385 days, 6 hours, 33 minutes, 46.7seconds

Actually she thinks she probably did hurt her back. Backwards Bush. Watch your back. Back to the future. Back to business. With their favorite flower shop closed till Wednesday.

385 days, 6 hours, 54 minutes, 4 seconds

Had she been smart she wouldn’t have leaned to the left like that.

385 days, 7 hours, 6 minutes, 54 seconds

Last New Years Eve, after the fireworks, they sat around munching coldcuts and talking about Social Security.

385 days, 7 hours, 17 minutes, 11 seconds

It’s going to be a strange new years eve celebration. He and friends from college, like every year. One died three years ago. One has the flu. One’s just home after his second pacemaker and a collapsed heart valve. And she’s stuck here.

385 days, 7 hours, 45 minutes, 46 seconds

All she does is reach down for her pocketbook, to look at the Backwards Bush clock (she hasn’t gotten on the Internet yet today). She wanted to write the above lines, praising the bed. And the bed traps her. Or the siderail traps her. Or is it a guardrail? Whatever, it presses straight across at about the level of her underarms. Really digs in. She imagines a huge bruise she’ll never see. At least it’s not the neck breaking. At least it’s not the heart.

385 days, 7 hours, 51 minutes, 54 seconds

She laughs and the world laughs with her. Turns in bed and the bed realigns itself. But mostly she cries in bed.

386 days, 0 hours, 31 minutes, 50 seconds

The confetti in Times Square will carry messages this year. Wishes will float down like in Cinderella. Anyone can wish over the Internet. It will be mixed in with more than a ton of real confetti though. She’d never get a wish. Or if she did it would be something stupid like bring my husband home from Iraq or let a Democrat win the election.

Make a wish foundation.

Her parents bussed her to Times Square as an eight-year-old. She doesn’t remember confetti. She remembers the cold and the crowd and being pushed and not being able to see over the people in front of her.

Confetti was high school. Saving seats for football games. Making bowling pin dolls. Cutting newspaper into confetti for the older girls. Until she just stomped her feet to get rid of the gum wrappers that landed on them and took off head first along the dark road. Head down, she means. She wished a car would run over her. She wished for a boarding school. Or a hospital.

386 days, 2 hours, 4 minutes, 37 seconds

She’s been here nearly three weeks now. She no longer knows or cares what day it is. Still, they write the date on the board at the front of the room each morning, along with the names of the nurse and aides. Like name tags for Alzheimer's patients. At a rally in Iowa, Hillary hands out pledge cards urging people to vote for her in the caucus on January 14. Only problem is that the caucus is January 3. Shooting herself in the foot, as the paper describes it. If that’s true then she’ll have to use a cane also. Not for support, just for balance.

387 days, 6 hours, 16 minutes, 31 seconds

So if she falls, she falls, she wants to tell the therapist. Always someone around to help. Thinking of that last fall, 82nd and Broadway, trying to hail a cab. Ten people gathered around helping her, fending off traffic. The cab must have driven around her.

A news story she also remembers. A woman walking in the East Village falls. Two teenage girls run over, ostensibly to help, then rob her. But she was old. And a tourist.

387 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 20 seconds

Speaking of oranges: children with diabetes as young as 10 years old learn to give themselves injections by practicing injecting water into an orange. So now she can’t even do what’s expected of a normal 10-year-old.

387 days, 6 hours, 47 minutes, 19 seconds

Tonight’s orange is better than last night’s orange.

387 days, 8 hours, 19 minutes, 2 seconds

Here is the man who owes her a dollar. But he is in the hospital. She is in the hospital. She is getting better. She sits at the computer hitting three keys at once, making up for lost time. Time is always lost. There’s no such thing as time, it’s a magic trick. Now you have it, now you don’t. Long long ago, there was time, but the teachers (except for third grade) had no time for her. Other kids had no time for her. She was the smallest. Making up for lost time. Holding her head up. Holding her new hat on. Weighing it down with the cane. This is what it’s comes down to: $40 cane, $ 200 hat. Which will he see first?

391 days, 12 hours, 29 minutes, 3.6 seconds

Sometimes she just wants to be a stray again.

391 days, 12hours, 32 minutes, 22 seconds

For the first time in what seems like months she has a strong enough Internet connection to browse the weird news sites. One of the first stories she reads is about a Jack Russell terrier who heard a 91-year-old woman crying for help at the end of a driveway. She’d fallen in a snowbank. No one else could hear her. Thes dog was a stray just three months ago.

Yes, she calls for help, despite herself.

Now, if she can just keep her eyes open.

391 days, 14 hours, 32 minutes, 11 seconds

Leon Fleisher, the revered pianist who for decades battled, and eventually overcame, a neurological disorder that crippled his right hand, was presented with the 2007 Kennedy Center Honors in ceremonies yesterday in Washington, D.C.

391 days, 23 hours, 14 minutes, 53 seconds

Christmas eve. They try to recall where they were the first time they watched a porn movie.

391 days, 23 hours, 26 minutes, 4 seconds

Shake my hand, the therapist tells the severely brain-damaged man who’s nodding off, reaching out to take his hand. Even the grungiest dog in the pound can do this. But both parents have to want the mutt.

On a nattress across the room, two therapists are trying to teach a man how to roll over with the aid of his elbows.

Bush’s dog, Mrs. Beasley, scampers away from Secret Service men trying to surround her. She doesn’t want to be photographed.

She gets the picture.

392 days, 0 hours, 2 minutes, 22 seconds

She’s trying to make up for lost time.

392 days, 0 hours, 6 minutes, 8 seconds

Aren’t you glad you use Dial?

392 days, 1 hours, 10 minutes, 8 seconds

Voters in Iowa are bothered by campaign calls this close to Christmas.

392 days, 5 hours, 16 minutes, 6 seconds

Blue’s just not your color, the therapist says, as she tries to screw in pegs a two-year-old can manage.

392 days, 22 hours, 27 minutes, 40 seconds

Rich roofer's fatal fall: One of the world's richest men, who made billions with a roofing company, has died after falling through the garage roof at his home. Ken Hendricks, 66, was checking on construction of the roof at his house in Illinois when the accident happened. He suffered massive head injuries.

Do roofers still use asbestos?

Her father-in-law on that roof. One of the first things he did for her. Before he got sick.

392 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes, 4 seconds

Finally a clonipin. Or is it tin? That taste in her mouth. That asbestos.

392 days, 23 hours, 12 minutes, 24 seconds

Call the gentle men in blue.

392 days, 23 hours, 25 minutes, 45 seconds

Woman’s work, she called it two days ago, trying to explain to the cognitive therapist that she doesn’t cook, doesn’t shop. Yesterday she discovered her hand works best with two fingers wrapped around a small blue sponge.

392 days, 23 hours, 34 minutes, 5 seconds

She married a turtle.

392 days, 23 hours, 41 minutes, 28 seconds

She loses files. She loses her notebook. She loses a poem. She loses her mind.

393 days, 7 hours, 50 minutes, 1 seconds

No pt for her today. She fell yesterday. Alone in the dining room, where she shouldn’t have been to begin with. Not alone. Not without him.

393 days, 8 hours, 0 minutes, 51 seconds

They just leave her sitting here.

395 days, 6 hours, 10 minutes, 18 seconds

Saturday evening. The Hispanic woman in the bed beside her has her family filling the room, including her 8-month-old and a newborn godchild. They offer to help her pick papers off the floor. Before dinner they join hands in prayer.

395 days, 6 hours, 10 minutes, 18 seconds

at 5:20 tonight, Queen Elizabeth II became the oldest British queen. But not the one who ruled longest.

395 days, 4 hours, 16 minutes, 36 seconds

He went straight to the emergency room. But he didn’t stay 26 hours.

395 days, 4 hours, 25 minutes, 39 seconds

It looks like Santa Rudy has a new health care plan in the offing. Coming down with flu-like symptoms while campaigning in Missouri, bringing it back to New York with him. The plane had to turn around.

396 days, 1 hours, 12 minutes, 8 seconds

At home, while searching the Internet for cancer turbans, she zoomed past sites offering hand- knitted gifts. Then, rushing out the door to move to her new room yesterday, they showed up. The Jehovah’s Witnesses. Well-intentioned cancer women wth their bags of makeup including skin tanning creams. They included a copy of in style magazine, with its lead article on tricks to having great hair. She wishes she could give it back.

Well, she found out from the rehab doctor why she wasn’t admitted that first day: they were considering another operation. No one told her. She’s thinking about a different oncologist. She’s thought of this before.

401 days, 1 hours, 10 minutes, 16 seconds

keep that arm involved, they tell her. Even if it can’t be of help, keep it in the vicinity, don’t let it feel like it’s being unused, or just in the way. God, she knows that sham.

401 days, 11 hours, 47 minutes, 3 seconds

So he slept late . He’s sleeping better now. He’ll call when he gets up.

401 days, 14 hours, 47 minutes, 3 seconds

So. It was a month after their wedding when they saw his extended family. And his aunt, a retired nurse turned real estate broker, gave them a clock with Westminster chimes. But she didn’t feel well. The hotel where they stayed had their first Jacuzzi, and he set it too hot, stayed in too long, emerged barely able to stand up. And she couldn’t help him.

401 days. 23 hours, 10 minutes, 3 seconds

36 hours checking e-mail. She feels like she’s been to a spa for her whole body.

402 days, 9 hours, 8minutes, 50 seconds

She watched as a man twice her size pointed out his bruises to the technicians. So grown ups fall also.

409 days, 1 hours, 25 minutes, 13.8 seconds

A law was passed last Tuesday: neglect of aging parents is a criminal offense. But this is in India.

410 days, 0 hours, 10 minutes, 41 seconds

Things are starting to grow again. Her toenails. Her fingernails. There’s fuzz at the top of her head. She rubs it for good luck.

412 days, 7 hours, 5 minutes, 14 seconds

Stay out of the sun, they warn her, handing her the third bottle of pills. A piece of German chocolate cake for her (and she doesn’t usually like chocolate). She fainted when the Brownies went swimming at the lake. She dropped out of the Brownies. She dropped out of school. She bought a dozen sun hats, different shapes and sizes and colors. But there is no color.

414 days, 17 hours, 10 minutes, 59 seconds

Must acquit.

414 days, 17 hours, 29 minutes, 48 seconds

She imagines Dubyuh with convertible gloves like she just gave her husband. He uses the cashmere for jogging, slips on the outer leather shell when he meets heads of state. Easy to slide out of. That sounds right, doesn’t it? He’ll ask his Chief of Staff, if he can just remember…

414 days, 23 hours, 3 minutes, 31 seconds

It’s after midnight.

414 days, 23 hours, 7 minutes, 30 seconds

He offers to help her set up her pills for the coming week, always a grueling task. He’s trying to make this as pleasant a day as he can but she can’t.

415 days, 1 hours, 0 minutes, 13.4 seconds

She imagines a diabetic coma at the stroke of midnight on her birthday. Everything else has gone wrong today. She takes her 23rd bite of zeppole, a gift from the waiter, reminds her husband again that if she’s even on a ventilator, not a respirator, she wants off. Don’t let them sweet-talk him into her being as good as before. This is before. The waiter didn’t know it was her birthday. Almost her birthday. She takes another bite. A coma might feel pretty good right now, despite the flowers.

415 days, 4 hours, 58 minutes, 31 seconds

The first day of December, the day before her birthday, three days before Chanukah, 30 degrees out, he goes to visit a friend and comes home having lost one of the gloves she gave him for Chanukah years ago. While he’s away she reads an article about a website set up to unite gloves with their owners, but that’s only in Pittsburgh. For now. The flowers he sent her are delivered while he’s out, and she has to hobble down the stairs to receive them, then hobble back up, terrified of that final step, no one to hang onto.

416 days, 1 hours, 37 minutes, 43 seconds

Tonight the first of her birthday cakes. She forgets to wish.

419 days, 6 hours, 25 minutes, 8 seconds

It suddenly occurs to her that, less than a year from now, we’ll know who’ll become the next president. With any luck, the country will be in remission.

420 days, 11 hours, 57 minutes, 39.2 seconds

This is how low they’ve come: for the second night in a week, screaming at each other as they walk Columbus Avenue. A teenager walking in front of them even turned around, but she’s with her parents or grandparents, so that’s not really a teenager.

420 days, 12 hours, 16 minutes, 53 seconds

So he tells her now he went to the parade mainly because he wanted her to have a balloon, he wanted her to have a balloon from Macy’s. And the first balloon vendor he saw had a unicorn and he wasn’t sure he’d see other vendors so he bought the unicorn (which she didn’t discover until later) and the Dalmatian. He remembered the balloons being larger. But he wanted her to finally her a balloon from the Macy’s parade. Two balloons. He's completely forgotten he brought her back a balloon the one other time she remembers him going to the parade –a lion, she thinks, and a mermaid. One was for her, the other for their sick friend. Still sick. Dalmatians are rescue dogs.

424 days, 11 hours, 30 minutes, 36 seconds

He goes to the parade after all. Just for two or three bands. Comes home with a small Dalmatian balloon for her, which he places on top of the stuffed rabbit. He hates that rabbit.

Dalmatians are rescue dogs. Her father had a real Dalmatian. He was named Tuesday. Today is Thursday. Possibly he was blown up on Tuesday. Meanwhile, she seldom picks up the phone from her father anymore, but he talks to her husband for a few minutes each day just to check things are alright. When he remembers.

424 days, 11 hours, 33 minutes, 20 seconds

Do you know what year is this is ? Do you know who’s president?

425 days, 1 hours, 19 minutes, 21 seconds

No blow ups tonight, she supposes. No more tantrums.

On just 2 mg of the steroid every other day her face may lose its bloat. And even that will stop soon.

No more blow ups tonight. The night before Thanksgiving, when all the Macy’s balloons are gathering down by the museum. Twenty-two years ago, when they were first together, no one knew about these little outbursts. They could stay watching as long as it took to get Garfield’s tail straight. She bought gloves. The next year they bought hot coffee for one of the workers. But now the streets are mobbed, and they close them off to viewers early.

No blow ups tonight. He won’t be going to the parade tomorrow. He won’t end up in the ER. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. And she won’t either. She swears she won’t.

425 days, 1 hours, 33 minutes, 51 seconds

A nightmare last night where she couldn’t keep her medications straight. She had on all these little candy bracelets. Or most of them were candy. She couldn’t remember which was which. She woke with a migraine and never really got back to sleep.

She supposes that’s what happens when you just walk out of the emergency room not even bothering to take off the bracelet. She supposes that’s what happens when you stomp on the insulin vial. It takes all her energy.

432 days, 13 hours, 43 minutes, 39 seconds

Almost time for George to pardon two more turkeys.

432 days, 23 hours, 32 minutes, 10 seconds

It’s the thigh, not I, that will be her downfall. Downstairs, half asleep , he reads The Tin Drum. She no longer orders chicken in restaurants.

438 days, 10 hours, 55 minutes, 18 seconds

Even back then, he didn’t know what to say to her. But he used to mutter this click or cluck all the the time, shaking his head, turning away. It’s the same click she’s heard from her husband lately. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it. And she, who never notices, notices.

438 days, 11 hours, 3 minutes, 55 seconds

In The Hotel New Hampshire, one of her favorite books and movies, Lilly is trying to grow. She even writes a bestseller about it. But in the end she kills herself, leaving a note behind that says “not tall enough.” She knows the feeling. At school on photo day she was always the last person in line. The last person to be weighed and measured in September. Her father talked about how when he graduated high school he and one other boy were the shortest in the class. The other guy went through a growth spurt, so it could still happen to her. She knew it wouldn’t. She knew the only growth would be inside her. What she didn’t expect was how much she’d come to fear it. This is what she thinks about at two in the morning, just before bed.

438 days, 22 hours, 30 minutes, 14 seconds

Mr. Kasuri reiterated that Gen. Musharraf would move forward with parliamentary elections early next year and make good on a pledge to give up his military uniform while remaining president.

438 days, 22 hours, 40 minutes, 31 seconds

To learn without thinking is an effort in vain. Her husband’s fortune.

438 days, 22 hours, 55 minutes, 57 seconds

Bush quips he might stay in power.

438 days, 23 hours, 13 minutes, 38 seconds

No one is standing in your way anymore, it’s time to move forward: the fortune she’s been waiting for. And, on the other side of the strip, next to the lucky lotto numbers: Learn Chinese: and the characters for kai wam sei: joke around.

440 days, 2 hours, 14 minutes, 21 seconds

The oncologist takes one quick glance at her. It’s over. And she feels better already.

440 days, 23 hours, 45 minutes, 43 seconds

The fours are adding up here. She was 41 when she married him. They’d been together just a little over four years. Her mother was alive (another five years). His mother was alive (another five years). Four living parents. People die all the time. So it’s not just her.

440 days, 23 hours, 52 minutes, 51 seconds

Another night. Another clonopin. Or whatever you call it.

442 days, 21 hours, 22 minutes, 46 seconds

She can’t believe they’d schedule the marathon the same weekend as Daylight Savings Time ends. Then again, life’s all about transitions.

She can sit and do one thing fairly well, if a little slowly. But then to move from one thing to another, from one place to another, requires her sitting there for what seems like forever trying to map a route. Sitting in the bed today, ensconced by pillows, she looks up to see the most exquisite deep red and white sunset lines over a small patch of sky. She knew by the time she got a camera it would be gone. She was trapped by pillows. Even walking to the window would have been too much. (She remembers waking up in the carriage alone when her mother had run inside for the camera; she remembers how scared she was).

Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein have decided to back Bush’s nominee for Attorney General. Easier that way. January 20, 2009. That’s the transition of they’re waiting for. But the pillows, meant for luxury, the realm of Kings and Queens, won’t let her move.

January 20, 2009. She still wonders if she’ll live that long. Waking up in the carriage. Or ambulance. Half in, half out.

445 days, 3 hours, 24 minutes, 6.8 seconds

She thinks of Rosie Ruiz, wiinning the marathon until it was discovered she took the subway. The year she moved in with him it was marathon weekend and crosstown traffic was disastrous. She rhinks of her endocrinologist running again this year. She thinks of her rocking horse.

445 days, 3 hours, 55 minutes, 16 seconds

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445 days, 4 hours, 28 minutes, 35 seconds

She returns from the Upper East Side dermatologist as sick as she’s ever felt, hanging onto a flowerpot to steady herself while the guard comes out to meet them. The mail truck’s here with 35 boxes of mailing supplies that she supposes she over-ordered. He’s got 13 boxes already on his cart, so she accepts those, refuses the others. She just needs to get upstairs and lie down. Another 13.

445 days, 5 hours, 13 minutes, 22 seconds

Rosie the nurse from hell was here again this morning. Never brings her own gloves. Insists it’s easiest to lance the finger without the lancette device. Would chase her around the room if she could just move. Squeezes her arm so tight it hurts. Starts to warn of the dangers of oral diabetes pills. She thinks of Rosie the Riveter. All the wars in her body. All the home fronts.

445 days, 12 hours, 18 minutes, 14 seconds

Not 14, 13. Instead of starting the Ben Casey episodes with disk 1, as planned, she started with the second case, disk 13. Bad Luck. They’ve watched the four shows on that disk now. She hasn’t fallen down the stairs. She hasn’t blacked out in four days. She was able to wash her face last night. The worst should be over.

445 days, 12 hours, 50 minutes, 37.4 seconds

November one. Month eleven. Part eleven of this blog. In fifty minutes it will be eleven hours. She stands up for the first time in days. She’s never felt so lonely.

447 days, 1 hours, 8 minutes, 21 seconds

In today’s weird news, yet another medical mishap. Surprise, surprise. A woman was treated with the Gamma Knife on the wrong side of the brain. Not to worry, not to worry, this does not necessarily harm the patient. Just a radiation mistake. She thinks of swelling three months later, trying to walk, she thinks about blacking out, she thinks of falling. She thinks and thinks and thinks of a lot of things while she can still think. The computer was supposed to spit her out if things weren’t perfect. The computer was supposed to protect her.

447 days, 6 hours, 22 minutes, 15 seconds

The bickering. Ask her what she remembers about this past week when she’s been too sick to write and she’ll tell you the bickering. It started at the oncologist’s. And God knows why she didn’t write it down at the time. There was a woman and her husband already there, the woman in the seat with a tray table that she usually uses. The empty chemo chair next to them. She was trying to get a DVD player to work. He was trying to help her. The nurse was trying to help her. Then the woman wanted to know again what drugs she was taking and her husband told her. Isn’t that bad for the liver, she asked. Or is it the kidney? He told her again what drugs she was taking. She asked the questions again. She tries to get the DVD to work. She says they must have brought the wrong tape.

Busy day. A young man in his 40s comes in and takes the seat between them. Everyone gets talking. He’s a doorman, comes for sessions every six months or so that’s all there is to it. She doesn’t remember how or why or when but the three of them get into telling stories, laughing their heads off to the point where the nurse has to come and remind them to be quiet. Stories about his work? Stories about his treatments? They’re having so much fun.

The man leaves and things quiet down. No more bickering. She and her husband just sit there watching from the distance. By tomorrow they’ll be the ones who bicker. It’s started already.

454 days, 22 hours, 48 minutes, 49 seconds

"It's an important concept for our fellow citizens to understand, that no one in need will ever be forced to choose a faith-based provider. That's an important concept for people to understand. What that means is if you're the Methodist church and you sponsor an alcohol treatment center, they can't say only Methodists, only Methodists who drink too much can come to our program. "All Drunks Are Welcome" is what the sign ought to say."

454 days, 23 hours, 28 minutes, 44 seconds

June 18, 2003: George W Bush has fallen off a Segway - a new stand-on scooter designed to make motorised travel user-friendly.The machine went down when he stepped onto it at his family estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, but he managed to leap to safety, landing on his feet.

454 days, 23 hours, 44 minutes, 4.9 seconds

Bush 'falls ill' at G8 summit: Friday, 08 Jun 2007. Mr Bush was said to be suffering from stomach pains overnight and is now set to miss some of the discussions scheduled between leaders about Africa today. The BBC reports that the US president fell ill last night and showed TV footage of him drinking a non-alcoholic beer with fellow leaders including British prime minister Tony Blair and German chancellor Angela Merkel. Earlier, White House official Dan Bartlett joked that Mr Bush was eager not to follow in the footsteps of his father, who famously threw up on then Japanese prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa at a state dinner in Tokyo in 1992.

455 days, 3 hours, 45 minutes, 13 seconds

They watch two Ben Casey episodes, accidentally starting on the wrong disk. She’d forgotten he was only a resident. She’d forgotten his temper. Tracy, next door, says that when she trained at Columbia Presbyterian back in the 60s they loved Ben Casey. They used to page him all the time. Tracy, neighbor, friend. The first nurse she put in the hospital. She thought, for a moment, of naming this new computer Tracy or Tracer, but Tarceva’s better. This will save her life. Too weak to stand up right now. Different visiting nurses announce themselves. So the whole building knows. And she fell.

456 days, 20 hours, 14 minutes, 11 seconds

So it’s 4:30 in the morning again, 1:30 in California, and she’s spreading moisturizer on her legs and thinking how she really has to call her uncle. He turned 90 on the fourth of July and they’d planned on going out there before all hell broke loose. And she hasn’t had the nerve to call and explain. Another cousin who was there just died of stomach cancer. Cancer men. Her uncle, Charles, Ron. She finds their smiles irresistable. The cream on her legs is soothing now, until she notices all the scabs behind her left leg, starts to pick at them. And she thinks of unions.

459 days, 3 hours, 1 minutes, 48 seconds

Back to Ben. Big Ben. And how it was so important to her British friends that she attend a late-night session of Parliament. Let's draw the world back into focus here.

459 days, 6 hours, 56 minutes, 51 seconds

Surprise, surprise, the computer didn't make it. Though she can still get on in Safe Mode, with Networking.

She'll get another Toshiba, she supposes. 17-inch screen. Two disk drives. One of the cheaper ones. It'll break a few months after the warranty expires. There's also the HP, of course, but the Toshiba's sleeker. Also, she keeps confusing the name with Tarceva, the pill they say will keep her alive another day, another week, another month of…

459 days, 7 hours, 7 minutes, 40 seconds

And there was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. Everybody loved her curly hair. Four sessions, it was promised. Then two weeks later it would start growing back. There's really going to be a struggle now.

459 days, 10 hours, 18 minutes, 48 seconds

After being unable to lift her head yesterday, she wears black for chemo today. Black tights. Black and white stretch jersey she feels thin enough to wear now. Black and grey Parkhurst hat. Blue socks.

She forgot about white for Yom Kippur.

"You realize that, except for the cancer and the diabetes, everything you're going through now is self-inflicted," he tells her. She stares at him, then the window, then him again. This isn't what you tell a potential suicide. But he explains she's the one who made the decision to continue with the chemo despite all its side effects. And he's proud of her.

Except this can't continue. Not today, at least. Anemia. Her platelet count too low. The doctor gives her a shot. And all those steroids already in her body. Keep her up at least. Same time next week. Same time next year. It doesn't matter. She comes home and puts on her ghost scarf. Black and white.

She forgot about white for Yom Kippur.

460 days, 23 hours, 10 minutes, 22 seconds

She woke up this morning with a blood reading of 88. As in 88 piano keys. As in the 88 keys on the keyboard she bought him as a Hanukkah gift right before her birthday. The first arrangement he composed on it was happy birthday. After that all hell broke loose.

461 days, 22 hours, 9 minutes, 16 seconds

She's writing and writing and writing. Blubbering. Probably drooling out of the corner of her mouth. Typing with two fingers and cotton gloves on. It's tomorrow.

461 days, 22 hours, 15 minutes, 49.8 seconds

Man with van. Manny with van. $50. He doesn't need the money, but his mother died two months ago, and she always enjoyed helping people.

She remembers to thank his mother.

461 days, 22 hours, 39 minutes, 56 seconds

A "desk" he calls it. No way. Where do the legs go? Entertainment center, maybe. Or the bottom half. Biggest god-damned thing she's ever seen. And heavy. Perfect for magazine storage. Sitting in the garage for days now. Probably out on the street tomorrow, with the rest of the furniture. She sneaks down to the garage at 3:00 a.m. to take another look. Can't even lift one leg. But she's got to have this. Desk? Okay, desk. Whatever. With both rear seats down she can get it in her car, or thinks she can. Prays she can.

Turns out it's been promised to someone else. Someone who hasn't seen it yet. Just what she needs to hear. She thought what you see is what you get. Thought this was fair game, imagined it in the back of her car. In her storage space. Then it shows up at the door to her apartment. She must be seeing things.

461 days, 22 hours, 56 minutes, 44 seconds

Delicate pink-framed reading/distance bifocals? Where the hell did these come from? For the second night in a row she changed glasses to read a menu, then forgot to change back. Used to be her eyes were immediately strained, but she doesn't even see the difference now. And she writes this with cotton gloves on. She's in the middle of a virus scan.

461 days, 23 hours, 3 minutes, 7.6 seconds

Gaudy pink all around her, marking the strides against breast cancer. Been there. Done that.

461 days, 23 hours, 18 minutes, 21 seconds

She slept for maybe an hour, right around the news, then almost just turned off the computer and said screw backing up, screw the night's meds, screw her arms and legs. She could have drifted back to sleep in seconds. But it just turned tomorrow. The day she's been waiting for. C Day. D Day. V Day. She sees the doctor at three o'clock (probably means four). They decide if the chemo continues. And she doesn't know what she wants. At the moment – no more tomorrows.

462 days, 1 hours, 41 minutes, 35 seconds

So she goes with a friend for brunch not dinner, because these days that's when she still has energy (they both cover their eyes as they pass the hat store), then on the way home stops to pick up a garment rack for the storage space, only it turns out this friend bought the same double-level rack and now doesn't have room for it. Call it a gift, a trade, a lucky charm.

He helps her put it together, stands between the bars and begins Cat's Cradle. She thinks of the cat she had, its last two years alone in an apartment half the size of this storage space. Maybe a third the size, but there was a loft bed, and a ladder. Clumsy old cat, not very good at games, but she supposes this is what storage feels like. No strings. Too many strings. Even her fingers ripped apart today.

462 days, 4 hours, 58 minutes, 44 seconds

The camera scans black and white pictures of children as an announcer says: "Hillary stood up for universal health care when almost no one else would, and kept standing until six million kids had coverage."

"She stood by ground zero workers who sacrificed their health after so many sacrificed their lives, and kept standing until this administration took action," the ad's announcer says as a photograph of Clinton, wearing a face mask at the World Trade Center cite, appears on the screen.

"So now that almost every candidate is standing up for health care for all," the announcer says, "which one do you think will never back down?"

462 days, 5 hours, 8 minutes, 47 seconds

System shutdown. Reboot. Reboot again. Go into safe mode. What did she expect? The computer's not working well either.

463 days, 7 hours, 25 minutes, 4.1 seconds

465 days, 12 hours, 14 minutes, 27 seconds

Hold onto your hat, the CBS weather forecaster says. Wind gusts up to 30 miles per hour. And she doesn't have a hat. But at least she's hearing the news for the first time in days. She promised the driver she would make it worth his while. Then he almost misses the exit and has to back up. She's terrified.

465 days, 12 hours, 55 minutes, 48 seconds

She has one hour and ten minutes to go. She still hasn't decided what to tell her students.

465 days, 13 hours, 20 minutes, 13 seconds

The first taxi refuses, the second talks of trouble on the bridges but agrees to take her to Forest Hills. He calls his boss, and says he'll be late getting back. He has a lady here and she's sick. God, does she look that bad? It's been a morning of one crisis after another. She woke up covered in Vaseline. The nurse didn't show. The computer wouldn't function. He tells his boss she just got out of the hospital.