526 days, 5 hours, 51 minutes, 50 seconds

Now that she's lost most of her hair, the cranial prosthesis needs to be tightened. They said this would happen. She wears it to breakfast with a friend from out of town. It feels like a big wool hat, and too hot for this 80° day. In between bites of eggs she doesn't usually like finds good today, she's idly tipping it, turning it, adjusting it. God knows what she looks like.

526 days, 7 hours, 11 minutes, 48 seconds

She almost forgot: she can't hold things in her left hand without dropping them. So now Ben's got another chip in his skull. God damn fucking brain surgeon – how appropriate. At least it wasn't the Hummel. At least it wasn't poor Pluto.

527 days, 10 hours, 45 minutes, 58 seconds

Her father tried to interest her in the heavens once. There was a man up in Ventnor with a high-powered telescope who set it out on the street whenever anything interesting was about to happen and invited friends and neighbors to watch along. He tried to interest her tripping over sticks on some mosquito trail to look for birds. He encouraged her to get up at six in the morning to ride bikes on the Boardwalk with him. And of course there were always his flowers.

527 days, 12 hours, 17 minutes, 9.2 seconds

Pluto arrived last week. A paperweight from Glass Eye Studios in Seattle, part of their Celestial series, each piece handcrafted with ashes from when Mount Saint Helens volcano erupted in 1980. But Pluto's been demoted. He's being discontinued next year. Especially at this moment, she feels kinship with what they're now calling a dwarf planet. She saw these paperweights last year and almost bought one for a friend who's always running out to view the stars with binoculars, some of the most beautiful artwork she's seen. Even more exquisite to hold in her hand. And now, greedy child that she is, she woke up this morning anxious to buy another for herself: the Rings of Saturn. The small disk in the center. Black lines swirling around it. Last night's midnight panic. The brain swelling. Movement, her husband says. Health, he calls it. And she wants to hate him. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She didn't even know him in 1980.

530 days, 21 hours, 22 minutes, 38 seconds

What beautiful hair you have, they told her all through childhood. And she thought of Little Red commenting on grandma’s big teeth. That curse. That fear. That mother she didn’t want to look like. Little Red. Now she sees her scalp is red. Or maybe pink. It was white, she always thought. Another illusion biting the rim of the waste basket. Curls so thin she can see through them. She feels as if she’s giving it up too soon – the hair, the anger.

531 days, 13 hours, 32 minutes, 7 seconds

A glucose reading of 88 yesterday morning and again at bedtime. Does this mean she should learn to play the piano? She hasn't written for five days, she sure as hell better do something.

536 days, 4 hours, 3 minutes, 27 seconds

Bush sneers at balding reporter, the headline reads. Nick Robinson from the BBC, who can't vote anyway. They've locked horns before. Such a silly country England is. Judges still locked in debate about whether or not to wear wigs in court.

536 days, 5 hours, 20 minutes, 50 seconds

It's been a long, hot summer. Only the start of August, and already the Madison Ave. topiary's losing its hair. Then again, she's not usually around in the summer. And most summer's it's the last thing she'd notice, but it's like he's waving her over. Or saying stop. Right now. Stop this.

537 days, 9 hours, 52 minutes, 28 seconds

Five days ago the Special Olympics stopped at the White House rose garden and, accompanied by police, had its Flame of Hope relit. The games are global now. Athletes from China were on hand to be photographed. The president and the first lady were there to welcome them (and also be photographed). The president talked about sponsoring the games when he was governor of Texas, and how these intellectually challenged athletes inspired him to forge ahead as well.

537 days, 10 hours, 29 minutes, 1.6 seconds

Everybody brings her flowers. And she's delighted by what people choose. This last bunch has long purple spikes, as if designed for the one pottery vase she has. And she only has this vase because she bought it as a Christmas gift, then chipped it. When she was in the hospital her parents bought her a huge bouquet on the street, not stopping to think there wouldn't be a vase. But that was Sinai, sixteen years ago. Her mother was alive. Her father still spent hours tending his rose bushes. Hour after hour after hour.

And here she is, a teenager yet again. Her favorite song is Bobby Darin's "Artificial Flowers." She writes rhymed poems about crying clowns and dead roses.

538 days, 13 hours, 50 minutes, 28.7 seconds

There's soap caked up under her wedding ring.

538 days, 22 hours, 24 minutes, 11 seconds

Lying in bed while she's backing up her computer, he tells her of the first time he tried to shop online. It was at a place called the Screwball Mall, and he wanted to buy her a present. He thought it would be appropriate. But he couldn't figure out how to put in his credit card. It was sort of a porn place, he says, drifting off to sleep.

539 days, 13 hours, 8 minutes, 38 seconds

She looks at a photo of Hillary Rodham in 1969: long straight brown hair (possibly dirty), striped pants, shapeless tunic, large glasses. This she can relate to. Yesterday all the Washington Post could talk about was the v-neck blouse showing her cleavage. See, she tells her husband: this is why she doesn't like to walk on Amsterdam Ave.

540 days, 5 hours, 18 minutes, 58 seconds

Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's being in the city all summer, around more people than usual. Maybe it's her skin all broken out. But she's been thinking of summer camp. How, when she was seven or eight, she scratched mosquito bites to the point where her legs were covered in sores. Horrified, her parents dragged her to the doctor. "See that, now you won't be able to go swimming," they told her. They knew she couldn't swim. They might or might not have known about the buddy system, how always two people had to stay together, and no one wanted to stay with her in the shallow water.

