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"So you overheard our conversation, and when, exactly, were you going to bring this to our attention?"

She looked up at the doctor with innocent eyes. "Sometimes, Doctor, your judgment on what a patient should or should not know may not be correct." She batted her eyelids. "From one professional to another."

"I will always remember you this way, Faye," I cooed. She returned a sweet smile to me.

"Stop encouraging her." He glared at me for a moment, and then turned back to Faye. "I won't go into the fact that a dog won't understand what you're saying if you tell him, 'Well, looks like you have heartworm, and we'll need to get that treated right away.' As one professional, to another, Doctor Whelan, does HIPAA ring any bells?"

"Silver bells?" I swear I heard Doctor Lenard growl. "One, my overhearing things does not make me responsible, and I have not repeated the specific details to anyone, including my own dear Fluffy here." She squeezed my arm. "Two, if you want to go there, I'll ask if neglect to ensure confidentiality of information being disseminated rings any bells. And it's my heart. I know what's happening to my body. I know what I could have done for someone if not for that... thing." She jabbed her finger at the television. "I can be upset. More so considering the details I do know. And other lives that were... just beginning."

"First off, I apologize for the questions they asked you as you were coming in. I heard there were some sore feelings." The ER doctor looked directly at me, though Faye's parents were standing nearby. I had been the only one with her when they took her in. "It's, well... standard but--"

"Faye was the angry one," I interrupted. "I understand. If I had to be suspected for a minute, it doesn't bother me; they were concerned, and the concerns were put to rest. The next case like this that comes through and they're afraid to ask, that will be the creep who beat the woman carrying his child." I waved my hands, looking up at my in-laws. "Unless you want to say a few words, we put that aside?"

Faye's father shook his head. "Just to say, Doctor, if I suspected it, you'd be treating him as well."

The doctor's smile was tight. "We ruled out some factors," he said. "Hypertension, age, short umbilical cord, obviously not addictions, no infections; the ones we're left with are traumatic."

"Or what you found when you went in for the caesarean," I added, not wanting to say the name.

"Well..." he frowned in thought for a moment. "Uterine fibroids -- benign cysts -- are a possible cause, yes. But a cyst on the ovary, not the uterus, I would have to look back in records. The cause is the least of our worries now; I'm just laying this out to give you a little more understanding than a bunch of terms you heard tossed around in the hurry to get the baby out and into treatment. Now, your wife is almost set to come around, and I want you there with her when she is. We need to explain what else we found."

My jaw tensed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my parents hurry into the lobby. "Can you give me a little information on that, Doctor, so I'm prepared? Better I not react for her to feed off of."

"Right. Good thinking. Two things happening at once like this and things start to slip." He looked down at the clipboard. He flipped through a few sheets of paper before bringing out two ultrasound images. "This is from your visit to the regular obstetrician two weeks ago. Nothing seems wrong in this." He handed me the first image. "This one is from the one we took just today, when she came in. We were mainly focused on this area," he said, moving beside me and waving his pen over a spot on the second image. "It was basically taken to confirm the presence of the placental abruption. But move up here, and you will see."

He waved his pen over an odd splotch on the ultrasound. "This isn't the abruption, and it's not the baby. Our focus was on verifying how severe this was, and going from there. It's in retrospect, when we got in to do the c-section and found the growth that we went back and looked. Now, you may have made a point in the fact that it has grown down to the uterus itself that it could have caused it like any fibroid stands the chance of doing. But -- and take this as actually very good news -- the concern with this growth is it was completely absent two weeks ago. It may have been developing on the ovary, just out of the shot, but it has grown. Fast."

My parents were by my side by then, my mother squeezing my shoulder. "It's malignant," she said.

"A biopsy will have to say for sure, but it's got all the marks of a germ-cell cancer," he said. "I can tell you're holding your breath, Mr. Whelan, but stay like that with your wife and it will be good for her. To the good news, now: the tortoise and the hare." He set the clipboard down on his lap and made eye contact again. "Germ-cell cancer is the hare. It grows so fast, it's screaming at you to notice it, as early as possible. The faster you notice cancer, Mr. Whelan..."

