yourself you don't still feel something for Campbell Alexander when, in fact, you've spent the past fifteen years trying to fill in the hole he made inside you."

I stared at her. "Wow."

She shrugged. "Guess I had a lot to get off my chest, after all.”

“Do you hate all men, or just Campbell?"

Izzy seemed to think about that for a while. "Just Campbell," she said finally.

What I wanted, at that moment, was to be alone in my living room so that I could throw things, like the TV remote or the glass vase or preferably my sister. But I couldn't order Izzy out of a house she'd moved into just hours before. I stood up and plucked my house keys off the counter. "I'm going out," I told her. "Don't wait up."

I'm not much of a party girl, which explains why I hadn't frequented Shakespeare's Cat before, although it was a mere four blocks from my condo. The bar was dark and crowded and smelled of patchouli and cloves. I pushed my way inside, hopped up on a stool, and smiled at the man sitting next to me.

I was in the mood to make out in the back row of the movie theater with someone who did not know my first name. I wanted three guys to fight for the honor of buying me a drink.

I wanted to show Campbell Alexander what he'd been missing.

The man beside me had sky-eyes, a black ponytail, and a Gary Grant grin. He nodded politely at me, then turned away and began to kiss a white-haired gentleman flush on the mouth. I looked around and saw what I had missed on my entrance: the bar was filled with single men—but they were dancing, flirting, hooking up with each other.

"What can I get you?" The bartender had fuchsia porcupine hair and an oxen ring pierced through his nose.

"This is a gay bar?"

"No, it's the officers' club at West Point. You want a drink or not?" I pointed over his shoulder to the bottle of tequila, and he reached for a shot glass.

I rummaged in my purse and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. "The whole thing." Glancing down at the bottle, I frowned. "I bet Shakespeare didn't even have a cat."

"Who peed in your coffee?" the bartender asked.

Narrowing my eyes, I stared at him. "You're not gay."

"Sure I am."

"Based on my track record, if you were gay, I'd probably find you attractive. As it is…" I looked at the busy couple beside me, and then shrugged at the bartender. He blanched, then handed me back my fifty. I tucked it back into my wallet. "Who says you can't buy friends," I murmured.

Three hours later, I was the only person still there, unless you counted Seven, which was what the bartender had rechristened himself last August after deciding to jettison whatever sort of label the name Neil suggested. Seven stood for absolutely nothing, he had told me, which was exactly the way he liked it.

"Maybe I should be Six," I told him, when I'd made my way to the bottom of the tequila bottle, "and you could be Nine."

Seven finished stacking the clean glasses. "That's it. You're cut off."

"He used to call me Jewel," I said, and that was enough to make me start crying.

A jewel's first a rock put under enormous heat and pressure. Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.

But Campbell had looked. And then he'd left me, reminding me that whatever he'd seen wasn't worth the time or effort.

"I used to have pink hair," I told Seven.

"I used to have a real job," he answered.

"What happened?"

He shrugged. "I dyed my hair pink. What happened to you?"

"I let mine grow out," I answered.

Seven wiped up a spill I'd made without noticing. "Nobody ever wants what they've got," he said.

Anna sits at the kitchen table by herself, eating a bowl of Golden Grahams. Her eyes widen, as she is surprised to see me with her father, but that's as much as she'll reveal. "Fire last night, huh?" she says, sniffing.

Brian crosses the kitchen and gives her a hug. "Big one."

"The arsonist?" she asks.

"Doubt it. He goes for empty buildings and this one had a kid in it."

"Who you saved," Anna guesses.

"You bet." He glances at me. "I thought I'd take Julia up to the hospital. Want to come?"

She looks down at her bowl. "I don't know."

"Hey." Brian lifts her chin. "No one's going to keep you from seeing Kate."

"No one's going to be too thrilled to see me there, either," she says.

The telephone rings, and he picks it up. He listens for a moment, and then smiles. "That's great. That's so great. Yeah, of course I'm coming in." He hands the phone to Anna. "Mom wants to talk to you," he says, and he excuses himself to change clothes.

Anna hesitates, then curls her hand around the receiver. Her shoulders hunch, a small cubicle of personal privacy. "Hello?" And then, softly: "Really? She did?"

A few moments later, she hangs up. She sits down and takes another spoonful of cereal, then pushes away her bowl. "Was that your mom?" I ask, sitting down across from her.

"Yeah. Kate's awake," Anna says.

"That's good news."

"I guess."

I put my elbows on the table. "Why wouldn't it be good news?"

But Anna doesn't answer my question. "She asked where I was."

"Your mother?"

"Kate."

"Have you talked to her about your lawsuit, Anna?"

Ignoring me, she grabs the cereal box and begins to roll down the plastic insert. "It's stale," she says. "No one ever gets all the air out, or closes the top right."

"Has anyone told Kate what's going on?"

Anna pushes on the box top to get the cardboard tab into its slot, to no avail. "I don't even like Golden Grahams." When she tries again, the box falls out of her arms and spills its contents all over the floor. "Shoot!" She crawls under the table, trying to scoop up the cereal with her hands.

I get on the floor with Anna and watch her shove fistfuls into the liner. She won't look in my direction. "We can always buy Kate some more before she gets home," I say gently.

Anna stops and glances up. Without the veil of that secret, she looks much younger. "Julia? What if she hates me?"

I tuck a strand of hair behind Anna's ear. "What if she doesn't?"

"The bottom line," Seven explained last night, "is that we never fall for the people we're supposed to."

I glanced at him, intrigued enough to muster the effort to raise my face from where it was plastered on the bar. "It's not just me?"

"Hell, no." He set down a stack of clean glasses. "Think about it: Romeo and Juliet bucked the system, and look where it got them. Superman has the hots for Lois Lane, when the better match, of course, would be with Wonder Woman. Dawson and Joey—need I say more? And don't even get me started on Charlie Brown and the little redheaded girl."

"What about you?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Like I said, it happens to everyone." Leaning his elbows on the counter, he came close enough that I could see the dark roots beneath his magenta hair. "For me, it was Linden."

"I'd break up with someone who was named for a tree, too," I sympathized. "Guy or girl?"

He smirked. "I'll never tell.”

“So what made her wrong for you?" Seven sighed. "Well, she—"

"Ha! You said she!"

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, Detective Julia. You've outed me at this gay establishment. Happy?"

"Not particularly."

"I sent Linden back to New Zealand. Green card ran out. It was that, or get married."

"What was wrong with her?"

"Absolutely nothing," Seven confessed. "She cleaned like a banshee; she never let me wash a dish; she listened to everything I had to say; she was a hurricane in bed. She was crazy about me, and believe it or not, I was the one for her. It was, like, ninety-eight percent perfect."

"What about the other two percent?"

"You tell me." He started stacking the clean glasses on the far side of the bar. "Something was missing. I couldn't tell you what it was, if you asked, but it was off. And if you think of a relationship as a living entity, I guess it's one thing if the missing two percent is, like, a fingernail. But when it's the heart, that's a whole different ball of wax." He turned to me. "I didn't cry when she got on the plane. She lived with me for four years, and when she walked away, I didn't feel much of anything at all."

"Well, I had the other problem," I told him. "I had the heart of the relationship, and no body to grow it in."

"What happened then?"

"What else," I said. "It broke."

The ridiculous irony is that Campbell was attracted to me because I stood apart from everyone else at The Wheeler School; and I was attracted to Campbell because I desperately wanted a connection with someone. There were comments, I knew, and stares sent our way as his friends tried to figure out why Campbell was wasting his time with someone like me. No doubt, they thought I was an easy lay.

But we weren't doing that. We met after school at the cemetery. Sometimes we would speak poetry to each other. Once, we tried to have an entire conversation without the letter "s." We sat back to back, and tried to think each other's thoughts—pretending clairvoyance, when it only made sense that his whole mind would be full of me and mine would be full of him.

I loved the way he smelled whenever his head dipped close to hear what I was saying—like the sun striking the cheek of a tomato, or soap drying on the hood of a car. I loved the way his hand felt on my spine. I loved.

"What if," I said one night, stealing breath from the edge of his lips, "we did it?"

He was lying on his back, watching the moon rock back and forth on a hammock of stars. One hand was tossed up over his head, the other anchored me against his chest. "Did what?"

I didn't answer, just got up on one elbow and kissed him so deep that the ground gave way. "Oh," Campbell said, hoarse. "That."

"Have you ever?" I asked.

He just grinned. I thought that he'd probably fucked Muffy or Buffy or Puffy or all three in the baseball dugout at Wheeler, or after a party at one of their homes when they both still smelled of Daddy's bourbon. I wondered why, then, he wasn't trying to sleep with me. I assumed that it was because I wasn't Muffy or Buffy or Puffy, but just Julia Romano, which wasn't good enough.

"Don't you want to?" I asked.

It was one of those moments where I knew we were not having the conversation that we needed to be having. And since I didn't really know what to say, never having crossed this particular bridge between thought and deed before, I pressed my hand up against the thick ridge in his pants. He backed away from me.