That's when the scratching habit started.

Just last night she was recounting the horrors of sleep-away camp, when a message would come over the loudspeaker every morning telling the kids how to dress, and counselors would yell at her for not putting shorts on. Then today she reads of a Shanghai company asking workers to wear shorts and tee-shirts to work to help save energy. Sitting a foot from the air conditioner replaced two years ago, she breaks out in chicken bumps. This is as bad as it was in the doctor's office when they tried to show her how to give herself insulin. She couldn't. Wouldn't. Won't.

And steroids, of course, would cure the rash.

Most years, in May, when anorexic women in the city wear less clothing, she walks around feeling ugly. Then, in June, she goes upstate, sees fat women with dirty hair and baby carriages in the supermarket, and starts to feel good about herself. But she's locked in the city this year. Maybe that's what depresses her.

540 days, 9 hours, 0 minutes, 50 seconds

Isolated thunderstorms predicted. The temperature's dropped eight degrees in the last twenty minutes. Thunder and lightning seem almost on top of each other. Her husband picks up an umbrella and heads for the coffee shop. She nibbles at a block of Jarlsburg the same color as that soap.

540 days, 11 hours, 38 minutes, 45 seconds

In a fit of anger, anxious to wash off whatever might be rash, this is what she does to a perfectly normal and reasonably new cake of soap.

There was other soap once, actually two small pieces stuck together. A friend called her into the bathroom to see how the two pieces, untouched by her, had formed a perfect heart. It was the week before her anniversary, two years ago now. Maybe three. She set the soap dish against the black background of her desk, and took a picture then, too.

The heart is a muscle.

540 days, 23 hours, 6 minutes, 4.6 seconds

Cheney Has Successful Heart Surgery, the headline reads. And photos show he and his wife waving to reporters as they leave the hospital. Old news by now, but her head was hurting too much today to read the papers. Cheney's had four heart attacks, a quadruple bypass, two angioplasties, and an operation six years ago to implant the defibrillator. If it senses an abnormal heart rhythm, this little box will deliver an electronic shock to the vice president's heart. Now they've replaced the defibrillator. The battery, they say, had gotten so low he was dangerous.

540 days, 23 hours, 57 minutes, 42 seconds

Monkey see, monkey do. Come look at the monkey face.

No. They say it's a wooden toe. Found on a mummy from around 700 BC. Found on a woman mummy. Found on a woman between 50 and 60 years old. It shows signs of wear, they say. It might be more than a burial adornment.

Look at the way the wood's worn down. Notice the hollow eyes, the flattened nose, the mouth grimacing in pain, the swollen cheek. This might be the world's oldest prosthesis. The question is: can a woman walk on this? Volunteers are needed.

542 days, 23 hours, 25 minutes, 35 seconds

In a Rhode Island nursing home (he's from Rhode Island) there's a cat named Oscar (her second boss was named Oscar). Some mornings he'll walk around sniffing at people, then choose one person and curl up beside them. Within a few hours, the person's passed away. This has happened twenty-five times now. It's gotten so the staff will notify the family, even if the patient shows no change. Oscar made headlines in a medical journal, he purred on the TV news.

He asked if she wanted a cat to keep her company…

543 days, 6 hours, 15 minutes, 21 seconds

Really, she understands. When everyone else in this office is a twenty-something Upper East Side single (or thirty-something and Botoxed in this very office) with long flowing hair and a cheery smile, even the doctor with the frizzy hair and backwards baseball cap isn't anxious to look at her.

544 days, 14 hours, 14 minutes, 35.2 seconds

Another day, another dollar. Don't make her sick. The only way to work with clichés, she's told students again and again, is to get inside and transform them. Another day, another pain, pimple, wrinkle, loose hair, fear, doubt, kiss, back scratch, grain of salt, tooth brushed. 544 days. The nightmare will soon be over.

545 days, 10 hours, 55 minutes, 41 seconds

Wrong again. Which doesn't make her feel any better.

545 days, 11 hours, 31 minutes, 45 seconds

In the doctor's office. She waits for a blood test. She waits for an iron shot. No way in hell she isn't anemic. Shades of her toddlerhood. She looks around the waiting room, but there are no toys here.

545 days, 12 hours, 34 minutes, 38 seconds

31 minutes. Cheney's claim to fame. 31 minutes when he could have pressed a button, picked up a phone, and changed the world as we know it. But, president or not, they kept him out of Washington.

She had her first colonoscopy in 1970. She was twenty-one years old. Used to be, they didn't put you out completely. But the world was different then. There were only steroids to treat colitis. Sedation and the IV were the only things she feared. She, of the round face.

She read an article last summer about how a hospital ran out of colonoscopy scopes, patients prepped and waiting. But even tricky Dick didn't think of that as his hunting ground. Thirty-one minutes, five polyps, none of them malignant. Damn. But she supposes he'll get used to this.

545 days, 12 hours, 55 minutes, 28 seconds

Sixty-six degrees at ten a.m., but going up to eighty. She wears the tie-dye shirt with buttons down the front, the men's shirt, buttons going the wrong way. It's her favorite tee-shirt.

