“I push the interest, because I can't stop getting hopeful that she'll latch onto something that will so consume her that she can forget, for long, long periods of time, how inherently difficult her life is.”

“I think as I often have that my mission is to layer her world with richness-not facts, but other hearts, desires, stories, a world populated with angels and idiots, and papered with texts that she can enter and live more than one moment at a time.”

“She seems very calm, but that bothers me all the more. I'm horrified that she might be accepting of a life that relegates her to empty corner tables, that my daughter might be making do with a minimum of joy.”

“But I hear that tone in his voice, that calming tone that doctors put on because, after all, they are still part witch, part shaman. Their cutting and chemicals can only do so much, and the rest is a bolstering of the mind and spirit to support what healing the body can manage on its own.”

“But our discussion has soured too much by this point; he will not be persuaded, so he has become insulted. I can see he will soon explode, but I hold his gaze and we both find a short instance of time in which to consider minimally, that we are both human beings with limitations, good intentions, and burdens to bear.”

“She lies there, deflating like a stuck balloon because she knew there would be pain and sometimes, as she's learning so quickly and much too early, we are alone with it. Despite Moms and Dads and all the others who might be hovering nearby, in the end we are alone with it.”

“I am angry at this moment, angry at both of them for electing to walk about hurt and silent rather than having it all out, out in the open where we could deal with it-and angry that I was shut out of it, as if I could only be a little victim and not a full person with ideas and support and love to give.”