Then there was the darkness below me again, and the light above.

Sink or swim, I thought ruefully. And what if I wanted to sink? What was there to keep me afloat?

I thought of my father's hand on my cheek, and I thought of the steady green-eyed gaze of the girl on the bed. I thought about what it felt to take a warm shower after a long bike ride, to slip into the ocean on a hot summer day. I thought about the taste of the tiny strawberries Maxi and I had found at the farmer's market. I thought about my friends, and Nifkin. I thought about my own bed, lined with flannel sheets softened from many trips through the dryer, with a book on the pillow and Nifkin perched beside me. And I thought for a minute about Bruce... not about Bruce specifically, but the feeling of falling in love, of being loved, of being worthy. Treasured, I heard Maxi say.

So okay, I thought. Fine. I'll swim. For myself, and for my daughter. For all the things I love, and everyone who loves me.

When I woke up again I heard voices.

"That doesn't look right," said one. "Are you sure it's hanging the right way?"

My mother, I thought. Who else?

"What's this yellow stuff?" demanded another voice- young, female, crabby. Lucy. "Probably pudding."

"It's not pudding," I heard in a raspy growl. Tanya.

Then: "Lucy! Get your finger out of your sister's lunch!"

"She's not going to eat it," Lucy said sulkily.

"I don't know why they even brought food," Tanya rumbled.

"Find some ginger ale," said my mother. "And some ice cubes. They said she can have ice cubes when she wakes up."

My mother leaned close. I could smell her- a combination of Chloe and sunscreen and Pert shampoo. "Cannie?" she murmured. I opened my eyes- for real this time- and saw that I wasn't underwater, or in my old bedroom, or in my father's office. I was in a hospital, in a bed. There was an IV taped to the back of my hand, a plastic bracelet with my name on it around my wrist, a semicircle of machines beeping and chirping around me. I lifted my head and saw down to my toes- no belly looming up between my face and my feet.

"Baby," I said. My voice sounded strange and squeaky. Someone stepped out of the shadows. Bruce.

"Hey, Cannie," he said, sounding sheepish, looking wretched, and horribly ashamed.

I waved him away with the hand that didn't have a needle stuck in it. "Not you," I said. "My baby."

"I'll get the doctor," said my mother.

"No, let me," said Tanya. The two of them looked at each other, then hustled out of the room as if by mutual agreement. Lucy shot me a quick unreadable look and dashed out behind them. Which left just me and Bruce.

"What happened?" I asked.

Bruce swallowed hard. "I think maybe the doctor better tell you that."

Now I was starting to remember- the airport, the bathroom, his new girlfriend. Falling. And then blood.

I tried to sit up. Hands eased me back onto the bed.

"What happened?" I demanded, my voice spiraling toward hysteria. "Where am I? Where's my baby? What happened?"

A face leaned into my line of sight- a doctor, no doubt, in a white coat with the obligatory stethoscope and plastic name tag.

"I see you're awake!" he said heartily. I scowled at him. "Tell me your name," he said.

I took a deep breath, suddenly aware that I was hurting. From my belly b.u.t.ton on down it felt like I'd been torn open and sewn back together sloppily. My ankle throbbed in time with my heartbeat. "I'm Candace Shapiro," I began, "and I was pregnant..." My voice caught in my throat. "What happened?" I begged. "Is my baby okay?"

The doctor cleared his throat. "You had what's known as placenta abruptio," he began. "Which means that your placenta separated from your uterus all at once. That's what caused the bleeding... and the premature labor."

"So my baby...," I whispered.

The doctor looked somber.

"Your baby was in distress when they brought you in here. We did a cesarean section, but because we didn't have the fetal monitor in place, we aren't sure whether she was deprived of oxygen, and if so, for how long."

He kept talking. Low birth weight. Premature. Underdeveloped lungs. Ventilator. NICU. He told me that my uterus was torn during the delivery, that I was bleeding so badly, they had to take "radical steps." Radical as in my uterus was now gone. "We hate to have to do this to young women," he said gravely, "but the circ.u.mstances left us no choice."