"Jewel," he said, "I don't want you to think that's why I'm here."

Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them. "Then why are you here?"

"Because you know all the words to 'American Pie,' " Campbell said. "Because when you smile, I can almost see that tooth on the side that's crooked." He stared at me. "Because you're not like anyone I've ever met."

"Do you love me?" I whispered.

"Didn't I just say that?"

This time, when I reached for the buttons of his jeans, he didn't move away. In my palm he was so hot I imagined he would leave a scar. Unlike me, he knew what to do. He kissed and slipped, pushed, cracked me wide. Then he went perfectly still. "You didn't say you were a virgin," he said.

"You didn't ask."

But he'd assumed. He shuddered and began to move inside me, a poetry of limbs. I reached up to hold on to the gravestone behind me, words I could see in my mind's eye: Nora Deane, b. 1832, d. 1838.

"Jewel," he whispered, when it was over. "I thought. . ."

"I know what you thought." I wondered what happened when you offered yourself to someone, and they opened you, only to discover you were not the gift they expected and they had to smile and nod and say thank you all the same.

I blame Campbell Alexander entirely for my bad luck with relationships. It is embarrassing to admit, but I have only had sex with three and a half other men, and none of those were any great improvement on my first experience.

"Let me guess," Seven said last night. "The first was a rebound. The second was married."

"How'd you know?"

He laughed. "Because you're a cliche."

I swirled my pinky in my martini. It was an optical illusion, making the finger look split and crooked. "The other one was from Club Med, a windsurfing instructor."

"That must have been worthwhile," Seven said.

"He was absolutely gorgeous," I answered. "And had a dick the size of a cocktail frank."

"Ouch."

"Actually," I mused, "you couldn't feel it at all."

Seven grinned. "So he was the half?"

I turned beet red. "No, that was some other guy. I don't know his name," I admitted. "I sort of woke up with him on top of me, after a night like this one."

"You," Seven pronounced, "are a train wreck of sexual history."

But this is inaccurate. A runaway train is an accident. Me, I'll jump in front of the tracks. I'll even tie myself down in front of the speeding engine. There's some illogical part of me that still believes if you want Superman to show up, first there's got to be someone worth saving.

Kate Fitzgerald is a ghost just waiting to happen. Her skin is nearly translucent, her hair so fair it bleeds into the pillowcase. "How are you doing, baby?" Brian murmurs, and he leans down to kiss her on the forehead.

"I think I might have to blow off the Ironman competition," Kate jokes.

Anna is hovering at the door in front of me; Sara holds out her hand. It is all the encouragement Anna needs to crawl up on Kate's mattress, and in my mind I mark off this small gesture from mother to child. Then Sara sees me standing at the threshold. "Brian," she says, "what is she doing here?"

I wait for Brian to explain, but he doesn't seem inclined to utter a word. So I paste a smile on my face and step forward. "I heard Kate was feeling better today, and I thought it might be a good time to talk to her."

Kate struggles to her elbows. "Who are you?" I expect a fight from Sara, but it is Anna who speaks up. "I don't think it's such a good idea," she says, although she knows this is the very reason I've come here. "I mean, Kate's still pretty sick." It takes me a moment, but then I understand: in Anna's life, everyone who ever talks to Kate takes Kate's side. She is doing what she can to keep me from defecting.

"You know, Anna's right," Sara hastily adds. "Kate's only just turned a corner."

I place my hand on Anna's shoulder. "Don't worry." Then I turn to her mother. "It's my understanding that you wanted this hearing—"

Sara cuts me off. "Ms. Romano, could we have a word outside?" We step into the hallway, and Sara waits for a nurse to pass with a Styrofoam tray of needles. "I know what you think of me," she says.

"Mrs. Fitzgerald—"

She shakes her head. "You're sticking up for Anna, and you should. I practiced law once, and I understand. It's your job, and part of that is figuring out what makes us us." She rubs her forehead with one fist. "My job is to take care of my daughters. One of them is extremely ill, and the other one's extremely unhappy. And I may not have it all figured out yet, but… I do know that Kate won't get better any quicker if she finds out that the reason you're here is because Anna hasn't withdrawn her lawsuit yet. So I'm asking you not to tell her, either. Please."

I nod slowly, and Sara turns to go back into Kate's room. With her hand on the door, she hesitates. "I love both of them," she says, an equation I am supposed to be able to solve.

I told Seven the Bartender that true love is felonious.

"Not if they're over eighteen," he said, shutting the till of the cash register.

By then the bar itself had become an appendage, a second torso holding up my first. "You take someone's breath away," I stressed. "You rob them of the ability to utter a single word." I tipped the neck of the empty liquor bottle toward him. "You steal a heart."

He wiped up in front of me with a dishrag. "Any judge would toss that case out on its ass."

"You'd be surprised."

Seven spread the rag out on the brass bar to dry. "Sounds like a misdemeanor, if you ask me."

I rested my cheek on the cool, damp wood. "No way," I said. "Once you're in, it's for life."

Brian and Sara take Anna down to the cafeteria. It leaves me alone with Kate, who is eminently curious. I imagine that the number of times her mother has willingly left her side is something she can count on two hands. I explain that I'm helping the family make some decisions about her health care.

"Ethics committee?" Kate guesses. "Or are you from the hospital's legal department? You look like a lawyer."

"What does a lawyer look like?"

"Kind of like a doctor, when he doesn't want to tell you what your labs say."

I pull up a chair. "Well, I'm glad to hear you're doing better today."

"Yeah. Apparently yesterday I was pretty out of it," Kate says. "Doped up enough to make Ozzy and Sharon look like Ozzie and Harriet."

"Do you know where you stand, medically, right now?"

Kate nods. "After my BMT, I got graft-versus-host disease—which is sort of good, because it kicks the leukemia's butt, but it also does some funky stuff to your skin and organs. The doctors gave me steroids and cyclosporine to control it, and that worked, but it also managed to break down my kidneys, which is the emergency flavor of the month. That's pretty much the way it goes—fix one leak in the dike just in time to watch another one start spouting. Something is always falling apart in me."

She says this matter-of-factly, as if I've grilled her about the weather or what's on the hospital menu. I could ask her if she has talked to the nephrologists about a kidney transplant, if she has any particular feelings about undergoing so many different, painful treatments. But this is exactly what Kate is expecting me to ask, which is probably why the question that comes out of my mouth is completely different. "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"No one ever asks me that." She eyes me carefully. "What makes you think I'm going to grow up?"

"What makes you think that you're not? Isn't that why you're doing all this?"

Just when I think she isn't going to answer me, she speaks. "I always wanted to be a ballerina." Her arm goes up, a weak arabesque. "You know what ballerinas have?" Eating disorders, I think.

"Absolute control. When it comes to their bodies, they know exactly what's going to happen, and when." Kate shrugs, coming back to this moment, this hospital room. "Anyway," she says. "Tell me about your brother."

Kate starts to laugh. "You haven't had the pleasure of meeting him yet, I guess."

"Not yet."

"You can pretty much form an opinion about Jesse in the first thirty seconds you spend with him. He gets into a lot of bad stuff he shouldn't."

"You mean drugs, alcohol?"

"Keep going," Kate says.

"Has that been hard for your family to deal with?"

"Well, yeah. But I don't really think it's something he does on purpose. It's the way he gets noticed, you know? I mean, imagine what it would be like if you were a squirrel living in the elephant cage at the zoo. Does anyone ever go there and say, Hey, check out that squirrel? No, because there's something so much bigger you notice first." Kate runs her fingers up and down one of the tubes sprouting out of her chest. "Sometimes it's shoplifting, and sometimes it's getting drunk. Last year, it was an anthrax hoax. That's the kind of stuff Jesse does."

"And Anna?"

Kate starts to pleat the blanket in folds on her lap. "There was one year when every single holiday, and I mean even like Memorial Day, I was in the hospital. It wasn't anything planned, of course, but that's the way it happened. We had a tree in my room for Christmas, and an Easter egg hunt in the cafeteria, and we trick-or-treated on the orthopedic ward. Anna was around six years old, and she threw a total fit because she couldn't bring sparklers into the hospital on the Fourth of July—all the oxygen tents." Kate looks up at me. "She ran away. Not far, or anything—I think she got to the lobby before someone nabbed her. She was going to find herself another family, she told me. Like I said, she was only six, and no one really took it seriously. But I used to wonder what it would be like to be normal. So I totally understood why she'd wonder about it, too."

"When you're not sick, do you and Anna get along pretty well?"

"We're like any pair of sisters, I guess. We fight over who gets to put on whose CDs; we talk about cute guys; we steal each other's good nail polish. She gets into my stuff and I yell; I get into her stuff and she cries down the house. Sometimes she's great. And other times I wish she'd never been born."

That sounds so patently familiar that I grin. "I have a twin sister. Every time I used to say that, my mother would ask me if I could really, truly picture being an only child."

"Could you?"

