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.