This is the shirt she wore to Philadelphia.

It's a short-sleeve shirt. A no-no, except around the house. But today, with blood tests and probably an iron shot, it will just make things simpler if she doesn't have to undress. And with her face broken out the way it's been since yesterday, she supposes glares won't be drawn to the scars on her arms.

This is the shirt she wore to Philadelphia. It was the same summer she bought the shirt (she'd tried it on the summer before, but it was too small then). Luckily, she lost weight. Luckily, the store still had it. She wore it to Jefferson Clinic in Philadelphia where her father was being tested for Alzheimer's. They'd all been so worried, but it was just an improper use of medication. He was so scared he'd have let them shoot his veins full of poison if they promised it would help. Might help.

546 days, 14 hours, 30 minutes, 37 seconds

Another bad hair day.

She wakes to the steady sound of rain, her head telling her it's foggy even before she sees. The sheets are drenched. Even at 10:30 this morning, cabs might be hard to come by. There were days not that long ago when she might have walked this. Meeting a friend, shopping for a cranial prosthesis. As if she wanted this. Still, her first shopping trip in months, unless you count the shoes. She thought she'd be walking more.

Another bad hair day, but at least she's prepared this time. A thin designer raincoat won in silent auction at a craft show, a Nova Scotia fisherman's cap, the only thing salvaged from that dreadful trip after the first cancer.

548 days, 23 hours, 58 minutes, 57.8 seconds

At almost this very second, the final Harry Potter is going on sale. People have been lining up for two days. It's not that she never paid attention, but the magic seemed to fail her by the start of Book Three. Instead, earlier tonight, without giving it much thought, she ordered chicken for dinner then lemon verbena sorbet for desert. She didn't know what verbena was, just felt her throat parched, didn't want blueberry sorbet. It came out green. Some mint, she guessed? Obviously an herb. All herbs have healing powers. She sticks her finger in to absorb the last drops. She looks in Wikipedia. Verbena was used to heal Jesus' wounds when he was taken down from the Cross, she reads. It protects from vampires.

549 days, 11 hours, 7 minutes, 46 seconds

She checks the "day of your death clock" again, though still refuses to list herself as pessimistic. Saturday, February 13, 2027. At first she thinks it hasn't changed, then rechecks her notes and sees it's cut off exactly one year. But there's still the twenty years she's promised him. This thing is bullshit.

549 days, 11 hours, 39 minutes, 37 seconds

From today's Times – a headline on how airlines will now permit the small, disposable cigarette lighters on flights. Had Richard Reid used a lighter instead of matches that bomb might have ignited , but what's done is done. Can't live in fear of the past forever. And trying to confiscate lighters (and small scissors, and screwdrivers) trivializes the security process. Small batteries can set off bombs also. She thinks of her husband, traveling with a walkman, an mp3 player, and a cd player, never knowing what he'll want, or need. She thinks of their first years together, when he still smoked, pushed to the back of the plane. Always the last to board and exit. But he'd never think to harm anyone.

549 days, 11 hours, 46 minutes, 6.9 seconds

Her father calls. Glad she answered the phone. There's something he wants to send her and he can't find her address. No, not another medical article, not another piece on the stock market – it's an article on someone she was mildly friendly with 40 years ago. He writes down her address again. He's glad she answered the phone, that she still has the same phone number. He thought she might have moved.

549 days, 12 hours, 31 minutes, 17 seconds

Of course Hairy's deflated. He's on chemo. She's losing weight, too – ten pounds over the past two months. She'd been trying for years to accomplish this. And she's still ten pounds over what she was when she met him.

551 days, 8 hours, 31 minutes, 40 seconds

551 days, 13 hours, 42 minutes, 19 seconds

Au Bon Pain. Pain, he calls it. Bread, she corrects him. There's no such thing as good pain. A chain in every airport, and he hates chains. But she can always find something to eat here, and he finally admits he likes the bread. Just a block from their favorite computer and music store, convenient on Saturdays when most of that area's locked down. Pain. The bone pain. The shot yesterday to get her white blood cells moving again. Like there's a ghost inside her.

551 days, 23 hours, 1 minutes, 9.2 seconds

If he's asleep already (without any pills tonight), and she takes a shower, and she borrows his nail clippers, as she's done so many times this passt year, does that mean she's trying to cut herself off from him? And then what?

551 days, 23 hours, 25 minutes, 29.7 seconds

The kitchen faucet drips. Few sounds, if any, drive her so crazy. And this time her husband doesn't even hear it. But this was earlier tonight. His brother was visiting. He's probably the one who left the faucets on. Both of them. Hot and cold. Luke warm. And he came all this way to see her.

Elsewhere in this city, there are office buildings hauling in tanks of ice, storing four floors of ice to take the place of air conditioning during the height of the summer. Or at least pump it through the building so the energy won't be taxed as much. And in New Orleans, two years after Katrina, they're finally melting down tons of stored ice FEMA thought they'd be needing. No other locality would take it off their hands. Drip. Drip. Even this far off she can hear it.

552 days, 13 hours, 31 minutes, 8.2 seconds

Mayor Bloomberg's plan to charge traffic coming into Manhattan has been rejected without even a vote, without much discussion. Clear to some this was Bloomberg testing the waters of national attention, feeling out a run for president. But he's probably too short to be president anyway. Maybe next year they can vote on a modified plan proposed by Sheldon Silver, after the MTA has announced its expansion plans. This 90 degree heatwave won't continue forever. Not that many people walking in midtown will be overcome by fumes in the meantime. Easier to jump in front of a train, when you come right down to it.

