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