Page 65

I walk her down the hall. Her room looks like her room now. The birds she penciled are back on the wall, thin gray lines, a heron among them. The clay dish sits on the dresser. The clothespin angel stands on the windowsill where I set it the day I brought her back, catching the last of the August light, her handwriting still on the back of it, my name and my grade.

She lowers herself onto the bed and pats the spread.

"How's that girl of yours? She's carrying low."

That girl of mine? That's a stretch. Still, something in me catches on the words.

"She's carrying two, that’s why.”

"Then she's carrying low twice." She says it flat and satisfied, the way she says it when she's taken another trick.

I smile at that. "Yes, ma'am."

Manny catches me in the hall on the way out. Reading glasses up in his hair, arms crossed, no hurry to him at all.

"Two good weeks," he says. "I see our girl coming back. We're not changing one thing about her day."

"No, sir."

He looks at me a beat longer than the words needed, then nods and goes. I stand there a second in the cool hum of the hall. She’s better. Not fixed, but I'll take better. I took her two thousand miles north because I thought having her close meant I could take better care of her.

I don’t much like what that says about the choice I made, but I can’t change the past. The only thing that matters now is that she's back and she's happy.

At the desk, I sign the book and head outside.

By the time Mackie hits thirty-four weeks, I’ve been in Florida long enough that Wade has stopped asking when I’m coming back. I haven’t booked the ticket yet, but I plan to leave tomorrow or the next day.

The couch cushion dips under me. Mackie's got her head tipped back against the armrest, the heels of both hands pressed into her eyes.

"Still?" I ask.

"Since lunch. The Tylenol did nothing."

"Take your pressure."

She doesn't argue, which is a first. She wraps the cuff around her arm and hits the button. We both listen to it hum and tighten while the screen blinks.

152 over 98.

I’m no expert, but I’ve watched her take it enough times to know neither number is where Rao wants it. She sits there another minute with her arm still in the cuff, and then she runs it again.

156 over 100.

"The lamp's got a smear around it," Mackie says. Then, a little after, quietly, "The window does too."

I reach into my shirt pocket. Rao's card has been in there since the thirteenth of July. I put it in my breast pocket every morning. I turn it over and read the back where I copied down what she told me.

Persistent headache. Spots or blurred vision. Swelling of the face or hands. Pain beneath the right ribs.

"Headache that won't quit," I say. "Spots and swelling." I look at her hands, at the fingers gone thick around the knuckles. "That's enough. I'm calling Dr. Rao."

"I hate that you have a list."

"So do I."

I take the card into the kitchen and call the number off the front of it. A nurse picks up. I tell her the readings and the three things, and she says, "Triage, third floor. Don't speed."

"Yes, ma'am."