553 days, 11 hours, 31 minutes, 32 seconds

She’s been fat, crazy, scared, uncoordinated, uncooperative, antisocial, insecure, agoraphobic, angry, depressed, reclusive, nauseous, an insomniac, weird, wired, clumsy, self-centered, a hypochondriac, vindictive, respected, eccentric, greedy, a drop-out, pessimistic, befriended, anorexic, exhausted, bored, shy, frustrated, ambitious, competitive, happy, uncertain, nervous, hysterical, gullible, over-medicated, restless, immature, optimistic, sick, mad, worried, ungrateful, boastful, a good driver, ultra-responsible, ignored, cherished, a picky eater, loving, small for her age, ugly, disgusted, lucky, a dreamer, loved, terrified, jealous, a workaholic, preoccupied, teased, an outcast, hot, shivering, frigid, lonely. But she’s never thought of herself as a drip before.

553 days, 12 hours, 8 minutes, 2 seconds

Today’s the deadline for getting senate approval for Mayor Bloomberg’s plan for charging cars and trucks coming into Manhattan below 86th St., If he wants to tap into five million dollars of federal funding. He says it will encourage people to take subways and buses. He says it will reduce congestion and pollution. He says we’ll all be healthier.

553 days, 13 hours, 5 minutes, 37 seconds

She’s starting to notice the art in doctors’ offices. Her neurologist with paintings by his wife and landscape photos he took up in Westchester near where he lives. Mostly it’s generic, though. Reproductions of masterworks, often flowers. Announcements for exhibitions. Here though, over the desk, right across from where she’s sitting, beside the black phone on the wall, is a photograph. Shades of a veined green leaf, enlarged out of proportion, blurred, with a caterpillar-like insect attached to it. One eye looks straight at her. He looks like something her father used to kill.

553 days, 13 hours, 16 minutes, 47 seconds

IV in, blood out. Squirting all over the opposite leg of his pants. She means all over. This is not her. It happened to her husband once, though. In the emergency room at St. Vincent’s, the night he sliced his finger. Something he’d rested it on at Second Ave. Deli (closed now, after over fifty years). There’d been a rush of activity that same night, after a woman drove her Mercedes out of a garage and into the crowded restaurant across the street. So they came to stitch him up two hours later and still he squirted. Even the technician jumped back.

553 days, 14 hours, 11 minutes, 12 seconds

Short sleeves (displaying scarred arms) or long sleeves (hot as hell, having to be rolled up)? Dressy or casual? And just how casual. As always there’s the question of what to wear. As if she’s meeting a lover here.

553 days, 22 hours, 20 minutes, 36 seconds

Pretend it’s the night before childbirth. Your first child. A C-section. A few hours’ pain. Twenty years of pain. Pretend.

554 days, 8 hours, 6 minutes, 24 seconds

Seems like Hairy's not the only one.

So okay, time to come out of herself, time to look around her. In the coffee shop, two mothers (maybe sisters), one fat, one thin, with two boys, one fat, one thin, the fat one maybe ten years old. Old enough to be civilized. They've got skates on, no, those sneakers with wheels in the heels (meals on wheels, she thinks). They go sliding up and down the aisles, the mothers doing nothing to stop them. Then they go outside, staying within the mothers' field of view, skating into guardrails, swinging from guardrails, running in and out the emergency exit, pounding on the windows. The fat mother orders French fries and couldn't care less.

And the other day, in front of the Whitney, she saw all the paparazzi in wait. Amateurs, mostly. And some blonde haired woman came out with a fat old man who couldn't protect her and they started flashing. And she darted back in. And he came out alone and got a cab and they flashed again, trailing the cab down the street, trying to peer in the windows. She has no idea who the woman was. Probably someone connected with the "summer of love" show now at the museum. She has no idea what the show might be. It was her first summer back from vegetation, and she couldn't have cared less about whatever love might be.

Aren't you ashamed of yourself? the immigrant fruit vendor chided one of the photographers, kneeling by his stand, packing up his camera.

557 days, 8 hours, 16 minutes, 32 seconds

Hairy's deflated.

557 days, 8 hours, 39 minutes, 11 seconds

558 days, 22 hours, 40 minutes, 6.3 seconds

Tonight again, like so many nights over the past two weeks, he tries to get to bed as close to midnight as possible, knowing he might get a call from London at 3:00 a.m., when the stock market opens there. His program for the Futures is fucking up.

560 days, 8 hours, 57 minutes, 6.8 seconds

She's not going to find many cigarette butts next to flowers if she looks in parks, she realizes. In parks they work hard to protect the flowers.

560 days, 9 hours, 11 minutes, 44 seconds

It's so hot even the pigeons in the park across from the hospital are lying down, some on the parched grass, some on the cooler concrete posts of benches. Sitting ducks, she'd call them, if she hadn't already killed the ducks.

560 days, 9 hours, 47 minutes, 15 seconds

She can't get the image of musical chairs out of her mind. Four chairs. Four IV poles. The small room with not much space to run around in. The blanket on every chair. Set to cover the body, she supposes. She didn't have to fight for a chair this time, but by next month, who knows?