"The earlier treatment starts," I completed.

"Precisely," he said. "If you wait here, I'll check on her, and also on your son. We want both of you to have an update on him as well, of course."

I nodded and watched him stand up and take several swift steps to the swinging doors leading into the ICU. I don't often read people as well as Faye, so I brushed off the odd change in his voice whenever he mentioned the status of our son as an illusion of my own fears.

We took the conversation outside this time, though I wondered if our voices would echo across the empty parking lot and somehow come back around to the window I had left ajar so she could hear and maybe talk to the dogs. Doctor Lenard was shaking his head and rubbing his arms. He looked at me and scowled. "She calls you Fluffy because you were always dressed to the neck in layers," he said. "You're not freezing your butt off right now?"

I shrugged. "Wind-chill can get to negative one hundred Fahrenheit on the Iditarod," I said. "I guess you could say I adjusted." I paused for a moment, feeling the bite in the air. "Let's just, you know, make this quick. Adjustment doesn't mean immunity. Doctor, what is the problem? She knows. It's eating her up, but after all the bad news in our lives, do you think we can't get over this?"

"I'll level with you," he said. I mused how that seemed to be his favorite introduction to sentences. "She'll probably take it just like half of the crap that's been thrown at, well, both of you. She actually jokes around about stuff, but won't about this. I admire that about her, what with failing kidneys, a rampant tumor. I can only pray in her place I'd keep her humor."

"Doctor... um..." He looked up at me, arms crossed over his chest. "You... you just rhymed, Doctor."

He studied my face for a moment. "I'd be curious to see you in her place too, you know," he said. "Not wishing it on you, mind you, I just suspect you'd be the same. I'm really jealous."

"Guess it's just a matter of keeping a strong heart."

"Don't make this worse, Conor," he said. The look on his face wiped the half-smile off of mine. "It's the girl -- I mean -- screw it. She's seventeen, Conor. Track meet two years ago, she drops. Her freshman year of high school, and they take her in, say it's dilated cardiomyopathy. Basically, the heart gets weakened and enlarged, and it loses efficiency. They went so far as to implant a defibrillator because of the severity. It stopped making a bit of difference. She came through our own cardiac unit to get that done -- damn, if I knew..."

"Bridger told Custer to be nice to the Sioux, no beating around the bush," I said. "You had... what? A Ouija board to tell you this night would come? 'I will not be ashamed to say "I know not."' I heard that somewhere. Man... Doctor, where did I hear that?"

"Ha-ha," he said. "Well, I haven't said any names yet, so I've got flimsy ground to toss the whole 'respect the privacy of my patients' part back at you. How do you know the Oath?"

I nodded back inside the hospital. "Faye has it on the wall. Yeah, she's a vet, but she has it on the wall. It's right under our wedding picture and right next to a picture of her and the team after their win the third year." I looked up at the sky; there weren't any stars visible. "And don't forget the fact that you're supposed to give special attention to warmth and sympathy."

"And understanding," he added, hopping up and down on his toes. "Speaking of warmth, as a doctor I know we're reaching the point of hypothermia, so let's just go in." He walked through the sliding doors and waited for me to follow. "Suffice it to say, my problem isn't that she knows, it's that I keep getting reminded of the fact that I've lost all power to make something good come out of this night, and who do I have to blame? Mother nature?"

I shook my head. "It's hard, Cory," I said, dropping formality. At this point, it was far too personal. "Hard to feel powerless."

"I wasn't listening in on the whole discussion," the doctor said. "I thought I heard 'Grade 3,' but I wasn't going to dump that on you. Not without confirmation. I gave you the facts I had and left my suspicions out of it. At this point, well, get mad at me if you want. I should have known the severity when you went into shock. He's fighting, that's all I can say now."

