She had to laugh. Got giddy. It was like in that song—Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…When you’re totally screwed, nothing can get worse, so what’s to worry? Of course she could get lucky…it would be a thousand-to-one, but maybe…

The ovaries and uterus were gone. The root of it all was out. Thank God for that. Those befouled organs were gone. Where? Disposed of. Burned. In a dumpster? Who cares? The source was destroyed. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. How could it be that bad? After all, the talk about pain from major abdominal surgery was overdone. She was walking with her little cart and tubes by the third day—a daily constitutional through the ward.

Okay, the Dilaudid was permanently off the menu, but morphine sulfate wasn’t half bad. No more cartoons but rather a mellow glow. Left, right, left, right. Hup, two, three, four! Even a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. On the morphine she was walking a quarter of an inch off the ground and everything was…softer, mercifully so. Maybe she could hack it for a thousand miles.

But those people in the hospital rooms, gray and dying, that was her. Could such a thing be possible? To die? Really? Yes, at some point she guessed you did die. But her? Now? So soon? With so little time to get used to the idea?

No, this was all a bad dream! She’d wake up. She’d wake up back in her little girl room on the farm near Battle Lake, Minnesota. There was a depression, things were a little rough, but big deal. What could beat a sun-kissed morning on Battle Lake and a robin’s song? There was an abundance of jays, larks, bluebirds, cardinals, hummingbirds, red-winged blackbirds in those days before acid rain and heavy-metal poisoning, and they came to her yard to eat from the cherry, apple, plum, and pear trees. What they really went for were the mulberries.