The record player's scratchy needle. The boy with pointed finger. Bang, bang. You're dead. And she can't get up till he tells her to.

Then there was the musical chairs of all those childhood parties. At least the ones she was invited to, along with the diabetic girl who wore two hearing aids and the sweet retard who was her doctor's daughter.

560 days, 10 hours, 4 minutes, 39 seconds

This isn't the Bush League, she has to remind herself. These are doctors at the top of their game. NYC will soon be back at the top of its game again. The Amazin' Mets. The Bronx Bombers... Shit. She covers her head in terror of the explosion. She runs to hide under the nearest desk, but there's a waste basket and paper shredder there already.

560 days, 12 hours, 40 minutes, 58 seconds

81 degrees when she wakes up, going up to 95 today (if you believe the underground weather site), 97 if you believe last night's tv. Last night they slept with the air conditioner on, something they haven't done since 1991, the last July she spent in the city. She was trying so hard, for his sake, to make it through the heat. Then, at about two o'clock, they gave up, shut the windows, put the air on, slept. It was probably not more than an hour later that someone jumped (or was pushed) out a window on the fourteenth floor. Because of her he missed all the action.

561 days, 8 hours, 33 minutes, 45 seconds

She had a cat once. They hated each other. Still , she kept it until the week she moved in with him. Nearly sixteen years. He loved a cat once. It was in the barn, and every morning it would be there by the door, just waiting for him to pet it. He was too young to know it was dead. Every weekend, the pet shop two blocks away holds pet adoptions, and every weekend she stops to peer in the cages, and every weekend he has to hurry her along. Now he asks if she wants a cat, to keep her company while he's at work. He has to get back to work. She says it would probably grow to hate her. He says there's always the compactor. She looks out the window.

562 days, 10 hours, 55 minutes, 35 seconds

She was headed somewhere else with that focus on the recliner, but her husband intruded (husbands always intrude). She was headed for the doctor's office once again, for the little room in the back with its own restroom, the wastebasket filled high with snack wrappers – potato chips, corn chips, all the rest of the gunk parents today say isn't good for their children. That little room with a VCR, personal DVD players, and four recliners. That's where she was headed. Is headed.

562 days, 11 hours, 51 minutes, 45 seconds

July 7, 2007. 7-7-7. This was supposed to be his lucky day. He was supposed to have flown from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. He looked forward to slot machines. He thought maybe he'd play some craps. If he had the time, he'd study more about poker and hit the tables there. Maybe he'd just walk around the strip, find a place outside where he could eat lunch and dinner. It's going up to 116 in Las Vegas today. He would have been so happy just to be there.

562 days, 12 hours, 4 minutes, 21 seconds

A poem she wrote a few months ago is up on the Internet today: "Recliner saves man who was shot in head." He was shot by his wife.

A recliner was what her parents bought her when they realized she was going to be doing nothing but sit in her room reading all day. They'd taken out the other twin bed, giving up on her having friends over. It was a green recliner, and she used it every day all day until she left their house.

The next time she had a recliner was over fifteen years later, when she moved into his apartment. They'd sit there and cuddle, like they did in bed this morning. He'd been up for hours. She'd been lying there awake, not wanting to get up, not wanting to start the day. But her cough gave her away, and he was there a moment later, fully dressed, cuddling her, tears welling up in his eyes. She could hear them.

564 days, 1 hours, 1 minutes, 17 seconds

He gives her a hug. He pulls her hair.

564 days, 1 hours, 54 minutes, 19.8 seconds

It's hot and humid, but she wraps a thick scarf around her neck to hide the bandage, just in case they run into someone from their building. She walks on the wrong side of the street, past the guys hanging out there: she'd forgotten. If one of them should attack, or even reach out to her breast, like they did once, she can't run. She thinks of maybe grabbing a cab to a better restaurant, then remembers she's wearing short sleeves and all the scratches on her arms will be visible.

She can envision herself becoming agoraphobic once again.

This is all the wig's fault.

Freshman year of high school. She thought if her hair just wasn't so curly, if she looked more like the other kids, she'd have more friends. The wig, expensive at the time, a brown just a little redder than her own hair, was set in a perfect flip. She doesn't recall now if she ever wore it or not, but by the next year she'd quit school. She kept the blinds drawn in the house, didn't want to be seen.

And tomorrow she's off to buy a wig again. This one will be different, she tells herself. Closer to her own hair. Finally she likes her own hair. She might even bring in a photo of what she wants, and not some model's photo. Doctor's orders. Courtesy of Blue Cross.

George Bush bursts out laughing, then lies more about Medicare. He doesn't understand the costumes yet.

565 days, 1 hours, 30 minutes, 47 seconds

Setback, she says, thinking of the end of daylight savings time. How easy it was to turn that little wheel in the back ahead sn hour, but how it only turns one way. Turning that small wheel with large fingers, going ahead eleven hours. It's ridiculous. And the chiming anniversary clock downstairs, how they have to make the chimes match, and how it's sometimes well into winter before they get it right.

566 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes, 35 seconds

July 3rd. Two a.m. She was supposed to be in California celebrating her uncle's birthday tomorrow. Ninety years old; in much better shape than her father's in. Sh's jealous.

