He summoned the nurse and presently she felt the cold kiss of an alcohol swab on her hip above the left buttock, and the prick of a needle.

“That’s all?” she said.

“I haven’t done it yet,” he said, and the nurse chuckled. “I gave you some Novocain.”

“Why? Will it hurt?”

“I’m going to take some bone marrow. It’ll be a bit uncomfortable.”

But when he did it she gasped and her eyes watered. “Hey.”

“Baby.” He slapped on a Band-Aid. “Come back in an hour,” he said, unperturbed.

She wandered through the stores, looked at furniture but saw nothing she liked, bought a birthday card to send to her mother.

When she got back to the office Dr. Williams was very occupied with paper work.

“Hi. I want to arrange for you to have some blood transfusions.”

“Transfusions?”

“You have the type of anemia known as aplastic. Do you know what that is?”

Gaby folded her hands tightly in her lap. “No.”

“The marrow in your bones for some reason has stopped producing enough blood cells, and has become fatty. That’s why you’re going to need the transfusions.”

She thought about it. “But if a body doesn’t produce blood cells . . .”

“We have to supply them in transfusions.”

Her tongue felt a little strange. “Is the disease fatal?”

“Sometimes,” he said.

“How long can a person live with a condition like mine?”

“Oh . . . years and years.”

“How many years?”

“I can’t predict something like that. We’ll work very hard to get you by the first three to six months, and after that it’s almost always clear sailing.”

“The people who die. Most of them die in three to six months?”

He looked annoyed at her. “One has to look at the positive side of something like this. Many, many people make complete recoveries from aplastic anemia. There’s no reason why you can’t be one of them.”

“What percentage recover?” she said, aware that she was making it difficult for him and caring not at all.

“Ten percent.”

“Well.” My dear God, she thought.

She went back to the apartment and sat without turning on any of the lights even though the single window did not allow sufficient illumination to read by.

Nobody came to the door. The telephone did not ring. After a long while she became conscious that the tiny patch of sun that fell on the avocado plant for three hours each afternoon had disappeared. She examined the yellowing plant closely and thought about giving it more fertilizer and water and then decided not to do either. That was the trouble, she thought; she had overfed it and drenched it and no doubt at the bottom of the pot the roots were rotting away in a tiny bog.