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I get her onto a backboard and strap her down, let them load her onto the ambulance I tip back the bottom of her chin, ready to intubate, but see the little scar she got fro on Jesse's ice skate, and fall apart Red moves me aside and does it instead, then takes her pulse "It's weak, Cap," he says, "but it's there"

He puts in an IV line while I pick up the radio and call in our ETA "Thirteen-year-old female, MVA, severe closed head injury" When the cardiac monitor blanks out, I drop the receiver and start CPR "Get the paddles," I order, and I pull open Anna's shirt, cut through the lace of the bra she wanted so badly but doesn't need Red shocks her, and gets the pulse back, bradycardia with ventricular escape beats

We bag her and put in an IV Paulie screa zone for ambulances and throws open the back doors On the trailer, Anna is irabs my arm, hard "Don't think about it," he says, and he takes the head of Anna's stretcher and rushes her into the ER

They will not let hters dribble in for support One of theet Sara, who arrives frantic "Where is she? What happened?"

"A car accident," I ot there" My eyes fill up Do I tell her that she is not breathing independently? Do I tell her that the EKG flatlined? Do I tell her that I have spent the past fewI did on that call, from the way I crawled over the truck to the e, certain that my emotion compromised what should have been done, what could have been done?

At thatbeing thrown against a wall "Goddaht here!"

He bursts out of the doorway of another trau, li, is at his side Immediately, Campbell's eyes home in on mine "Where's Anna?" he asks

I don't answer, because what the hell can I say And that's all it takes for him to understand "Oh, Jesus," he whispers "Oh God, no"

The doctor cohts a week "Brian," he says soberly, "she's not responding to noxious stimuli"

The sound that co "What does that , Brian?"

"Anna's head hit the ith great force, Mrs Fitzgerald It caused a fatal head injury A respirator is keeping her breathing right now, but she's not showing any indications of neurological activityshe's brain dead I'm sorry," the doctor says "I really am" He hesitates, looks fro you even want to think about right now, but there's a very s you'd like to consider?"

There are stars in the night sky that look brighter than the others, and when you look at the at twins The two stars rotate around each other, so nearly a hundred years to do it They create soelse You ht see a blue star, for example, and realize only later that it has a white dwarf as a coht, by the time you notice the second one, it's really too late

Campbell is the one who actually answers the doctor "I have power of attorney for Anna," he explains, "not her parents" He looks froirl upstairs who needs that kidney"

SARA

IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE there are orphans and s, but there is no word for the parent who loses a child

They bring her back down to us after the donated organs are reo in In the hallway, already, are Jesse and Zanne and Carown close to, and even Julia Rooodbye

Brian and I walk inside, where Anna lies tiny and still on the hospital bed A tube feeds down her throat, a machine breathes for her It is up to us to turn it off I sit down on the edge of the bed and pick up Anna's hand, still warm to the touch, still soft inside mine It turns out that after all these years I have spent anticipating athe sky in with a crayon; there is no language for grief this big "I can't do this," I whisper

Brian comes up behindher body alive What one"

I turn, bury ainst his chest "But she wasn't supposed to," I sob

We hold each other, then, and when I feel brave enough I look back down at the husk that once heldbut a shell There is no energy to the lines of her face; there is a slack absence to her ans that will go to Kate and to other, nameless, second-chance people

"Okay" I take a deep breath I put , flips off the respirator I rub her skin in sht make it easier When the e in her And then I feel it, as her heart stops beating beneath my palm--that tiny loss of rhythm, that hollow calm, that utter loss

EPILOGUE

When along the pavement,

Palpitating flames of life,

People flicker round me,

I forget my bereavement,

The gap in the great constellation,

The place where a star used to be

--D H LAWRENCE,

"Subence"

Kate

2010

THERE SHOULD BE A STATUTE of liht to wake up crying, but only for a er turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork froerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass--if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it That it is okay to one, the e once measured her birthdays

For a long tiht sky Sometimes it was the wink of her eye, sometimes the shape of her profile He insisted that stars were people ere so well loved they were traced in constellations, to live forever Mytian to look for signs--plants that bloos with double yolks, salt spilled in the shape of letters

And an to hate myself It was, of course, all my fault If Anna had never filed that lawsuit, if she hadn't been at the courthouse signing papers with her attorney, she never would have been at that particular intersection at that particularback to haunt her