After class, I lingered near the overhead projector. I don’t know why I cared. I slouched toward Gloria, asking her for my results.

Well, Gloria said, adjusting her glasses and surveying my form. You show an aptitude for the helping professions—nursing or veterinary medicine. Would you like to talk more about your career options?

Not really, I said.

She handed me an application for nursing school at Camosun College and said I was different from the other girls; I was more sensitive. I was ready for Change.

But she’d got me all wrong. I was sensitive as a rock. I’d watched Cassie and Amber slice themselves and said nothing. I just sat there, cruel and useless. What kind of fool just sits there? I should have said I was impressed. I should have said I was sorry. I just should have. Said something kind.

The doctor at White Oaks was no help either.

I asked him for a sedative because I couldn’t sleep. The opera never comes.

He said there was no reason for me to be tranquilized.

Look, I said, I’ve got a particular disease. You might not have heard of it before, but trust me, I’ve got it, and I’m probably gonna die.

What seems to be the problem?

The problem, I said, is this: I was born with a fever, and it’s been gone since I was six, but it’s started coming back to me this year. It comes and goes. I can’t ever predict. I’ll be burning and dizzy, and then it just leaves. When I woke up in the middle of last night, I was covered in cold sweat.

He put his hand on my forehead, then stuck a glass tube under my tongue.

Hold it, he said. Press down.

After a while, he took the thermometer from my pressed lips. We watched as the red line rose. It fell; it rose again slowly.

98.7 degrees, he said. You have no temperature, young lady. You’re perfectly fine.

You’re perfectly fine.

He said he was hip to that old chestnut, the fever ruse.

Fever’s a symptom, he informed me. One is not born with a fever.

But I was—

Fever is not a disease, he said. The enemy most often takes the form of a virus or an infection. And fever, he said, fever is nature’s way of removing her enemy.

A GOOD GIRL

WHEN I wouldn’t tell anyone where my parents were, they sent me to see a placement officer.

Her name was Hazel; she liked to bet on greyhound dogs. Next year, when she turned sixty, she planned to move to Florida so she could bet all day long.

You can smoke if you want, she said. I’m cool.

We had our little chat.

I told Hazel I wanted to be a nurse.

That’s a good goal, she said.