I laugh. "Oh… there were definitely times I could imagine life without her."

Kate doesn't crack a smile. "See," she says, "my sister's the one who's always had to imagine life without me."

SARA

AT EIGHT, KATE IS A LONG TANGLE of arms and legs, sometimes resembling a creature made of sunlight and pipe cleaners more than she does a little girl. I stick my head into her room for the third time that morning, to find her in yet a different outfit. This one is a dress, white with red cherries printed across it. "You're going to be late for your own birthday party," I tell her.

Thrashing her way out of the halter top, Kate strips off the dress. "I look like an ice cream sundae."

"There are worse things," I point out.

"If you were me, would you wear the pink skirt or the striped one?"

I look at them both, puddles on the floor. "The pink one."

"You don't like the stripes?"

"Then wear that one."

"I'm going to wear the cherries," she decides, and she turns around to grab it. On the back of her thigh is a bruise the size of a half-dollar, a cherry that has stained its way through the fabric.

"Kate," I ask, "what's that?"

Twisting around, she looks at the spot where I point. "I guess I banged it."

For five years, Kate has been in remission. At first, when the cord blood transplant seemed to be working, I kept waiting for someone to tell me this was all a mistake. When Kate complained that her feet hurt, I rushed her to Dr. Chance, certain this was the bony pain of recurrence, only to find out that she'd outgrown her sneakers. When she fell down, instead of kissing her scrapes, I'd ask her if her platelets were good.

A bruise is created when there is bleeding in tissues beneath the skin, usually—but not always—the result of a trauma. It has been five whole years, did I mention that? Anna sticks her head into the room. "Daddy says the first car just pulled up and if Kate wants to come down wearing a flour sack he doesn't care. What's a flour sack?"

Kate finishes hiking the sundress over her head, then pulls up the hem and rubs the bruise. "Huh," she says.

Downstairs, there are twenty-five second-graders, a cake in the shape of a unicorn, and a local college kid hired to make swords and bears and crowns out of balloons. Kate opens her presents—necklaces made of glittery beads, craft kits, Barbie paraphernalia. She saves the biggest box for last—the one Brian and I have gotten her. Inside a glass bowl swims a fantail goldfish. Kate has wanted a pet forever. But Brian is allergic to cats, and dogs require a lot of attention, which led us to this. Kate could not be happier. She carries him around for the rest of the party. She names him Hercules.

After the party, when we are cleaning up, I find myself staring at the goldfish. Bright as a penny, he swims in circles, happy to be going nowhere.

It takes only thirty seconds to realize that you will be canceling all your plans, erasing whatever you had been cocky enough to schedule on your calendar. It takes sixty seconds to understand that even if you'd been fooled into thinking so, you do not have an ordinary life.

A routine bone marrow aspiration—one we'd scheduled long before I ever saw that bruise—has come back with some abnormal promyelocytes floating around. Then a polymerase chain reaction test—one that allows the study of DNA—showed that in Kate, the 15 and 17 chromosomes were translocated.

All of this means that Kate is in molecular relapse now, and clinical symptoms can't be that far behind. Maybe she won't present with blasts for a month. Maybe we won't find blood in her urine or stools for a year. But inevitably, it will happen.

They say that word, relapse, like they might say birthday or tax deadline, something that happens so routinely it has become part of your internal calendar, whether you want it to or not.

Dr. Chance has explained that this is one of the great debates for oncologists—do you fix a wheel that isn't broken, or do you wait until the cart collapses? He recommends that we put Kate on ALL-TRANS Retinoic Acid. It comes in a pill half the size of my thumb, and was basically stolen from ancient Chinese medics who'd been using it for years. Unlike chemotherapies, which go in and kill everything in their path, ATRA heads right for chromosome 17. Since the translocation of chromosomes 15 and 17 is in part what keeps promyelocyte maturation from happening correctly, ATRA helps uncoil the genes that have bound themselves together… and stops the abnormalities from going further.

Dr. Chance says the ATRA may put Kate back into remission.

Then again, she might develop a resistance to it.

"Mom?" Jesse comes into the living room, where I am sitting on the couch. I've been there for hours now. I can't seem to make myself get up and do any of the things I am supposed to, because what is the point of packing school lunches or hemming a pair of pants or even paying the heating bill?

"Mom," Jesse says again. "You didn't forget, did you?"

I look at him as if he is speaking Greek. "What?"

"You said you'd take me to buy new cleats after we go to the orthodontist. You promised."

Yes, I did. Because soccer starts two days from now, and Jesse's outgrown his old pair. But now I do not know if I can drag myself to the orthodontist's, where the receptionist will smile at Kate and tell me, like she always does, how beautiful my children are. And there is something about the thought of going to Sports Authority that seems downright obscene.

"I'm canceling the orthodontist appointment," I say. "Cool!" He smiles, his silver mouth glinting. "Can we just go get the cleats?"

"Now is not a good time."

"But—"

"Jesse. Let. It. Go."

"I can't play if I don't get new shoes. And you're not even doing anything. You're just sitting here."

"Your sister," I say evenly, "is incredibly sick. I'm sorry if that interferes with your dentist's appointment or your plan to go buy a pair of cleats. But those don't rate quite as high in the grand scheme of things right now. I'd think that since you're ten, you might be able to grow up enough to realize that the whole world doesn't always revolve around you."

Jesse looks out the window, where Kate straddles the arm of an oak tree, coaching Anna in how to climb up. "Yeah, right, she's sick," he says. "Why don't you grow up? Why don't you figure out that the world doesn't revolve around her?"

For the first time in my life I begin to understand how a parent might hit a child—it's because you can look into their eyes and see a reflection of yourself that you wish you hadn't. Jesse runs upstairs to slam the door to his bedroom.

I close my eyes, take a few deep breaths. And it strikes me: not everyone dies of old age. People get run over by cars. People crash in airplanes. People choke on peanuts. There are no guarantees about anything, least of all one's future.

With a sigh I walk upstairs, knock on my son's door. He has just recently discovered music; it throbs through the thin line of light at the base of the door. As Jesse turns down the stereo the notes flatten abruptly. "What."

"I'd like to talk to you. I'd like to apologize." There is a scuffle on the other side of the door, and then it swings open. Blood covers Jesse's mouth, a vampire's lipstick; bits of wire stick out like a seamstress's pins. I notice the fork he is holding, and realize this is what he has used to pull off his braces. "Now you never have to take me anywhere," he says.

Two weeks go by with Kate on ATRA. "Did you know," Jesse says one day, while I am getting her pill ready, "a giant tortoise can live for 177 years?" He is on a Ripley's Believe It or Not kick. "An Arctic clam can live for 220 years."

Anna sits at the counter, eating peanut butter with a spoon.

"What's an Arctic clam?"

"Who cares?" Jesse says. "A parrot can live for eighty years. A

cat can live for thirty."

"How about Hercules?" Kate asks.

"It says in my book that with good care, a goldfish can live for seven years."

Jesse watches Kate put the pill on her tongue, take a swig of water to swallow it. "If you were Hercules," he says, "you'd already be dead."

Brian and I slide into our respective chairs in Dr. Chance's office. Five years have passed, but the seats fit like an old baseball glove. Even the photographs on the oncologist's desk have not changed—h is wife is wearing the same broad-brimmed hat on a rocky Newport jetty; his son is frozen at age six, holding a speckled trout—contributing to the feeling that in spite of what I believed, we never really left here.

The ATRA worked. For a month, Kate reverted to molecular remission. And then a CBC turned up more promyelocytes in her blood.

"We can keep pulsing her with ATRA," Dr. Chance says, "but I think that its failure already tells us she's maxed out that course.”

“What about a bone marrow transplant?"

"That's a risky call—particularly for a child who still isn't showing symptoms of a full-blown clinical relapse." Dr. Chance looks at us. "There's something else we can try first. It's called a donor lymphocyte infusion—a DLL Sometimes a transfusion of white blood cells from a matched donor can help the original clone of cord blood cells fight the leukemia cells. Think of them as a relief army, supporting the front line."

"Will it put her into remission?" Brian asks. Dr. Chance shakes his head. "It's a stop-gap measure—Kate will, in all probability, have a full-fledged relapse—but it buys time to build up her defenses before we have to rush into a more aggressive treatment."

"And how long will it take to get the lymphocytes here?" I ask. Dr. Chance turns to me. "That depends. How soon can you bring in Anna?"

When the elevator doors open there is only one other person inside it, a homeless man with electric blue sunglasses and six plastic grocery bags filled with rags. "Close the doors, dammit," he yells as soon as we step inside. "Can't you see I'm blind?"

I push the button for the lobby. "I can take Anna in after school. Kindergarten gets out at noon tomorrow."

"Don't touch my bag," the homeless man growls.

"I didn't," I answer, distant and polite.

"I don't think you should," Brian says.

"I'm nowhere near him!"

"Sara, I meant the DLL I don't think you should take Anna in to donate blood."

For no reason at all, the elevator stops on the eleventh floor, then closes again.