566 days, 22 hours, 28 minutes, 37 seconds

The surgery got started very late. Then the nodes exploded. She spends the night, then goes home painless. Unless you count the migraine.

567 days, 13 hours, 22 minutes, 10.9 seconds

CNN is on in the patient waiting room. She looks at the set through the translucence of another patient's IV bag. News of the terrorist bombings in Glasgow and London.

CNN discloses that there were two doctors possibly involved in the Glasgow attacks. And possibly this will uncover a whole network of professionals. She thinks of her doctor. Of her father. How at least her father's concern for her has taken the focus off his own pain. As long as he remembers

567 days, 15 hours, 36 minutes, 7 seconds

Her father, in the hospital, telling every doctor how wonderful he is. Her father, at home, throwing out all the business cards. All these doctors saying come see them for follow-up. All they want is money. And he doesn't want to see any doctor who isn't American.

Her grandmother in the hospital, in a room the size of a closet (the size of her last apartment), but a private room, watched television well into Jack Paar and beyond. The nurses would come in and watch with her. She loved the nurses. Then she started to feel better.

567 days, 15 hours, 37 minutes, 32 seconds

Rots of Ruck.

567 days, 15 hours, 45 minutes, 38 seconds

The moon's been chasing her around all week. She woke at dawn to see the pale white disk between her and the other side of the building, still a full circle, pale, all the light drained out of it. The moon, a tumor.

567 days, 15 hours, 50 minutes, 30.3 seconds

Seven. Lucky Seven. She starts part seven the second day of the seventh month. On many slot machines, even one seven pays. Then she sees 567 days, so that's the third seven. When did these sections start coinciding with the months? It doesn't matter. What she needs is luck today.

570 days, 11 hours, 35 minutes, 28 seconds

She washes her hair with Suave Kids' Dragon Fruit shampoo. All she could find up here. And she thinks of Dungeons and Dragons. All the roles we play. And she thinks of the museum last week – was it just a week ago? It was exactly a week ago. – how she looked at the unicorns and mermaids but skipped the dragons. Still confusing dragons with dinosaurs, boys' toys. And this is, she supposes, a shampoo for little boys, nothing like she expected, her hair wild, sticking out every direction. For all types of hair, they said. And she believed them.

570 days, 11 hours, 37 minutes, 27 seconds

Yesterday, she swears, the Backwards Bush site headlined The End of an Error. Today that's gone again.

570 days, 11 hours, 47 minutes, 32.5 seconds

Devil, be gone! In Borders yesterday, she found a George Bush voodoo doll – he stuck it to you, now you stick it to him! She was on the verge of buying it until she noticed, two shelves up, a Hillary Clinton voodoo doll. Nothing but a slick marketing gimmick.

She thinks of one of her students, a former teacher. The assignment was to write about dolls and stuffed animals, and he wrote about the voodoo doll students made of him. Still haunted by it.

They say be careful where you stick the pins. The curse can cycle back to you.

She bought her own voodoo doll, years ago, when his mother was still alive, from the Voodoo Museum in New Orleans. Or a voodoo doll kit, rather. It was a white doll in a blue robe, used for healing. And she thought to set up a shrine around her headaches, to protect herself from headaches, but she never did. She could always see past headache pain when she needed to.

570 days, 12 hours, 1 minutes, 14 seconds

She's up here pretending this is a normal summer. The temperature down to 54 last night. And when she just looked at the thermometer in the kitchen window, it was 666. Devil, be gone! It was 62.5 outside her bedroom, shaded by the porch.

She remembers fights with him other mornings like this, other summers – her refusing to put on the heat with the windows open. But that was when his mother was still alive. That was before she bought the new windows.

571 days, 21 hours, 45 minutes, 28 seconds

She turns out all the lights, goes out on the porch to see the full moon, sits down just in time to watch the orange disk fade behind the overgrown lilacs. She stays there counting the fireflies. Standing up, she can see the top third of the moon again.

572 days, 5 hours, 31 minutes, 57 seconds

Riddled. It sounds like a child's guessing game.

572 days, 5 hours, 53 minutes, 43.2 seconds

Unable to stay awake, despite a nap after lunch (naps are for two-year-olds). She snacks on grapes (screw the diabetes) then grabs her second iced tea of the day (screw the headaches). Actually it's diet Lipton white tea with raspberry flavoring. And quite possibly less caffeine than regular tea (last summer she was drinking green tea, thinking it had more caffeine, not less). She thinks of afternoons like this, thirty-five years ago, when a friend who lived nearby often stopped over on his way home, and she'd make tea, and they'd sit and talk. Like old women, she thinks now. She was maybe twenty-five. She experimented with different teas back in those days – black teas, flavored teas, herbal. He taught her how to boil mu tea. He glued a leg of her table that had come loose. Then he left town. Then he died of cancer. His body riddled with it. Actually living years longer than anyone expected.

572 days, 12 hours, 48 minutes, 37 seconds

She turns to each day's news, especially now, to move the focus away from her petty aches and pains. Mostly the news is political. Bush, at least, gives her a good laugh. But today she's buried her head in another story: Florida Man Wakes Up With Headache, Later Finds Bullet in Head. It was 4:30 a.m when he woke in agony. His wife drove him to the hospital. When they found the bullet they immediately thought it was a stray, rare in his upscale neighborhood. His wife drove home to see if she could find a hole in the wall where it entered. Doctors said the bullet had been shot at close range. She claimed it was an accident.

