That is how Annie sees her husband from the doorway of Room 377 in the hospital where he will die of cancer in five months and three days. Five months, three days that have somehow collapsed into a dreadful and inexplicable now.

"Annie?"

Mark's voice is a hoarse whisper. Its weakness shakes Annie, and for an instant she thinks she is going to burst into tears. She covers her trembling lips with her palm.

"Annie, that you?"

She stands there, trying to regain her composure, the room silent except for the quiet beeping of the instruments at Mark's bedside. The fuzziness of the light makes her feel strangely lost and isolated, like a small boat adrift in fog.

Finally she lowers her hand from her mouth.

"Yes," she says. "It's me, hon. I'm here. "

He slips his right arm partially out from under his blankets and beckons her with a feeble wave. His face is still a blur, but she has no difficulty seeing the gesture.

Her eyes fall briefly on the sleeve of his pajama.

"Come over here, Annie, " he says. "Hard to talk when you're standing there by the door. "

She steps forward into the room. His sleeve. Something about it isn't right, something about the color of it--

"Come on, what are you waiting for?" he says. Pulling his arm further out from underneath his blankets and tapping the safety rail of his bed. "You belong with me. "

There is a harshness in Mark's voice, an anger that has become huge within him in recent days--but although Annie often brushes up against its sharp outer edges, she is aware that the cancer is its real target. In the beginning it had flared up from beneath the surface only on occasion, but its progression has matched that of the disease, consuming him, ravaging his personality. He is resentful of his loss of independence, resentful of his inability to care for himself, resentful of his neediness ... and beyond all else resentful of having his future stolen from him by something as insipid and indiscriminate as an uncontrollable growth of cells. Annie has come to accept those feelings as constants that she is helpless to relieve, and can only hope to skirt past on delicate tiptoes.

She wades through the filmy light toward her husband. His IV stand and the wall of beeping instruments are on the left side of the bed, so she walks around its foot to the right and rolls back his plastic hospital tray in order to approach him.

Suddenly his hand reaches over the safety rail and clutches her wrist.

"Give it to us, Annie, " he says. "Let's hear how sorry you are. "

She stands there in shock as his fingers press into her with impossible strength.

"We trusted you," he says.

His fingers are digging deeper into the soft white flesh under her wrist, hurting her now. Though Annie knows they will leave bruises, she does not attempt to pull away. She looks at Mark across the bed, wishing she could see his face, mystified by his words. Their hostility is more intense, more cuttingly directed at her than at any time in the past, but she can't understand why.