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within the folds of some flimsy butcher’s paper.
    What—that is disgusting, Constance said. I hope its not human.
    What is it?
    It looks like a liver, said Constance, and she shivered.
    I think it’s a heart, Margie said.
    Throw it away.
    Is it to eat? Margie mumbled.
    Get rid of it, said Constance, walking off.
    Do you think Mother really said that?
    I don’t know. It didn’t really sound … Constance shrugged. Sure, who knows. Maybe.
    Seth and I used to laugh a lot, Margie said.
    She must have been different back then, Constance said.
    Margie peered into the bag.
    Throw it out, Constance said at the end of the hall. It’s sick.
    Really? Margie put her fist around the bag, closing the top. It doesn’t seem that sick to me.
    Where’s my nurse? said Ann Grant Lord.
    She’s in the other room. Do you want me to get her?
    Not that one. The other one, the Irish one.
    She’s off for two days, Margie said.
    Where’d she go?
    Home, Mother. She needed a day off.
    Who’s in there? Ann Lord’s head did not move from the pillow but her eyes narrowed.
    Another one filling in, Constance said. She leaned forward to whisper, I’m not sure her name.
    What?
    Another nurse, Constance said loudly.
    I want the Irish one back.
    Mother, you had a visitor last night, Margie said. Constance and Margie looked at each other.
    Ann Lord looked at her hands on the bedspread.
    His name was John Winter.
    The head against the pillow remained still. The hands did not move. Never heard of him.
    Really? John Winter? He said he danced with you at a wedding.
    I don’t know anyone by that name.
    He knows you.
    Yes, a lot of people say they do.

     
    The line between her dreams and waking life disappeared. She had no idea what day it was. They said it was July. A month had gone by since the last of the tests. A chilling phrase: run some tests. They made her drink poison, poked and prodded, pulled blood out in purple threads, then came Dick Baker’s casual voice, Could she come into the office. She felt like hell, silence on the line. Why don’t I stop by on my way home? he said, in this way telling her. Then the days at the hospital which is no place for sick people. There you blurred into something else in rooms with brown stripes down the halls and plastic under the sheets and curving aluminum bars and windows that didn’t open. People wore crumpled masks and the furniture rolled. She lay under the machine shaped like a bull’s head and needles were taped into place and needles pulled out. Visiting hours were over. In the middle of the night buzzers went off and in the morning when you rolled your I.V. by the next room saw the empty bed with the blank clipboard and no more bald woman named Gwenivere. She had brought her own nightgown not to wear the dreadful tie-things they gave you and always spilled her orange juice peeling off the top. No there was no question of her going back to the hospital.
    There were days when it was true then it was not true then it was true again. After the treatment stopped she felt better then worse then she saw there was nothing to make it better. It quickly got worse. Dinner at the Welds’ they were discussing war with dessert and Ann Lord got up from the table and found an armchair past the pocketdoors where she could still see them talking, she just couldn’t listen anymore. It had come blasting up into her head and she couldn’t hear anything. She tried to push at it with her will but it roared and roared. She was no match for it. Clare Weld came toward her holding a tilting coffee cup. Clare was not an affectionate woman, reserved with her husband and children, so it surprised Ann Lord when she put her coffee cup down, sat on the arm of Ann’s chair and very naturally put a confident arm around herand kissed the top of Ann’s head. Illness brought out surprising things in people.
    She closed her eyes and saw sunlight in squares on the Turkish rug and didn’t know if she was in a dream or not. Then she