And here she is, in her country house, alone, for this week between surgeries. She thinks of her husband taking off work for every doctor. Her husband waking at three a.m., four a.m., five a.m. just to hold her. Her husband not wanting to leave her side. Not wanting her to leave him.

So much for getting away.

574 days, 0 hours, 23 minutes, 49 seconds

One more weak week. Then the cycle begins again. The moon three days the other side of full by then.

574 days, 12 hours, 46 minutes, 33 seconds

Enter the elevator of any NYC hospital and see all these bobbing black heads. Men who haven't worn their yamalkas since they were thirteen have found them deep in some closet. They smell of mothballs. Another man in the waiting room alternately cleans his glasses and fingers a rosary. Her husband, up since 3:00 a.m. with a crisis at work, naps beside her.

576 days, 23 hours, 6 minutes, 24 seconds

He reminds her that a year ago she was making herself sick over her dead computer. As of tonight, the new one's out of warranty. Six weeks ago, his biggest worry was the refrigerator making strange noises. The lemon law's expired. There are no guarantees.

577 days, 1 hours, 13 minutes, 56 seconds

One nut. Or is it a bolt? Like a lightning bolt. It's a nut. It came loose when they were unscrewing her head brace, fell into her bra, she thought, but she couldn't find it. No, she isn't nuts. At home later, undressing, it falls on the floor. She has only one hand to pick it up with. She put it on her desk, she thought. Or in her pocket. A week later she finds it on the bathroom floor.

577 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes, 17 seconds

She stands behind a pregnant woman in line to see the Mythological Creatures show at the Museum of Natural History.

580 days, 1 hours, 44 minutes, 35.6 seconds

The Ben Casey bobble head est arrivé. Her E-bay special. He takes his place on the one shelf devoted to figurines – Dopey with his cymbal still on the shelf beside him, three dachshunds (one pewter bought at a craft fair; one a Hummel sitting and looking at a book with a little girl, bow in hair, that her husband bought her in Sweden; one sitting up and begging who looks exactly like Peanut did, down to the bone jutting out of his chest). Further back on this same shelf – a pottery mask sculpture made by her closest friend and a deconstructed Ginny Doll, arms and legs pulled off the torso, groping in all directions from that wire basket she's tossed them in. Ben's not perfect either, you know. There's a chip out of his shoulder, another three chips out of the base of his skull, none of which can be seen from the front. She finds this appropriate.

581 days, 0 hours, 31 minutes, 52 seconds

Now he says she should have saved the duck. If she didn't want it she could have given it to the whining child at the next table in Brooklyn Diner, where a hot dog costs $15.95. It strikes her as a long way from Brooklyn.

She thinks of Dick Cheney, wonders what the difference is between duck and grouse. Last spring a duck lay nine eggs in a pile of mulch next to the Treasury Department. One duck (named Duck Cheney) and nine eggs, guarded by the Secret Service.

581 days, 5 hours, 9 minutes, 46 seconds

Once a dead duck, always a dead duck. Three ducks dead beside her pond, then more fish than she could count. Only frogs and mosquitoes survive. This summer it hardly matters.

581 days, 5 hours, 39 minutes, 35 seconds

The taxi to Town Hall (where she doesn't really want to go) almost doesn't see her and starts to turn the corner, then backs out. She slides the door open to see a white stuffed animal (duck, she thinks) with a red head and yellow bill. She's nauseous but keeps writing. She's sick. Animals offer comfort. Does she have any right to this?

581 days, 9 hours, 34 minutes, 38 seconds

She drops everything.

584 days, 13 hours, 38 minutes, 46 seconds

Her cousin sends flowers, accidentally, twice. Her husband sends a mermaid.

584 days, 14 hours, 21 minutes, 7 seconds

On the news the other night, photos of a very special high school graduation: from Sloan Kettering. Patients with volunteer tutors to help them keep up with classes they'd previously attended. Fifteen this year, clad in bright purple robes, some using canes, at least one dragging an IV pole along. They seem happy here, but she wonders how many return to their former schools during remissions or on breaks between surgeries. How many are in special ed. How many are taunted by classmates. On the way home from Columbia Presbyterian two days ago, they passed the New York State Psychiatric Hospital. She almost went to school there.

585 days, 23 hours, 52 minutes, 17.8 seconds

A colander, she thinks, never certain if that o is long or short. The silver pot for draining pasta. All the holes for water to run out. Drianing vegetables, but she never cooks fresh vegetable and never thinks to wash salad. Years ago she gave her friend a beautifully crafted pottery colander as a gift, then found a similar one for herself at a yard sale. Better than aluminum. Better than plastic. It sits centered on her table, sometimes holding fruit. But none so polished as this one. Probably glows in the dark. 201 very precise holes, the nurse explains, testing her head for the size of it. And she thinks of children growing up in the 50s, glued to the tv, Vic Morrow starring in Combat, handsome Vic Morrow, years before Dr. Kildare. One of tv's good guys. Troops of children prowling the backyards after school, colanders upside down over their pony tails.

