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BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH - HE KINDLY STOPPED FOR ME -

Charlie Asher walked the earth like an ant walks on the surface of water, as if the slightest h the surface to be sucked to the depths below Blessed with the Beta Male i into the future so heto kill him - him; his wife, Rachel; and noborn Sophie But despite his attention, his paranoia, his ceaseless fretting fronancy stick to the time they wheeled her into recovery at St Francis Memorial, Death slipped in

"She's not breathing," Charlie said

"She's breathing fine," Rachel said, patting the baby's back "Do you want to hold her?"

Charlie had held baby Sophie for a few seconds earlier in the day, and had handed her quickly to a nurse insisting that so He'd done it twice and kept co up with twenty-one

"They act like that's all there is to it Like if the kid has theto be fine What if there are extras? Huh? Extra-credit fingers? What if the kid has a tail?" (Charlie was sure he'd spotted a tail in the six-ram Umbilical indeed! He'd kept a hard copy )

"She doesn't have a tail, Mr Asher," the nurse explained "And it's ten and ten, we've all checked Perhaps you should go hoet some rest "

"I'll still love her, even with her extra finger "

"She's perfectly normal "

"Or toe "

"We really do knoe're doing, Mr Asher She's a beautiful, healthy baby girl "

"Or a tail "

The nurse sighed She was short, wide, and had a tattoo of a snake up her right calf that showed through her white nurse stockings She spent four hours of every workday h ports in a Lucite incubator, like she was handling a radioactive spark in there She talked to them, coaxed them, told the in chests no bigger than a balled-up pair of sweat socks She cried over every one, and believed that her tears and touch poured a bit of her own life into the tiny bodies, which was just fine with her She could spare it She had been a neonatal nurse for twenty years and had never so much as raised her voice to a new father

"There's no goddamn tail, you doofus! Look!" She pulled down the blanket and aiht unleash a fusillade of weapons-grade poopage such as the guileless Beta Male had never seen