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.