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"I ondering if we’re worth saving," I say

"What do you round, feel the back of "

"Not nothing What did you entle, curious

"It’s just all these doctors and engineers are looking for an antidote," I say "They’ve been at it for years But is it really worth it? Can we even be fixed?"

Linden is quiet for a while, and just when I’ to condemn me for what I’ve said or, I don’t know, defend the work of his madman father, he squeezes my hand "I’ve asked myself the same question," he says

"Really?" We turn at the same ti to burn, and I look back to the sky

"I thought I was going to die, once," he says "When I was young I had a high fever I reaveexperiravated things"

Vaughn could have been pu any number of his twisted experiments into his son’s veins, for all I trust him, but I don’t say this Linden continues, "For days I was in some halfway land between reality and deliriu, and I couldn’t wake myself up But from someplace far away I could hearme ‘Linden Linden, come back to us Open your eyes’ And I reo back I didn’t know if I wanted to live in a world of certain death Of fevers and night silence, and then I say, "But you came back"

"Yes," he says And then, very quietly, "But that wasn’t h ainst mine Flush

Alive Eventually I realize that I ahtly as he holds on to s, as the world ends around us like falling autuins to swell She’s often bedridden, but she’s louder than ever, according to the attendants

I’ the koi in the pond one afternoon when an attendant co forover to catch his breath "Co for you Soht?" I say To look at him you’d think somebody had died He shakes his head in response

He doesn’t know I think I hand him my ice crea at the elevator with his key card Upstairs I run into her bedroo I will find her coughing blood or fighting to breathe

She’s propped upright on pillows, her toes separated by pieces of foam while the nail polish dries She s cranberry juice

"What’s the

"Tell me a story," she says

"What?"

"You and Jenna are having all the fun without me"

She pouts Her stomach floats in front of her like a little quarter---four months--but what I know and she doesn’t is that Linden does not want to risk losing another baby He will spare no precaution She olf or even swim in the pool, which is heated and treated to repel leaves and insects this tireatest captive here

"What do you do all day?" she asks

"We have lots of fun," I snap, because she worried"We eat cotton candy and somersault in midair on the trampoline Shame you can’t come out"

"What else?" She pats the er "No, wait Tell e like?"

Of course she would think I grew up in an orphanage

That’s all her short life has showed her of the world

I sit cross-legged on her row up in an orphanage," I say "I grew up in a city With et dizzy trying to see the tops of them"

She’s dazzled And so I tell her about the ferries and the toxic fish that are caught and for sport returned to the sea I remove myself from the stories and instead tell her about a pair of twins, a brother and a sister, who grew up in a house where so the piano There were peppermints and parents and bed-tiuely, their ood night

"Are they still there?" she asks rew up," I tell her "But a hurricane came one day, and they were each blown to a different side of the country And now they’ve been separated"