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bristle-jawed nurse told us that Dr. Prendergorst — "you'll know him by his eyes, they look like pickled onions" — was expecting us on the eleventh floor.
    We entered the elevator, a steamy box crowded with morose men and women, like a cattle boat bearing war refugees from one zone of chaos to another. I reached out to take Helen's hand. The gesture failed. Oiled by sweat, my fingers slipped from her grasp.
    No one was waiting in the eleventh floor waiting room, a gloomy niche crammed with overstuffed armchairs and steel engravings of famous cancer victims, a gallery stretching as far back in history as Jonathan Swift. Helen gave our names to the receptionist, a spindly young man with flourishing gardens of acne on his cheeks, who promptly got on the intercom and announced our arrival to Prendergorst, adding, "They look pale and scared."
    We sat down. Bestselling self-help books littered the coffee table. You Can Have Somewhat Better Sex . How to Find a Certain Amount of Inner Peace . The Heisenberg Uncertainty Diet . "It's a mean system, isn't it?" the receptionist piped up from behind his desk. "He's in there, you're out here. He seems to matter, you don't. He keeps you waiting — you wait. The whole thing's set up to intimidate you."
    I grunted my agreement. Helen said nothing.
    A door opened. A short, round, onion-eyed man in a white lab coat came out, accompanied by a fiftyish couple — a blobby woman in a shabby beige dress and her equally fat, likewise disheveled husband: rumpled golfing cap, oversized polyester polo shirt, baggy corduroy pants; they looked like a pair of bookends they'd failed to unload at their own garage sale. "There's nothing more I can say," Prendergorst informed them in a low, tepid voice. "A Hickman catheter is our best move at this point."
    "She's our only child," said the wife.
    "Leukemia's a tough one," said Prendergorst.
    "Shouldn't you do more tests?" asked the husband.
    "Medically — no. But if it would make you feel better..." The couple exchanged terse, pained glances. "It wouldn't," said the wife, shambling off.
    "True," said the husband, following.
    A minute later we were in Prendergorst's office, Helen and I seated on metal folding chairs, the doctor positioned regally behind a mammoth desk of inlaid cherry, "Would you like to put some sugar in your brain?" he asked, proferring a box of candy.
    "No, thank you," said Helen tonelessly.
    "I guess the first step is to confirm the diagnosis, right?" I said, snatching up a dark chocolate nugget. I bit through the outer shell. Brandy trickled into my throat.
    "When your son gets back from camp, I'll draw a perfunctory blood sample," said Prendergorst, sliding an open file folder across his desk. Beneath Toby's name, a gruesome photograph of the deceased Hob's hare lay stapled to the inside front cover, its body reduced by the autopsy to a gutted pelt. "The specimen they sent us was absolutely loaded with the virus," said the doctor. "The chances of Toby not being infected are perhaps one in a million." He whisked the file away, slipping it into his top desk drawer. "A rabbit destroying your child, it's all faintly absurd, don't you think? A snake would make more sense, or a black widow spider, even one of those poisonous toads — I can't remember what they're called. But a rabbit..."
    "So what sort of therapy are we looking at?" I asked. "I hope it's not too debilitating."
    "We aren't looking at any therapy, Mr. Sperry. At best, we'll relieve your son's pain until he dies."
    "Toby's only seven," I said, as if I were a lawyer asking a governor to reprieve an underage client. "He's only seven years old."
    "I think I'll sue that damn camp," Helen grunted.
    "You'd lose," said Prendergorst, handing her a stark pamphlet, white letters on black paper: Xavier's Plague and Xavier's-Related Syndrome — The News Is All Bad . "I wish I could remember what those toads are called." Had my brainburn not cured me of sentimentality and schmaltz, had