The homeless man begins to rummage in his plastic bags. "When we had Anna," I remind Brian, "we knew that she was going to be a donor for Kate."

"Once. And she doesn't have any memory of us doing that to her."

I wait until he looks at me. "Would you give blood for Kate?"

"Jesus, Sara, what kind of question—"

"I would, too. I'd give her half my heart, for God's sake, if it helped. You do whatever you have to, when it comes to people you love, right?" Brian ducks his head, nods. "What makes you think that Anna would feel any different?"

The elevator doors open, but Brian and I remain inside, staring at each other. From the back, the homeless man shoves between us, his bounty rustling in his arms. "Stop yelling," he shouts, though we stand in utter silence. "Can't you tell that I'm deaf?"

To Anna, it is a holiday. Her mother and father are spending time with her, alone. She gets to hold both of our hands the whole way across the parking lot. So what if we're going to a hospital?

I have explained to her that Kate isn't feeling good, and that the doctors need to take something from Anna and give it to Kate to make her feel better. I figured that was more than enough information.

We wait in the examination room, coloring line drawings of pterodactyls and T-Rexes. "Today at snack Ethan said that the dinosaurs all died because they got a cold," Anna says, "but no one believed him."

Brian grins. "Why do you think they died?"

"Because, duh, they were a million years old." She looks up at him. "Did they have birthday parties back then?"

The door opens, and the hematologist comes in. "Hello, gang. Mom, you want to hold her on your lap?"

So I crawl onto the table and settle Anna in my arms. Brian gets stationed behind us, so that he can grab Anna's shoulder and elbow and keep it immobilized. "You ready?" the doctor asks Anna, who is still smiling.

And then she holds up a syringe.

"It's only a little stick," the doctor promises, exactly the wrong words, and Anna starts thrashing. Her arms clip me in the face, the belly. Brian cannot grab hold of her. Over her screams, he yells at me. "I thought you told her!"

The doctor, who's left the room without me even noticing, returns with several nurses in tow. "Kids and phlebotomy never mix well," she says, as the nurses slide Anna off my lap and soothe her with their soft hands and softer words. "Don't worry; we're pros."

It is a deja vu, just like the day Kate was diagnosed. Be careful what you wish for, I think. Anna is just like her sister.

I'm vacuuming the girls' room when the handle of the Electrolux smacks Hercules' bowl and sends the fish flying. No glass breaks, but it takes me a moment to find him, thrashing himself dry on the carpet beneath Kate's desk.

"Hang on, buddy," I whisper, and I flip him into the bowl. I fill it with water from the bathroom sink.

He floats to the top. Don't, I think. Please.

I sit down on the edge of the bed. How can I possibly tell Kate I've killed her fish? Will she notice if I run to the pet store and get a replacement?

Suddenly Anna is next to me, home from morning kindergarten. "Mommy? How come Hercules isn't moving?"

I open my mouth, a confession melting on my tongue. But at that moment the goldfish shudders sideways, dives, and starts to swim again. "There," I say. "He's fine."

When five thousand lymphocytes don't seem to be enough, Dr. Chance calls for ten thousand. Anna's appointment for a second donor lymphocyte draw falls in the middle of the gymnastics birthday party of a girl in her class. I agree to let her go for a little while, and then drive to the hospital from the gym.

The girl is a sugar-spun princess with fairy-white hair, a tiny replica of her mother. As I slip off my shoes to trek across the padded floor, I try desperately to remember their names. The child is… Mallory. And the mother is… Monica? Margaret?

I spot Anna right away, sitting on the trampoline as an instructor bounces them up and down like popcorn. The mother comes over to me, a smile strung on her face like a row of Christmas lights. "You must be Anna's mom. I'm Mittie," she says. "I'm so sorry she has to leave, but of course, we understand. It must be amazing, going somewhere no one else ever gets to go."

The hospital? "Well, just hope you never have to do the same.”

“Oh, I know. I get dizzy going up an elevator." She turns to the trampoline. "Anna, honey! Your mother's here!"

Anna barrels across the padded floor. This is exactly what I'd wanted to do to my living room when the kids were all small: cushion the walls and floor and ceiling for protection. And yet it turned out that I could have rolled Kate in bubble wrap, the danger for her was already under the skin.

"What do you say?" I prompt, and Anna thanks Mallory's mother.

"Oh, you're welcome." She hands Anna a small bag of treats. "Now, have your husband call us anytime. We'd be happy to take Anna while you're in Texas."

Anna hesitates in the middle of a shoelace knot. "Mittie?" I ask, "what exactly did Anna tell you?"

"That she had to leave early so your whole family could take you to the airport. Because once training starts in Houston, you won't see them until after the flight."

"The flight?"

"On the space shuttle…?"

For a moment I am stunned—that Anna would make up such a ridiculous story, that this woman would believe it. "I'm not an astronaut," I confess. "I don't know why Anna would even say something like that."

I pull Anna to her feet, one shoelace still untied. Dragging her out of the gymnasium, we reach the car before I say a word. "Why did you lie to her?"

Anna scowls. "Why did I have to leave the party?"

Because your sister is more important than cake and ice cream; because I cannot do this for her; because I said so.

I'm so angry that I have to try twice before I can unlock the van. "Stop acting like a five-year-old," I accuse, and then I remember that's exactly what she is.

"It was so hot," Brian says, "a silver tea set melted. Pencils were bent in half."

I look up from the newspaper. "How did it start?"

"Cat and dog chasing each other, when the owners were on vacation. They turned on a Jenn-Air range." He peels his jeans down, winces. "I got second-degree burns just kneeling on the roof."

His skin is raw, blistered. I watch him apply Neosporin and gauze. He keeps talking, telling me something about a rookie nick-named Caesar who just joined their company. But my eyes are drawn to the advice column in the newspaper:

What sort of woman considers this to be her biggest problem? I picture her scrawling out a note to Dear Abby on linen-blend stationery. I wonder if she's ever felt a baby turn inside her, tiny hands and feet walking in slow circles, as if the inside of a mother is a place to be carefully mapped.

"What are you glued to?" Brian asks, coming to read the column over my shoulder.

I shake my head in disbelief. "A woman whose life is being ruined by rings from jelly jars."

"Cream gone bad," Brian adds, chuckling.

"Slimy lettuce. Oh my God, how can she stand to be alive?" We both start laughing then. Contagious, all we have to do is look at each other to laugh even harder.

And then just as suddenly as all this was funny, it isn't anymore. Not all of us live in a world where our refrigerator contents are the barometer for our personal happiness. Some of us work in buildings that are burning down around us. Some of us have little girls who are dying. "Slimy fucking lettuce," I say, my voice hitching. "It's not fair."

Brian is across the room in an instant; he folds me into his embrace. "It never is, baby," he answers.

One month later, we go back for a third lymphocyte donation. Anna and I take our seats in the doctor's office, waiting to be called. After a few minutes, she tugs on my sleeve. "Mommy," she says.

I glance down at her. Anna is swinging her feet. On her fingernails is Kate's mood-changing nail polish. "What?"

She smiles up at me. "In case I forget to tell you after, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be."

One day my sister arrives unannounced, and with Brian's permission, spirits me away to a penthouse suite at the Ritz Carlton in Boston. "We can do anything you want," she tells me. "Art museums, Freedom Trail walks, dinners out on the Harbor." But what I really want to do is just forget, and so three hours later I am sitting on the floor beside her, finishing our second $100 bottle of wine.

I lift the bottle by its neck. "I could have bought a dress with this."

Zanne snorts. "At Filene's Basement, maybe." Her feet are on a brocade chair; her body is sprawled on the white carpet. On the TV, Oprah counsels us to minimize our lives. "Plus, when you zip up a great Pinot Noir, you never look fat."

I look over at her, suddenly feeling sorry for myself.

"No. You’re not doing the crying thing. Crying is not included in the room rate."

But suddenly all I can think of is how stupid the women on Oprah sound, with their stuffed Filofaxes and crammed closets. I wonder what Brian made for dinner. If Kate's all right. "I'm going to call home."

She conies up on an elbow. "You are allowed to take a break, you know. No one has to be a martyr twenty-four/seven."

But I hear her wrong. "I think once you sign on to be a mother, that's the only shift they offer."

"I said martyr," Zanne laughs. "Not mother."

I smile a little. "Is there a difference?"

She takes the telephone receiver out of my hand. "Did you want to get your crown of thorns out of the suitcase first? Listen to yourself, Sara, and stop being such a drama queen. Yes, you drew a bad lot of fate. Yes, it sucks to be you."

Bright color rises on my cheeks. "You have no idea what my life is like."

"Neither do you," Zanne says. "You're not living, Sara. You're waiting for Kate to die."

"I am not—" I begin, but then I stop. The thing is, I am.

Zanne strokes my hair and lets me cry. "It is so hard sometimes," I confess, words I have not said to anyone, not even Brian.

