As they squeezed her hair into a cap and loaded her onto the gurney, Lucy glanced—without truly focusing—on the hazy colors of her patchwork. This was the life she had stitched together over the last few months, ever since she had brought Chagas’ disease back with her from Colombia. She was twenty-eight, and looked nineteen with her illness; but she took every day as it came like a wise old crone. She had patched a story in gem-bright colors or pastels as the mood dictated, for weeks on end. Her huge tired eyes rested briefly on the last piece she’d done: a heart on the wing rising toward the tiny sliver of moon, in a night sky. She meant it as a reminder of her mother flying away when she was little—a flight from which the mother had never returned, and the child never recovered. It was a sea change in her life. But now, in the nebulous space she occupied with the anesthetics taking hold of her, she saw the winged heart in a new light, about herself, which she hadn’t contemplated before. Her lids gave up, and folded her into a divine sleep.

8

LUCY SENSED HIS PRESENCE, EVEN BEFORE SHE OPENED HER EYES. HE HAD a smell that was apart from anything else in the hospital—vetiver, or bergamot, she thought. She smiled with her eyes still tightly shut for a moment longer, then she opened them and spoke.

“I’m sure I’m looking better today than you’ve ever seen me.” Her voice was thick, and didn’t sound at all like her own. She was in the intensive care unit, and ached in parts of her body she’d never been closely acquainted with, but she saw in Alex’s amused eyes that she’d found the power to convey some irony. And despite the bruising, and wires, and brutal incisions, she felt pleasantly sleepy.

“You look pretty good for eight or nine hours of surgery.”

His voice was clear and gentle as usual, but tired, she thought. And she knew that what he’d said wasn’t true: she knew without asking that she looked as wounded as she felt. But Alex himself was reassuringly calm looking at her. Peeping from behind a sterile mask, she noticed his eyes were devoid of their usual brightness, but they were doing their best to engage with her.

He moved closer. “Besides, you’ll get no sympathy from me. I thought I’d find you up and on the treadmill today. My secretary got an urgent message to me that your operation was scheduled for last Friday. I can’t believe you’d have wanted to delay it—or have second thoughts? What happened?”