"I'm only mad that you'd think I'd kill the messenger," Faye replied, her voice soft either from the drugs or holding back tears. Or both.

"The messenger didn't give the right message," he replied.

"You gave what you knew for certain at the time," I said. "I never heard you blatantly say, right out, 'Your son is going to be just fine.'" I looked towards the incubator. "He's fighting, that's the good news we're going to have to go with."

We had been taken into the room where our son was being treated; they wheeled Faye in on a gurney since she was not going to be walking or even in a wheelchair any time soon. Doctors still hovered nearby, checking instruments and looking poised to take advantage of any improvement in the vital signs, but the feeling of the room was dark and heavy. I didn't want to voice it, and it looked like no one else did, but the truth hung out in the air: we wouldn't have to wait too long to know if he was losing.

It didn't.

Faye had her hand on the incubator, peering through the clear encasement at the tiny figure within. She had just murmured that he had my eyes when I saw a doctor straighten up and walk swiftly over to us. Faye didn't lift her eyes to meet his gaze, but he didn't bother looking at her. His eyes were directly on mine. I was numb, not able to feel anything inside or out, just able to perceive that he whispered in my ear, "Do you want to hold him?"

Numb as I was, my brain was sharp enough to understand that no miracle had suddenly made this little boy so much better that they could remove him. Minutes were left for us to hold him, to look into his eyes, before he was gone. I nodded, trying to cry, feeling horrible that I couldn't. I looked over to Faye, whose eyes were still locked onto our son. Her lips moved, and though I've never learned to read lips, I saw them form one word.

"Goodbye."

We would cry later. Later, I would cry enough to make up for all the times, past and future, that I would hold tears back. This was one of those times. I was back in her room, peering out the window. I hated watching the lights reflect off the clouds, knowing the silent blanket above us was taunting her, and taunting Doctor Lenard with the knowledge that the one glimmer of light this night could bring was being smothered with every passing minute. I looked down at the dogs instead. Baldur was the only one looking up at that moment. It looked like a few of them had dozed off. I just kept looking down, looking into his eyes as Kelly and Faye talked just behind me.

"The last test's results came in," Kelly said, her voice even. Bad sign.

"I'll come right out and ask: hours?" There wasn't even a hint of unsteadiness in Faye's voice.

"Well," Kelly struggled, shuffling the papers. "There's a point, Faye, when the best thing Cory or I can do is wave a plumb-line over the results."

I noticed increased movement out of the corner of my eye and turned. Faye was trying to put one of her pillows on Kelly's head. "No, stay still. Put it on your head, and then hold the report up to your temple. Conor, get ready to say, 'Hey-o!'"

"My prediction is, even if it's a hundred years the world will still lose something irreplaceable," Kelly replied, gently replacing the pillow. "From your condition right now, one would think you're on the mend."

"This is nothing." She settled back. "Usually I can keep it going a lot longer."

My talk with Doctor Lenard had brought back memories of David, our son. Otherwise there wouldn't be a trace of sadness in my smile when I turned back to the window. Baldur still sat there, gazing up at me, his large brown eyes connecting the instant I looked back down. I felt he knew, that he was telling me to be there for her. I lifted my eyes to the clouds again, regretting it the instant my gaze lifted above the treetops. I felt myself missing the northern lights. I blinked, the nostalgia jolting something awake in the back of my mind. Barely aware of my surroundings, I ambled away from the window, gazed at a reporter standing amongst banks of snow in New York City, and sat down. My head swiveled mechanically to Faye.

My eyes started to focus again, and she must have notice me acting odd. She furrowed her brow as my thoughts began to coalesce. We'd been together for over ten years, but it only took a few days for us to be able to tell things about each other. She studied my face for a minute, her eyes boring into mine, as the pieces started falling into place. My eyes darted to the window, and she saw the motion for what it meant. Realization swept onto her face, and warning swept into her voice. "Conor, do I have to make Alfred Noyes write a poem about you?"

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