"As long as it's not all the time," Zanne says. "Honey, Kate is not going to die sooner because you have one more glass of wine, or because you stay overnight in a hotel, or because you let yourself crack up at a bad joke. So sit your ass back down and turn up the volume and act like you're a normal person."

I look around at the opulence of the room, at our decadent sprawl of wine bottles and chocolate strawberries. "Zanne," I say, wiping my eyes, "this is not what normal people do."

She follows my gaze. "You're absolutely right." She picks up the remote control, flipping channels until she finds Jerry Springer. "That better?"

I start to laugh, and then she starts to laugh, and soon the room is spinning around me and we are lying on our backs, staring up at the crown molding edging the ceiling. I suddenly remember how, when we were kids, Zanne used to always walk ahead of me to the bus stop. I could have run and caught up—but I never did. I only wanted to follow her.

Laughter rises like steam, swims through the windows. After three days of a torrential downpour, the kids are delighted to be outside, kicking around a soccer ball with Brian. When life is normal, it is so normal.

I duck into Jesse's room, trying to navigate strewn LEGO pieces and comic books so that I can set his clean clothes down on the bed. Then I go into Kate and Anna's room, and separate their folded laundry.

When I place Kate's T-shirts on her dresser I see it: Hercules is swimming upside down. I reach into the bowl and turn him, holding his tail; he wafts for a few strokes and then floats slowly to the surface, white-bellied and gasping.

I remember Jesse saying that with good care, a fish might live seven years. This has only been seven months.

After carrying the fishbowl into my bedroom, I pick up the phone and dial Information. "Petco," I say.

When I'm connected, I ask a clerk about Hercules. "Do you, like, want to buy a new fish?" she asks. "No, I want to save this one."

"Ma'am," the girl says, "we're talking about a goldfish, right?" So I call three vets, none of whom treat fish. I watch Hercules in his death throes for another minute, and then ring the oceanography department at URI, asking for any professor that's available. Dr. Orestes studies tide pools, he tells me. Mollusks and shellfish and sea urchins, not goldfish. But I find myself telling him about my daughter, who has APL. About Hercules, who survived once against all odds.

The marine biologist is silent for a moment. "Have you changed his water?"

"This morning."

"You get a lot of rain down there the past couple of days?”

“Yes."

"Got a well?"

What does that have to do with anything? "Yes…"

"It's just a hunch, but with runoff, your water might have too many minerals in it. Fill the bowl with bottled water, and maybe he'll perk up."

So I empty out Hercules' bowl, scrub it, and add a half-gallon of Poland Spring. It takes twenty minutes, but then Hercules begins to swim around. He navigates between the lobes of the fake plant. He nibbles at food.

Kate finds me watching him a half hour later. "You didn't have to change the water. I did it this morning."

"Oh, I didn't know," I lie.

She presses her face up to the glass bowl, her smile magnified. "Jesse says goldfish can only pay attention for nine seconds," Kate says, "but I think Hercules knows exactly who I am."

I touch her hair. And wonder if I have used up my miracle.

ANNA

If YOU LISTEN TO ENOUGH INFOMERCIALS you start to believe some crazy things: that Brazilian honey can be used as leg wax, that knives can cut metal, that the power of positive thinking can work like a pair of wings to get you where you need to be. Thanks to a little bout of insomnia and way too many doses of Tony Robbins, I decided one day to force myself into imagining what it would be like after Kate died. That way, or so Tony vowed, when it really happened, I'd be ready.

I kept at it for weeks. It is harder than you think to keep yourself in the future, especially when my sister was walking around at the time being her usual pain-in-the-butt self. My way of dealing with this was to pretend Kate was already haunting me. When I stopped talking to her, she figured she'd done something wrong, which she probably had, anyway. There were entire days where I did nothing but cry; others where I felt like I'd swallowed a lead plate; some more where I worked really hard at going through the motions of getting dressed and making my bed and studying my vocab words because it was easier than doing anything else.

But then, there were times when I let the veil lift a little, and other ideas would pop up. Like what it would be like to study oceanography at the University of Hawaii. Or try skydiving. Or move to Prague. Or any of a million other pipe dreams. I'd try to stuff myself into one of these scenarios, but it was like wearing a size five sneaker when your foot is a seven—you can get by for a few steps, and then you sit down and pull off the shoe because it just plain hurts too much. I am convinced that there is a censor sitting on my brain with a red stamp, reminding me what I am not supposed to even think about, no matter how seductive it might be.

It's probably a good thing. I have a feeling that if I really try to figure out who I am without Kate in the equation, I'm not going to like who I see.

My parents and I are sitting together at a table in the hospital cafeteria, although I use the word together loosely. It's more like we're astronauts, each wearing a separate helmet, each sustained by our own private source of air. My mother has the little rectangular container of sugar packets in front of her. She is organizing them with ruthlessness, the Equal and then the Sweet 'n Low and then the nubbly brown natural crystals. She looks up at me. "Honey."

Why are terms of endearment always foods? Honey, cookie, sugar, pumpkin. It's not like caring about someone is enough to actually sustain you.

"I understand what you're trying to do here," my mother continues. "And I agree that maybe your father and I need to listen to you a little bit more. But Anna, we don't need a judge to help us do this."

My heart is a soft sponge at the base of my throat. "You mean it's okay to stop?"

When she smiles, it feels like the first warm day of March—after an eternity of snow, when you suddenly remember how summer feels on the backs of your bare calves and in the part of your hair. "That's exactly what I mean," my mother says.

No more blood draws. No granulocytes or lymphocytes or stem cells or kidney. "If you want, I'll tell Kate," I offer. "So you don't have to."

"That's all right. Once Judge DeSalvo knows, we can pretend it never happened."

In the back of my mind, a hammer trips. "But… won't Kate ask why I'm not her donor anymore?"

My mother goes very still. "When I said stop, I meant the lawsuit." I shake my head hard, as much to give her an answer as to dislodge the knot of words tangled in my gut.

"My God, Anna," my mother says, stunned. "What have we done to you to deserve this?"

"It's not what you've done to me."

"It's what we haven't done, right?"

"You aren't listening to me!" I yell, and at that very moment, Vern Stackhouse walks up to our table.

The deputy looks from me to my mother to my father and forces a smile. "Guess this isn't the best time to interrupt," he says. "I'm real sorry about this, Sara. Brian." He hands my mother an envelope, nods, and walks off.

She pulls out the paper inside and reads it, then turns to me. "What did you say to him?" she demands. "To who?"

My father picks up the notice. It is full of legal language, which might as well be Greek. "What's this?"

"A motion for a temporary restraining order." She grabs it from my father. "Do you realize you're asking to have me kicked out of the house, and to have no contact with you? Is that really what you want?" Kick her out? I can't breathe. "I never asked for that."

"Well, an attorney wouldn't have filed it on his own behalf, Anna." Do you know how sometimes—when you are riding your bike and you start skidding across sand, or when you miss a step and start tumbling down the stairs—you have those long, long seconds to know that you are going to be hurt, and badly? "I don't know what's going on," I say.

"Then how can you think you're qualified to make decisions for yourself?" My mother stands so abruptly her chair clatters to the cafeteria floor. "If this is what you want, Anna, we can start right now." Her voice, it's thick and rough as rope the moment before she leaves me.

About three months ago, I borrowed Kate's makeup. Okay, so borrowed wouldn't be the right word, exactly: stole. I didn't have any of my own; I wasn't supposed to be allowed to wear it until I turned fifteen. But a miracle had happened, and Kate wasn't around to ask, and desperate times call for desperate measures.

The miracle was five-eight, with hair the color of Silver Queen corn silk and a smile that made me feel like I'd been spinning in circles. His name was Kyle and he'd moved from Idaho, right into the homeroom seat behind mine. He didn't know anything about me or my family, so when he asked me if I wanted to go to a movie with him I knew it wasn't because he felt sorry for me. We saw the new Spider-Man movie, or at least he did. I spent all my time trying to figure out how electricity could leap the tiny space between my arm and his.

When I came home, I still was walking about six inches above the ground, which is why Kate was able to blindside me. She knocked me onto my bed, pinned me by my shoulders. "You thief," she accused. "You went into my bathroom drawer without asking."

"You take my things all the time. You borrowed my blue sweatshirt two days ago."

"That's totally different. You can wash a sweatshirt."

"How come it's okay to have my germs floating around your arteries, but not on your freaking Max Factor Cherry Bomb lip gloss?" I shoved a little harder, and managed to roll us, so that now I had the upper hand.

Her eyes lit up. "Who was it?"

"What are you talking about?"

"If you're wearing makeup, Anna, there must have been a reason."

"Get lost," I said.

"Fuck off." Kate smiled at me. Then she reached one free hand under my arm and tickled me, taking me by surprise so much that I let go of her. A minute later we had wrestled off the bed, each of us trying to get the other to cry uncle. "Anna, stop already," Kate gasped. "You're killing me."