586 days, 17 hours, 22 minutes, 34.3 seconds

They use a scissors to pin the top of her gown together. Cut throat, cut rate, the cutting edge. Don't move, a man tells a woman in every crime drama she can think of at the moment. She watched them all, then turned to the medical dramas, closing her eyes or running from the room at each procedure. We can't let this woman die, the doctor says as the credits roll on the afternoon soap her friend scripted. No, he says, he didn't write that. His own words on the cutting room floor. In the holding cell next door, they're calling ouot directions for some of the helmet holes. Sounds like they're playing bingo. Or Russian roulette.

586 days, 18 hours, 25 minutes, 28.7 seconds

She's following the stars. He's following her.

586 days, 18 hours, 34 minutes, 18 seconds

Oh, he says. Ronald Reagan.

586 days, 23 hours, 19 minutes, 29 seconds

She'd wanted a helmet, like the space men wear. To keep her cool all summer. To save her from darting from one airconditioned shop to another, making herself sick. To save her marriage. She bargained, cajoled, and pleaded. But she never imagined it permanent, never feared mad physicists drilling into her scalp like this.

587 days, 0 hours, 20 minutes, 26 seconds

Find Waldo. Whale watch. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Bush watch. They say it was just a $50 Timex. They say it was in his pocket. And she's still upset she lost Cinderella.

587 days, 4 hours, 39 minutes, 21 seconds

In Albania, President Bush is mistaken for a rock star. He stops to greet the crowd in a tiny town, emerging from the trees near where his car's parked. They call his name, they reach out to shake hands with him (though you can see this every night on Jay Leno, people crowding the stage as the star prances on). Bush moves further into the crowd. Leaves are left behind. Monkey see, monkey do. People grab his arms. One woman plants a kiss on his cheek, another ruffles his hair. People wave little American flags. He climbs up on the running-board of his limo. He blows kisses just like Marilyn Monroe did. Suddenly his watch is gone from his wrist. Men in suits close in around him. He's lost track of time. His hands keeps shaking. Follow the stars.

587 days, 8 hours, 59 minutes, 4.3 seconds

Not just gamma knife, Leksell gamma knife. Invented by a neurosurgeon in Sweden forty years ago. She was in Sweden three years ago, the wedding of her husband's friend's daughter. His closest friend. Dead now.

587 days, 9 hours, 29 minutes, 5 seconds

Follow the stars, the receptionist tells them. Go in the Children's Hospital entrance, follow the beige and brown stars set into the floor, past the gift shop, past the live performance area and snack bar, past the outdoor garden. They get larger and more colorful as they approach the elevator, then the elevator itself with bright red, blue, and yellow stars, leading directly to the gamma knife. God's ray gun.Glow, little glow worm, glow. Glimmer, glimmer, dimmer, shimmer. And she thinks of her sophomore year in high school, a boy running for student council president that she had a crush on. She'd given him her sorority key for good luck, but it wasn't good enough. Keep looking at the stars, kid, he told her, slipping it over her head in the hall back by the lockers. Four months later she dropped out of school.

589 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes, 49 seconds

Sheila Ballantyne, 70. Larry Leon Hamlin, 58. Harvey R. Colten, 68. Steven Billiard Jr., 42. Charles Maynes, 68. Samuel A. Garrison, 65. Jörg Immendorff, 61. Two months ago, she'd look at the New York Times obituaries and notice all the people who died in their nineties.

591 days, 3 hours, 48 minutes, 5.8 seconds

Boy, it's good to see this guy back, her husband says, sprawling on the downstairs couch, the Yankees game on tv . This guy is Bobby Murcer, former player, now broadcaster.

591 days, 9 hours, 9 minutes, 18 seconds

She blow-dries her hair. Not wanting to get sick again. And thinks again of Tony Blair spending over $3000 on makeup. In recent news, a principal is in trouble over dragging a high school boy to a barber shop. A straight-A student is expelled from 8th grade because of her hair color. And a four-year-old is banned from pre-school because of pink hair. She thinks how not much has changed in the past fifty years, not really. Except maybe that parents go to bat for their kids. In their first correspondence in the three weeks she's been sick, her father reiterates that he wants a plain pine coffin, nothing fancy. He also might have paid for the funeral in advance, but he can't remember.

591 days, 9 hours, 32 minutes, 54 seconds

No more tears, no more tangles, no more stitches, no more dried blood. Looking in the third drugstore, she comes up with L'oréal Kids extra gentle shampoo – no knots! More conditioning! With a burst of watermelon. For thick, curly, or wavy hair. She'd been hoping for Johnson and Johnson baby shampoo, but God knows if they even make that these days. Watermelon, evident the moment she opens the cap, she decides is enough of a reminder.

591 days, 15 hours, 9 minutes, 37 seconds

A stitch in time saves nine. She wakes up confident all the pain's from the stitches. Coming out today. And not stitches, staples. She probably shouldn't have fought so hard all her life to be writer, not woman. All her teenage angst catching up with her. And her mother dead, and her father dying. No one else to blame. Unless you count Bush, of course.

592 days, 14 hours, 24 minutes, 37 seconds

Yesterday was the the anniversary of D-Day. June 6, 1944. The day world allied forces invaded Europe and stormed the beaches of Normandy. Her husband reminded her yesterday. She meant to ewrite about it yesterday. Yesterday she didn't even go so far as to open a newspaper. Yesterday it was as if there was no larger world around her. Just her own pain.