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After seeing the last patient of the day, a follow-up visit with an engaging thirty-year-old woraft last March, Jonas Nyebern entered his private office at the back of the medical suite and closed the door He went behind the desk, sat down, and looked in his wallet for a slip of paper on which ritten a telephone number that he chose not to include on his Rolodex He found it, pulled the phone close, and punched in the seven nu machine picked up as it had on his previous calls yesterday and earlier that ht now After the beep, please leave a et back to you as soon as possible"

Jonas waited for the signal, then spoke softly "Mr Redlow, this is Dr Nyebern I know I’ve left other es, but I was under the impression that I would receive a report from you last Friday Certainly by the weekend at the latest Please callup

He wondered if he had reason to worry

He wondered if he had any reason not to worry

6

Regina sat at her desk in Sister Mary Margaret’s French class, weary of the smell of chalk dust and annoyed by the hardness of the plastic seat under her butt, learning how to say, Hello, I am an Aht attend Sunday Mass?

Tres boring

She was still a fifth-grade student at St Thomas’s Elementary School, because continued attendance was a strict condition of her adoption (Trial adoption Nothing final yet Could blow up The Harrisons could decide they preferred raising parakeets to children, give her back, get a bird Please, God, ned birds so they poop a lot Make sure they knohat a raduated from St Thomas’s Eleh School, because St Tho In addition to the children’s care home and the two schools, it had a day-care center and a thrift shop The parish was like a conglo executive like Donald Trump, except Father Ji casinos The bingo parlor hardly counted (Dear God, that stuff about birds pooping a lot--that was in no way meant as a criticis birds poop a lot, all over everything, and like the s we ordinary humans can’t ever quite understand No offenseto St Thomas’s School, because both the nuns and the lay teachers pushed you hard, and you ended up learning a lot, and she loved to learn

By the last class on that Tuesday afternoon, however, she was full up with learning, and if Sister Mary Margaret called on her to say anything in French, she would probably confuse the word for church with the word for sehich she had done once before, ht of the other kids and to her own mortification (Dear God, please remember that I made myself say the Rosary as penance for that boner, just to prove I didn’tby it, it was only a , she was the first out of her seat and the first out of the classrooh most of the kids at St Thomas’s School did not come from St Thomas’s Home and were not disabled in any way

All the way to her locker and all the way from her locker to the front exit, she wondered if Mr Harrison would really be waiting for her, as he had pro on the sideith kids swarradually din of his car, and her waiting as the sun set and the ht, and in thewhen the kids returned for another day of school, she’d just go back inside with them and not tell anyone the Harrisons didn’t want her any more

He was there In the red car In a line of cars driven by other kids’ parents He leaned across the seat to open the door for her as she approached

When she got in with her book bag and closed the door, he said, "Hard day?"

"Yeah," she said, suddenly shy when shyness had never been one of herof this faet it

He said, "Those nuns"

"Yeah," she agreed

"They’re tough"

"Tough"

"Tough as nails, those nuns"

"Nails," she said, nodding agree if she would ever be able to speak ain

As he pulled away from the curb, he said, "I’ll bet you could put any nun in the ring with any heavyweight cha--I don’t care if it was even Muhammad Ali--and she’d knock hi at hiht with a real hardcase nun Bate nun could ang of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"

"They mean well," she said, which was three words, at least, but sounded goofy Sheat all; she just didn’t have any experience at this father-kid stuff

"Nuns?" he said "Well, of course, they mean well If they didn’t mean well, they wouldn’t be nuns They’d be maybe Mafia hitressmen"