Those words, they were all it took. My hands fell off her as if I'd been burned. We lay shoulder to shoulder between our beds, staring up at the ceiling and breathing hard, both of us pretending that what she'd said had not cut quite so close to the bone.

In the car, my parents fight. Maybe we should hire a real lawyer, my father says, and my mother replies, / am one.

But Sara, my father says, if this isn't going to go away, all I'm saying is—

What are you saying, Brian? she challenges. What are you really saying? That some man in a suit whom you've never met would be able to explain Anna better than her own mother? And then my father drives the rest of the way in silence.

To my shock, there are TV cameras waiting on the steps of the Garrahy building. I'm sure they're here for something really big, so imagine my surprise when a microphone gets stuck into my face, and a reporter with helmet hair asks me why I am suing my parents. My mother pushes the woman away. "My daughter has no comment," she says, over and over; and when one guy asks if I'm aware that I am Rhode Island's first designer baby, I think for a minute she might actually deck him.

I've known since I was seven how I was conceived, and it wasn't that huge a deal. First off, my parents told me when the thought of them having sex was far more disgusting than the thought of creation in a petri dish. Second, by then tons of people were having fertility drugs and septuplets and my story wasn't really all that original anymore. But a designer baby? Yeah, right. If my parents were going to go to all that trouble, you'd think they'd have made sure to implant the genes for obedience, humility, and gratitude.

My father sits next to me on a bench, his hands knotted between his knees. Inside the judge's chambers, my mother and Campbell Alexander are verbally slugging it out. Here in the hallway, we're unnaturally quiet, as if they've taken all possible words with them and left us with nothing.

I hear a woman curse, and then Julia rounds the bend. "Anna. Sorry I'm late; I couldn't get past the media. Are you all right?"

I nod, and then I shake my head.

Julia kneels down in front of me. "Do you want your mother to leave the house?"

"No!" To my utter embarrassment, my eyes get glassy with tears. "I've changed my mind. I don't want to do this anymore. None of it."

She looks at me for a long moment, then nods. "Let me go in and talk to the judge."

When she leaves, I concentrate on getting air into my lungs. There are so many things I have to work hard at now, that I used to be able to carry out instinctively—draw in oxygen, keep my silence, do the right thing. The weight of my father's eyes on me makes me turn. "Did you mean it?" he asks. "About not wanting to do this anymore?"

I don't answer. I don't move a fraction of an inch.

"Because if you're still not sure, maybe it's not such a bad idea, having some breathing space. I mean, I've got that extra bed in my room at the station." He rubs the back of his neck. "It wouldn't be like we were moving out, or anything. Just. .." He looks at me.

"… breathing," I finish, and do just that.

My father stands up and holds out his hand. We walk out of the Garrahy Complex, side by side. The reporters come on like wolves, but this time, their questions bounce right off me. My chest feels full of glitter and helium, the way it used to when I was little and riding my father's shoulders at twilight, when I knew that if I held up my hands and spread my fingers like a net, I could catch the coming stars.

CAMPBELL

THERE MAY BE A SPECIAL CORNER of Hell for attorneys who are shamelessly self-aggrandizing, but you can bet we all are ready for our close-ups. When I arrive at the family court to find a horde of reporters on parade, I offer around sound bites as if they are candy, and make sure that the cameras are on me. I say the appropriate things about how this case is unorthodox, but ultimately painful for everyone involved. I hint that the judge's ruling may affect the rights of minors nationwide, as well as stem cell research. Then I smooth the jacket of my Armani suit, tug on Judge's leash, and explain that I really must go speak to my client.

Inside, Vern Stackhouse catches my eye and gives me a thumbs-up. I'd run into the deputy earlier, and very innocently asked whether his sister, a reporter for the ProJo, would be coming down today. "I can't really say anything," I hinted, "but the hearing … it's going to be pretty big."

In that special corner of Hell, there's probably a throne for those of us who try to capitalize off our pro bono work.

Minutes later, we are in chambers. "Mr. Alexander." Judge DeSalvo lifts up the motion for a restraining order. "Would you like to tell me why you've filed this, when I explicitly addressed the issue yesterday?"

"I had my initial meeting with the guardian ad litem, Judge," I reply. "While Ms. Romano was present, Sara Fitzgerald told my client the lawsuit was a misunderstanding that would work itself out." I slide my glance toward Sara, who shows no emotion but a tightening of her jaw. "This is a direct violation of your order, Your Honor. Although this court tried to fashion conditions that would keep the family together, I don't think it's going to work until Mrs. Fitzgerald finds it possible to mentally separate her role as parent from her role as opposing counsel. Until then, a physical separation is necessary."

Judge DeSalvo taps his fingers on the desk. "Mrs. Fitzgerald? Did you say those things to Anna?"

"Well, of course I did!" Sara explodes. "I'm trying to get to the bottom of this!"

The admission is a circus tent collapsing, leaving all of us in utter silence. Julia chooses that moment to burst through the door. "Sorry I'm late," she says, breathless.

"Ms. Romano," the judge asks, "have you had a chance to speak to Anna today?"

"Yes, just now." She looks at me, and then at Sara. "I think she's very confused."

"What's your opinion of the motion Mr. Alexander's filed?" She tucks an errant coil of hair behind one ear. "I don't think I have enough information to make a formal decision, but my gut feeling says it would be a mistake for Anna's mother to be removed from the house."

Immediately, I tense. Reacting, the dog gets to his feet. "Judge, Mrs. Fitzgerald just admitted that she violated the court's order. At the very least she should be reported to the bar for ethical violations, and—'

"Mr. Alexander, there is more to this case than the letter of the law." Judge DeSalvo turns to Sara. "Mrs. Fitzgerald, I strongly recommend you look into hiring an independent attorney to represent you and your husband in this petition. I am not going to grant the restraining order today, but I will warn you once again not to talk with your child about this case until the hearing next week. If it comes to my attention at some future date that you have ignored this directive once again, I will report you to the bar myself and personally escort you from your home." He smacks the file folder shut and gets up. "Do not bother me again until Monday, Mr. Alexander."

"I need to see my client," I announce, and I hurry out to the hallway where I know Anna is waiting with her father.

Sara Fitzgerald, predictably, is right at my heels. Following her—intent on keeping the peace, no doubt—is Julia. All three of us come to an abrupt stop at the sight of Vern Stackhouse, dozing on the bench where Anna was sitting. "Vern?" I say.

He immediately leaps to his feet, clearing his throat defensively. "It's a lumbar problem. Gotta sit down every now and then to take the pressure off."

"You know where Anna Fitzgerald went?"

He jerks his head toward the front door of the building. "She and her dad took off a while ago."

From the look on Sara's face, this is news to her, too. "Do you need a ride back to the hospital?" Julia asks.

She shakes her head and peers through the glass doors, where the reporters have rallied. "Is there a back way out?"

At my side, Judge begins to stick his muzzle into my hand. Damn.

Julia steers Sara Fitzgerald toward the rear of the building. "I need to talk to you," she calls over her shoulder to me.

I wait for her to turn her back. Then I promptly grab Judge's harness and haul him down a corridor.

"Hey!" A moment later, Julia's heels strike the tile behind me. "I said I wanted to talk to you!"

For a minute I seriously consider ducking out a window. Then I stop abruptly, turn, and offer up my most engaging smile. "Technically speaking, you said you needed to talk to me. If you'd said you wanted to talk to me, I might have waited around." Judge sinks his teeth into the corner of my suit, my expensive Armani suit, and tugs. "Right now, though, I have a meeting to get to."

"What the hell is wrong with you?" she says. "You told me you talked to Anna about her mother and that we were all on the same page.'

"I did, and we were—Sara was coercing her, and Anna wanted that to stop. I explained the alternatives."

"Alternatives? She's a thirteen-year-old girl. Do you know how many kids I see whose take on a trial is completely different from their parents'? A mother comes in and promises that her child will testify against a child molester, because she wants the perp put away for life. But the child doesn't care what happens to the perp, as long as he never has to be in the same room as the guy again. Or he thinks that maybe the perp should get another chance, just like his parents give him when he's bad. You can't expect Anna to be like a normal adult client. She doesn't have the emotional capability to make decisions independent of her home situation.”

“Well, that's the point of this whole petition," I say. "As a matter of fact, Anna told me, not a half hour ago, that she's changed her mind about this whole petition." Julia raises a brow. "Didn't know that, did you?"

"She hasn't talked to me about it."

"That's because you're talking about the wrong things. You had a conversation with her about a legal way to keep her from being pressured to call off the lawsuit. Of course she jumped all over that. But do you really think she was considering what it might truly mean—that there would be one less parent home to cook or drive or help her with homework, that she wouldn't be able to kiss her mother good night, that the rest of her family would most likely be very upset with her? All she heard, when you talked, were the words no pressure. She never heard separation."

Judge begins to whine in earnest. "I have to go." She follows me. "Where?"

"I told you, I have an appointment." The corridor is lined with rooms, all locked. Finally I find a knob that turns in my hand. I walk inside and bolt the door behind me. "Gentlemen," I say heartily.

