Fire. The Molotov cocktails hadn’t been flung at my dad but at Sister Frankie.

“The nun … Is she … How is she?”

“She’s in intensive care right now. You saved her life.” Lotty’s voice quavered.

“My arms hurt.”

“They were burned. But you got medical help fast, and there are only a few patches where the underlayer of skin was compromised. You’ll be fine in a few days. Now I want you to rest.”

A man was speaking in the background, loud, demanding that I answer questions. Lotty answered in the voice that made Max bow and call her Eure Hoheit, “Your Highness” in German. The surgeon, as Princess of Austria, telling the man that I would answer no official questions until she was sure I wasn’t still in shock.

Lotty was protecting me, I could rest, I could relax and be safe. I drifted off to sleep, riding on a field of violets. A saber-toothed tiger prowled through the violets. I crouched low, but it smelled me. My flesh was burned. I smelled like steak on Mr. Contreras’s grill. I tried to scream, but my throat was swollen, and no sound came out.

I struggled back to consciousness and lay panting in the dark. I felt my hands. They were wrapped in gauze, and the pressure was painful because they were still swollen. I tentatively felt my blistered eyelids. They, too, were padded in gauze.

A nurse came in and asked me to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten. “I’ve hurt worse, I think,” I whispered. “Maybe a nine. Is it day or night?”

“It’s afternoon. You’ve slept for five hours, and I can give you some more pain medication now.”

“How is the nun? How is Sister Frankie?”

I could feel her moving near me. “I don’t know. I just came on shift. The doctor will tell be able to tell you.”

“Dr. Herschel?” I asked. But I was already drifting back to the fractured lines and colors of morphic sleep.

A baseball sat on the kitchen table, rocking back and forth from a passing freight train that shook the house. It was Christmas, and Papà had gone to the ballpark without telling me. He and Mama and a strange man had been arguing in the middle of the night, their loud voices waking me up.

“I can’t do it!” Papà shouted.

And then Mama heard me on the stairs and called to me in Italian to go back to bed. The men’s voices dropped to whispers, until the man shouted, “I’m tired of you preaching to me, Warshawski! You’re not the cardinal, let alone a saint, so get off your plastic crucifix.”