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yard they've found is a favorite for the residents during the daytiht of the sun take their lunches out here

I aht when Kate speaks "Are you afraid of dying?"

Taylor shakes his head "Not really Soh, I think about s, you know, about me If anyone will cry" He hesitates "If anyone will even come"

"I will," Kate promises

Taylor dips his head toward Kate's, and she sways closer, and I realize that this is why I followed them I knew this hat I would find, and like Brian, I wanted one ht worry between es of her blue hygienic mask and I know I should stop him, I know I have to, but I don't This much I want her to have

When they kiss, it is beautiful: those alabaster heads bent together, se that's folding into itself

When Kate goes into the hospital for her stem cell transplant, she's an emotional wreck She is far less concerned with the runny fluid being infused into her catheter than she is with the fact that Taylor hasn't called her in three days, and has in fact not returned her calls either "Did you have a fight?" I ask, and she shakes her head "Did he say he was going soency," I say "Maybe this has nothing to do with you at all"

"Maybe it does," Kate argues

"Then the best revenge is getting healthy enough to give hiht back"

In the hallway, I approach Steph, a nurse who has just come on duty and who's known Kate for years The truth is, I am just as surprised about Taylor's lack of co in here

"Taylor Ambrose," I ask Steph "Has he been in today?"

She looks at me and blinks

"Big kid, sweet Hung up on hter," I joke

"Oh, SaraI thought for sure so"

I don't tell Kate, not for a h to leave the hospital, until Kate has already convinced herself she was better off without hiin to tell you the words I use; none of theht behind them I mention hoent to Taylor's house and spoke to his mother; how she broke down in my arms and said she'd wanted to call me, but there was a part of her that was so jealous it sed all her speech She toldon air, had walked into her bedrooree fever How one into respiratory distress and then cardiac arrest and after thirty o

I don't tell Kate so else Jenna Ambrose said--that afterward, she went inside and stared at her son, asn't her son any to wake up That even now she hears noise overhead and thinks Taylor is ifted before she re

"Kate," I say, "I'm so sorry"

Kate's face crumples "But I loved hih

"I know"

"And you didn't tell me"

"I couldn't Not when I thought itback, yourself"

She closes her eyes and turns onto her side on the pillow, crying so hard that thein the nursing staff

I reach for her "Kate, honey, I did as best for you"

She refuses to look in ood at that"

Kate stops speaking to me for seven days and eleven hours We coo about our business of reverse isolation; we pick through the ht I lie in bed next to Brian and wonder why he can sleep I stare at the ceiling and think that I have lost one

Then one day I walk by her bedrooraphs all around There are, as I expect, the ones of her and Taylor that we took before the proicalher mouth Taylor has drawn a lipstick smile on it, for the sake of the photos, or so he said

It had h It seems impossible that this boy, as so solid a presence when the flash went off h le word: practice

But there are other photos, too, froer One of Kate and Anna on the beach, crouched over a hermit crab One of Kate dressed up like Mr Peanut for Halloween One of Kate with creael like eyeglasses

In another pile are her baby pictures--all taken when she was three, or younger Gap-toothed and grinning, backlit by a sloe-eyed sun, unaware of as to co her," Kate says quietly, and these first words lass, one that shifts beneath my feet as I step into the room

I put e of one photo Bent at a corner, it shows Kate as a toddler being tossed into the air by Brian, her hair flying behind her, her ars starfish-splayed, certain beyond a doubt that when she fell to earth again, there would be a safe landing, sure that she deserved nothing less

"She was beautiful," Kate adds, and with her pinky she strokes the glossy vivid cheek of the girl none of us ever got to know

JESSE

THE SUMMER I WAS FOURTEEN my parents sent me to boot camp on a farm It was one of those action-adventures for troubled kids, you know, get up at four AM to do the et into? (The answer, if you're interested: score pot off the ranch hands Get stoned Tip cows) Anyway, one day I was assigned to Moses Patrol, or that's e called the poor son of a bitch who pulled herding duty with the lambs I had to follow about a hundred sheep around a pasture that didn't have one goddamned tree to provide even a sliver of shade

To say a sheep is the du aniht in fences They get lost in four-foot-square pens They forget where to find their food, although it's been in the saht And they're not the little puffy darlings you picture when you go to sleep, either They stink They bleat They're annoying as hell

Anyway, the day I was stuck with the sheep, I had filched a copy of Tropic of Cancer and I was folding down the pages that caood porn, when I heard someone scream I was perfectly sure, mind you, that it wasn't an ani like this into find so twisted like a pretzel or souts But lying on the side of the creek, with a bevy of ewes in attendance, was a sheep giving birth

I wasn't a vet or anything, but I knew enough to realize that when any living creatureto plan Sure enough, this poor sheep had two little hooves dangling out of her privates She lay on her side, panting She rolled one flat black eye toward ave up

Well, nothing was dying on my patrol, if only because I knew that the Nazis who ran the camp would make me bury the daot down on rabbed the knotty slick hooves and yanked while the ewe screamed like any mother whose child is ripped away from her

The lamb came out, its limbs folded like the parts of a Swiss Army knife Over its head was a silver sac that felt like the inside of your cheek when you run your tongue around it It wasn't breathing

I sure as shit wasn't going to put my mouth over a sheep and do artificial respiration, but I used ernails to rip apart the skin sac, to yank it down from the neck of the lamb And it turned out, that was all it needed A s and started whickering for its mother

There were, I think, twenty la that summer session Every time I passed the pen I could pick mine out from a crowd He looked like all the others, except that he ; he always see off the oil in its wool And if you happened to get hione n that he'd walked on the other side long enough to re

I tell you this now because when Kate finally stirs in that hospital bed, and opens her eyes, I know she's got one foot on the other side already, too

"Oh my God," Kate says weakly, when she sees me "I wound up in Hell after all"

I lean forward in my chair and cross my ar up, I kiss her on the forehead, letting my lips stay an extra second How is it that mothers can read fever that way? I can only read i?"

She s when I've seen the real thing hanging in the Louvre "Peachy," she says "To what do I owe the honor of your presence?"

Because you won't be here er, I think, but I do not tell her this "I was in the neighborhood Plus there's a really hot nurse orks this shift"

This onna miss you"