Julia rattles the knob. She bangs on the smoky postage-stamp square of glass. I feel sweat break out on my forehead. "You're not getting away this time," she yells through the door at me. "I'm still waiting right here."

"I'm still busy," I yell back. When Judge pushes his snout in front of me, I sink my fingers into the thick fur at his neck. "It's okay," I tell him, and then I turn around to face the empty room.

JESSE

EVERY NOW AND THEN I have to contradict myself and believe in God, such as at this very moment when I come home to find a bodacious babe on my doorstep, one who gets to her feet and asks me if I know Jesse Fitzgerald. "Who's asking?" I say. "Me."

I give her my most charming smile. "Then here I am." Let me just step back for a moment and tell you that she's older than me, but with every glance that makes less and less of a difference—she's got hair I could get lost in, and a mouth so soft and full I have a hard time tearing my eyes away to check out the rest of her. I'm itching to get my hands on her skin—even the ordinary parts—just to see if it feels as smooth as it looks.

"I'm Julia Romano," she says. "I'm a guardian ad litem."

All the violins soaring in my veins screech to a stop. "Is that like a cop?"

"No, I'm an attorney, and I'm working with a judge to help your sister."

"You mean Kate?"

Something in her face tightens. "I mean Anna. She filed a lawsuit for medical emancipation from your parents."

"Oh, yeah. I know about that."

"Really?" This seems to surprise her, as if defiance is something Anna's cornered the market on. "Do you happen to know where she is?"

I glance at the house, dark and empty. "Am I my sister's keeper?" I say. Then I grin at her. "If you feel like waiting, you can come up and see my etchings."

To my shock, she agrees. "Actually, that's not a bad idea. I'd like to talk to you."

I lean against the door again and cross my arms, so that my biceps flex. I give her the grin that's stopped half the female population of Roger Williams University in their tracks. "You got plans for tonight?"

She stares at me like I've just spoken Greek. No, damn, she'd probably understand Greek. Martian. Or freaking Vulcan. "Are you asking me out on a date?"

"I'm sure as hell trying," I say.

"You're sure as hell failing," she responds flatly. "I'm old enough to be your mother."

"You have the most fantastic eyes." By eyes, I mean tits, but whatever.

Julia Romano chooses that moment to button her suit jacket, which makes me laugh out loud. "Why don't we just talk here?"

"Whatever," I say, and I lead her up to my apartment.

Given what it usually looks like, the place isn't so bad. The dishes on the counter are only a day or two old; and spilled cereal isn't nearly as bad to come home to after a full day as spilled milk. On the middle of the floor is a bucket and rag and container of gas; I'm working up some flresticks. There are clothes all over the floor, some artfully arranged to minimize the effect of a leak in my moonshine still.

"What do you think?" I smile at her. "Martha Stewart would love it, huh?"

"Martha Stewart would make you her life project," Julia murmurs. She sits down on the couch, leaps up, and removes a handful of potato chips that have, holy God, already left a grease print in the shape of a heart on her sweet ass.

"You want a drink?" Don't let it be said my mother never taught me manners.

She glances around, then shakes her head. "I'll pass."

Shrugging, I pull a Labatt's out of the fridge. "So there's been a little fallout along the home front?"

"Wouldn't you know?"

"I try not to."

"How come?"

"Because it's what I do best." Grinning, I take a nice long pull of my beer. "Although this is one blowout I would've loved to see."

"Tell me about Kate and Anna."

"What am I supposed to tell you?" I swing down next to her on the couch, way too close. On purpose.

"How do you get along with them?"

I lean forward. "Why, Ms. Romano. Are you asking me if I play nice?" When she doesn't as much as blink, I knock off the act. "They survive me," I answer. "Like everyone else."

This answer must interest her, because she writes something down on her little white pad. "What was it like, growing up in this family?"

A dozen flip responses work their way up my throat, but the one that comes out Is a totally dark horse. "When I was twelve, there was this time Kate got sick—not even big sick, just an infection, but she couldn't seem to get rid of it by herself. So they took Anna in to give granulocytes—white blood cells. It wasn't like Kate planned it or anything, but it happened to be Christmas Eve. We were supposed to all go out as a family, you know, and get a tree." I pull a pack of smokes from my pocket. "You mind?" I ask, but I never give her a chance to answer before I light up. "I was shuttled over to some neighbor's house last minute, which sucked, because they were having a nice Christmas Eve with their relatives and kept whispering about me like I was a charity case and deaf to boot. Anyway, that all got lame pretty fast, so I said I had to pee and I snuck out. I walked home and took one of my dad's axes and a handsaw and chopped down this little spruce in the middle of the front yard. By the time the neighbor figured out I was gone, I had the whole thing set up in our living room in the tree stand, garland, ornaments, you name it."

In my mind, I can still see those lights—red and blue and yellow, blinking over and over on a tree as overdressed as an Eskimo in Bali. "So Christmas morning, my parents come to the neighbors to collect me. They look like hell, the both of them, but when they bring me home there are presents under the tree. I'm all excited and I find one with my name on it, and it turns out to be this little windup car—something that would have been great for a three-year-old, but not me, and that I happened to know was for sale in the hospital gift shop. As was every single other present I got that year. Go freaking figure." I stab my cigarette butt out on the thigh of my jeans. "They never even said anything about the tree," I tell her. "That's what it's like growing up in this family."

"Do you think it's the same for Anna?"

"No. Anna's on their radar, because she plays into their grand plan for Kate."

"How do your parents decide when Anna will help Kate medically?" she asks.

"You make it sound like there's some process involved. Like there's actually a choice."

She lifts her head. "Isn't there?"

I ignore her, because that's a rhetorical question if I've ever heard one, and stare out the window. In the front yard, you can still see the stump from that spruce. No one in this family ever covers up their mistakes.

When I was seven I got it in my head to dig to China. How hard could it be, I figured—a straight shot, a tunnel? I took a shovel out of the garage and I started a hole just wide enough for me to slip into. Every night I would drag the old plastic sandbox cover across it, just in case of rain.

For four weeks I worked at this, as the rocks bit into my arms to make battle scars, and roots grabbed at my ankles.

What I didn't count on were the tall walls that grew around me, or the belly of the planet, hot under my sneakers. Digging straight down, I'd gotten hopelessly lost. In a tunnel, you have to light your own way, and I've never been very good at that.

When I yelled out, my father found me in seconds, although I'm sure I waited through several lives. He crawled into the pit, torn between my hard work and my stupidity. "This could have collapsed on you!" he said, and lifted me onto solid ground.

From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest.

Darkness, you know, is relative.

BRIAN

IT TAKES ANNA LESS THAN TEN MINUTES to move into my room at the station. While she puts her clothes into a drawer and sets her hairbrush next to mine on the dresser, I go out to the kitchen where Paulie is chefing up dinner. The guys are all waiting for an explanation.

"She's going to stay with me here for a while," I say. "We're working some things out."

Caesar looks up from a magazine. "Is she gonna ride with us?"

I haven't thought of this. Maybe it will take her mind off things, to feel like she's an apprentice of sorts. "You know, she just might."

Paulie turns around. He's making fajitas tonight, beef. "Everything okay, Cap?"

'Yeah, Paulie, thanks for asking."

"If there's anyone upsetting her," Red says, "they'll have to go through all four of us now."

The others nod. I wonder what they would think if I told them that the people upsetting Anna are Sara and me.

I leave the guys finishing up dinner preparations and go back to my room, where Anna sits on the second twin bed with her feet pretzeled beneath her. "Hey," I say, but she doesn't respond. It takes me a moment to see that she's wearing headphones, blasting God knows what into her ears.

She sees me and shuts off the music, pulling the phones to rest on her neck like a choker. "Hey."

I sit down on the edge of the bed and look at her. "So. You, uh, want to do something?"

"Like what?"

I shrug. "I don't know. Play cards?" 'You mean like poker?"

"Poker, Go Fish. Whatever." She looks at me carefully. "Go Fish?”

“Want to braid your hair?"

"Dad," Anna asks, "are you feeling all right?"

I am more comfortable rushing into a building that is going to pieces around me than I am trying to make her feel at ease. "I just-l want you to know you can do anything you want here."

"Is it okay to leave a box of tampons in the bathroom?" Immediately, my face goes red, and as if it's catching, so does Anna's. There is only one female firefighter, a part-timer, and the women's room is on the lower level of the station. But still.

Anna's hair swings over her face. "I didn't mean… I can just keep them—"

"You can put them in the bathroom," I announce. Then I add with authority, "If anyone complains, we'll say they're mine."

"I'm not sure they'll believe you, Dad."

I wrap an arm around her. "I may not do this right at first. I've never bunked with a thirteen-year-old girl."

"I don't shack up with forty-two-year-old guys too often, either."

"Good, because I'd have to kill them."

Her smile is a stamp against my neck. Maybe this will not be as hard as I think. Maybe I can convince myself that this move will ultimately keep my family together, even though the first step involves breaking it apart. "Dad?"

