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Graduallynearer until I understood that it was soel, ap-peared above , and I felt an incredible urge to put a hand tofro, Where a your for with a nurse Ah, I thought, a clue I was in a hospital bed She was standing to his right, in polyester white, a vestal virgin with a bedpan, her gaze fixed on his perfect features in profile I’d forgotten how cunning he was at that sort of thing While he feigned grave concern forbackith his little sexual net, envel-oping her in a fine web of pheromones I moved my lips and he leaned closer He said, "I think she’s conscious"

"I’ll get the doctor," the nurse said She disappeared

Daniel stroked my hair "What is it, babe? Are you in pain?"

I licked arbled and I wasn’t sure he got the drift I vowed, in that h to throw him out I closed , Olive flying past s askew, as lu with a sodden thump

Olive must be dead There wasn’t any way to mend the parts of her turned inside out by the blast

I re down his face Was he dead, too? I looked at Daniel, wondering how bad it was

Daniel sensed ’s okay You’re in the hospital and Terry’s here, too," he said And after a hesitation, "Olive didn’t o away

I concentrated onthat all of them could be accounted for Many treasured por-tions of ht at first I was in some sort of bed restraint, but it turned out to be an i combination of bruises, whiplash, IV fluids, painkillers, and pressure dressings on the areas where I had suffered burns Given the fact that I’d been standing ten feet away fronificant-contusions and abrasions, mild concussion, su-perficial burns on my extremities I’d been hospitalized primarily for shock

I was still confused about what had happened, but it didn’t take a 160 IQ to figure out that soas explosion More likely a bomb The sound and the impact were both characteristic of low explosives I kno, because I looked it up, that low explosives have velocities of 3,300 feet per second, which is e person tends to move That short trip from Olive’s front porch to the tree base was as close to free flight as I was ever going to get

The doctor cah to ask Daniel to leave the room while she examined me I liked her because she didn’t lapse into a slack-jawed stupor at the sight of hi as a child while she checked ns She must have been in her late thirties, with haphazard hair, no ence She held h ?"

Tears welled up I saw ain, throat raw frootten what it was like to experience the warmth radiated by those who tend the sick I was satu-rated by a tenderness I hadn’t felt since my mother died I don’t take well to helplessness I’ve worked hard in my life to deny neediness, and there I was, unable to sustain any pretense of toughness or coreat relief to lie there in a puddle and give

By the ti s I quizzed her in a foggy way, trying to get a fix on my current state

She toldbeen adht be-fore I re of sirens as the aht above ency Rooned to evaluateit hen I was finally tucked into bed: clean, patched up, pu no pain It was now y, and I discovered belatedly that I was dropping off to sleep without even being aware of it