“Come on, let me buy what passes for lunch around here.”

I looked up at her from my chair and for a second simply didn’t know who she was. I shook my head, but not as a response to her question, then said, “No, thank you.” I added “Hilary” to satisfy myself that I knew who she was.

Eremophila alpestris. A humerus, complete, 22.7 mm in length, was found from the 19–25 cm level. This species has been reported from other Pleistocene deposits. The size is comparable to the races breeding today in the area.

Sarah and Meg were still at the hospital midafternoon. I got into my Jeep and drove over to join them, my heart racing the whole way. It was one of those Southern California days that people often said they hated, sunny and hot. I dismissed summarily the complaint, often from easterners, that the region offered no seasons. A rather unsophisticated lot, these complainers, at the very least lazy. Signs of seasons abounded in Los Angeles and around, more subtle than the abundant death of leaves that so many seemed so in love with. The blooming of flowers and trees, the appearance of various birds. In the spring, the phainopepla appeared, the males showing off their white-patched wings. Purple finches in the fall. Santa Ana winds blowing hot through October. Rains in the winter. The sun there was bright, often too bright, somehow too close, and it was so that day, hammering on me as I drove.

It irked me that Children’s Hospital was so decidedly cheerful. It irked me that I was irked by it. Why shouldn’t the place have been cheerful? It was, after all, where most children got better. I should have believed that because of all the happy colors and tanks full of smiling fish and bright, shiny, floating balloons that my child would be made better as well. I wanted to believe that, but apparently I didn’t. I had sunk into a pessimistic wormhole, and, knowing I couldn’t extricate myself, I at least resolved to hide my fear.

I followed the red line on the floor to neurology. That unwavering, resolute red line. Situated between the blue and yellow lines, leading past the big fish tank, over the pedestrian bridge, having no meaning by its being red but meaning everything because it was red. I followed, chased, heeded the red line until it led me to my daughter.