"Hmm?"

"Just so you know: no one plays Go Fish after they're potty-trained." She hugs me extra tight, the way she used to when she was small. I remember, in that instant, the last time I carried Anna. We were hiking across a field, the five of us—and the cattails and wild daisies were taller than her head. I swung her up into my arms, and together we parted a sea of reeds. But for the first time we both noticed how far down her legs dangled, how she was too big to sit on my hip, and before long she was struggling to get down and walk on her own.

Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.

It seems remarkable that while one of our daughters is leading us into a legal crisis, the other is in the throes of a medical one-but then again, we have known for quite some time that Kate's at the end stages of renal failure. It is Anna, this time, who's thrown us for a loop. And yet-like always-you figure it out; you manage to deal with both. The human capacity for burden is like bamboo—far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance.

While Anna was packing up her things that afternoon, I went to the hospital. Kate was having her dialysis done when I came into the room. She was asleep with her CD headphones on; Sara rose from a chair with one finger pressed to her lips, a warning.

She led me into the hallway. "How's Kate?" I asked. "About the same," she answered. "How's Anna?" We traded the status of our children like baseball cards that we'd flash for a peek, but didn't want to give up just yet. I looked at Sara, wondering how I was supposed to tell her what I'd done.

"Where did you two run off to while I was fending off the judge?" she said. Well. If you sit around and think about how hot the fire's going to be, you'll never get into the thick of it. "I took Anna to the station."

"Something going on at work?"

I took a deep breath and leaped off the cliff that my marriage had become. "No. Anna's going to stay with me there for a few days. I think maybe she needs a little time by herself."

Sara stared at me. "But Anna's not going to be by herself. She's going to be with you."

The hallway seemed too bright and too wide all of a sudden. "Is that a bad thing?"

"Yes," she said. "Do you really think that buying into Anna's tantrum is going to help her any in the long run?"

"I'm not buying into her tantrum; I'm giving her space to come to the right conclusions by herself. You're not the one who's been sitting outside with her while you're in the judge's chambers. I'm worried about her."

"Well, that's where we're different," Sara argued. "I'm worried about both our daughters."

I looked at her, and for just a splinter of a minute saw the woman she used to be—one who knew where to find her smile, instead of having to rummage for it; one who always messed up punch lines and still got a laugh; one who could reel me in without even trying. I put my hands on her cheeks. Oh, there you are, I thought, and I leaned down to kiss her on the forehead. "You know where to find us," I said, and walked away.

Shortly after midnight we get an ambulance call. Anna blinks from her bed as the bells go off and light automatically floods the room. "You can stay," I tell her, but she's already up and putting on her shoes.

I've given her old turnout gear from our part-time female firefighter: a pair of boots, a hard hat. She shrugs into the coat and climbs into the rear of the ambulance, strapping herself to the rear-facing seat behind Red, who's driving.

We scream down the streets of Upper Darby to the Sunshine Gates Nursing Home, an anteroom for meeting St. Peter. Red grabs the stretcher from the ambulance while I carry in the paramedic's bag. A nurse meets us at the front doors. "She fell down and lost consciousness for a while. And she's got an altered mental state."

We are led to one of the rooms. Inside, an elderly woman lies on the floor, tiny and fine-boned as a bird, blood oozing from the top of her head. It smells like she's lost control of her bowels. "Hi, hon," I say, leaning down immediately. I reach for her hand, the skin thin as crepe. "Can you squeeze my fingers?" And to the nurse: "What's her name?"

"Eldie Briggs. She's eighty-seven."

"Eldie, we're going to help you," I say, continuing to assess her. "She's got a lac on the occipital area. I'm going to need the backboard." While Red runs out to the ambulance to get it, I take Eldie's blood pressure and pulse—irregular. "Do you have any pain in your chest?" The woman moans, but shakes her head and then winces. "I'm going to have to put you in a collar, hon, all right? It looks like you hit your head pretty hard." Red returns, bearing the board. Lifting my head, I look at the nurse again. "Do we know if her change in consciousness was the result of the fall, or did it cause the fall?"

She shakes her head. "No one saw it happen."

"Of course," I mutter under my breath. "I need a blanket."

The hand that offers it is tiny and shaking. Until that moment, I've completely forgotten Anna is with us. "Thanks, baby," I say, taking the time to smile at her. 'You want to help me here? Can you get down to Mrs. Briggs's feet?"

She nods, white-faced, and crouches down. Red aligns the backboard. "We're going to roll you, Eldie … on three…" We count, shift, strap her on. The motion makes her scalp wound gush again.

We load her into the ambulance. Red hauls off to the hospital as I move around the cramped quarters of the cabin, hooking up the oxygen tank, ministering. "Anna, grab me an IV start kit?" I begin to cut Eldie's clothes off her. 'You still with us, Mrs. Briggs? Little needle stick coming," I say. I position her arm and try to get a vein, but they are like the faintest tracings of pencil, blueprint shadings. Sweat beads on my forehead. "I can't get in with a twenty. Anna, can you find a twenty-two?"

It doesn't help that the patient is moaning, crying. That the ambulance is swaying back and forth, turning corners, braking, as I try to insert the smaller needle. "Dammit," I say, throwing the second line on the floor.

I do a quick cardiac strip and then pick up the radio and dial into the hospital to tell them we're incoming. "Eighty-seven-year-old patient, had a fall. She's alert and answering questions, BP 136 over 83, pulse 130 and irregular. I tried to get IV access for you but haven't had a lot of luck with that. She does have a lac on the back of her head but it's pretty well controlled by now. I've got her on oxygen. Any questions?"

In the beam of an approaching truck, I see Anna's face. The truck turns, the light falls, and I realize that my daughter is holding this stranger's hand.

At the emergency entrance of the hospital, we pull the stretcher out of the cabin and wheel into the automatic doors. A team of doctors and nurses is already waiting. "She's still talking to us," I say.

A male nurse taps her thin wrists. "Jesus."

'Yeah, that's why I couldn't get a line. I needed pedi cuffs to get her pressure."

Suddenly I remember Anna, who's standing wide-eyed in the doorway.

"Daddy? Is that lady going to die?"

"I think she might have had a stroke… but she's going to make it. Listen, why don't you just go wait over there, in a chair? I'll be out in five minutes, tops."

"Dad?" she says, and I pause at the threshold. "Wouldn't it be cool if they were all that way?"

She doesn't see it the way I do—that Eldie Briggs is a paramedic's nightmare, that her veins are shot and her condition's waffling and that this has not been a good call at all. What Anna means is that whatever is wrong with Eldie Briggs can be fixed.

I go inside and continue to feed information to the ER staff as needed. About ten minutes later, I finish up my Run Form and look for my daughter in the waiting area, but she's gone missing. I find Red smoothing fresh sheets onto the stretcher, strapping a pillow under its belt. "Where's Anna?"

"1 figured she was with you."

Glancing down one hallway and then the other, all I see are weary physicians, other paramedics, small scatterings of dazed people sipping coffee and hoping for the best. "I'll be right back."

Compared to the frenzy of the ER, the eighth floor is all tucked tight. The nurses all greet me by name as I head for Kate's room and gently push open the door.

Anna is too big for Sara's lap, but that's where she's sitting. She and Kate are both asleep. Over the crown of Anna's head, Sara watches me approach.

I kneel in front of my wife and brush Anna's hair off her temples. "Baby," I whisper, "it's time to go home."

Anna sits up slowly. She lets me take her hand and draw her upright, Sara's palm trailing down her spine. "It's not home," Anna says, but she follows me out of the room all the same.

Past midnight, I lean down beside Anna and balance my words on the edge of her ear. "Come see this," I coax. She sits up, grabs a sweatshirt, stuffs her feet into her sneakers. Together, we climb to the station's roof.

The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark. "Oh!" Anna exclaims, and she lies down so that she can see better.

"It's the Perseids," I tell her. "A meteor shower."

"It's incredible."

Shooting stars are not stars at all. They're just rocks that enter the atmosphere and catch fire under friction. What we wish on, when we see one, is only a trail of debris.

In the upper left quadrant of the sky, a radiant bursts in a new stream of sparks. "Is it like this every night, while we're asleep?" Anna asks.

It is a remarkable question—Do all the wonderful things happen when we are not aware of them? I shake my head. Technically, the earth's path crosses this comet's gritty tail once a year. But a show as dynamic as this one might be once in a lifetime.

"Wouldn't it be cool if a star landed in the backyard? If we could find it when the sun came up and put it into a fishbowl and use it as a night-light or a camping lantern?" I can almost see her doing it, combing the lawn for the mark of burned grass. "Do you think Kate can see these, out her window?"

"I'm not sure." I come up on an elbow and look at her carefully.

But Anna keeps her eyes glued to the upended bowl of the heavens. "I know you want to ask me why I'm doing all this."

"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to."

Anna lies down, her head pillowed against my shoulder. Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas-a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak.