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.