He droned on and on about counseling, therapy, adoption, egg harvesting, and surrogates until I wanted to scream, to claw at his throat, to force him to give me the answer to the only question I cared about anymore. I looked at my mother, who bit her lip and looked away as I struggled to sit up. The doctor looked alarmed, and tried to ease me back down onto my back, but I wasn't going. "My baby," I said. "Is it a boy or girl?"

"A girl," he said- reluctantly, I thought.

"Girl," I repeated, and started to cry. My daughter, I thought, my poor daughter whom I couldn't keep safe, not even on her way into the world. I looked at my mother, who'd come back and was leaning against the wall, blowing her nose. Bruce put his hand awkwardly on my arm.

"Cannie," he said, "I'm sorry."

"Get away from me," I wept. "Just go." I wiped my eyes, shoved my matted hair behind my ears, and looked at the doctor. "I want to see my baby." They eased me into a wheelchair, sore and st.i.tched up, hurting all over, and wheeled me to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. I couldn't go in, they explained, but I could see her through the window. A nurse pointed her out. "There," she said, gesturing.

I leaned so close my forehead pressed on the gla.s.s. She was so small. A wrinkled pink grapefruit. Limbs no bigger than my pinky, hands the size of my thumbnail, a head the size of a smallish nectarine. Tiny eyes squinched shut, a look of outrage on her face. A dusting of black fuzz on top of her head, a nondescript beige-ish hat on top of that. "She weighs almost three pounds," the nurse who was pushing me said.

Baby, I whispered, and tapped my fingers against the windows, drumming a soft rhythm. She hadn't been moving, but when I tapped she pinwheeled her arms. Waving at me, I imagined. Hi, baby, I said.

The nurse watched me closely. "You okay?"

"She needs a better hat," I said. My throat felt thick, clotted with grief, and there were tears running down my face, but I wasn't crying. It was more like leaking. As if I was so full of sadness and a strange, doomed kind of hope that there was nowhere for it to go but out. "At home, in her room, the yellow room with the crib, in the dresser, the top drawer, I've got lots of baby hats. My Mom has keys"

The nurse leaned down. "I have to bring you back," she said.

"Please make them give her a nicer hat," I repeated. Stupid, stubborn. She didn't need fashionable headgear, she needed a miracle, and even I could see that.

The nurse bent closer. "Tell me her name," she said. And sure enough, there was a piece of paper taped to one end of the box. "BABY GIRL SHAPIRO," it read.

I opened my mouth, not sure what would happen, but when the word came I knew instantly, in my heart, that it was right.

"Joy," I said. "Her name is Joy."

When I came back to my room Maxi was there. A quartet of candy-stripers cl.u.s.tered at the door of my room, their faces like blossoms, or balloons packed tight together. Maxi pulled a white curtain close around my bed, shutting them out. She was dressed more soberly than I'd ever seen her- black jeans, black sneakers, a hooded sweatshirt- and she was carrying roses, a ridiculous armload of roses, the kind of garland you'd drape around a prizewinning horse's neck. Or lay across a casket, I thought grimly.

"I came as soon as I heard," she said, her face drawn. "Your mother and sister are outside. They'll only let one of us in at a time."

She sat beside me and held my hand, the one with the tube in it, and didn't seem alarmed when I didn't look at her, or even squeeze back. "Poor Cannie," she said. "Have you seen the baby?"

I nodded, brushing tears from my cheeks. "She's very small," I managed, and started to sob.

Maxi winced, looking helpless, and dismayed at being helpless.

"Bruce came," I said, weeping.

"I hope you told him to go to h.e.l.l," said Maxi.

"Something like that," I said. I wiped my non-needled hand across my face and wished for Kleenex. "This is disgusting," I said, and hiccoughed a sob. "This is really pathetic and disgusting."

Maxi leaned close, cradling my head in her arm. "Oh, Cannie," she said sadly. I closed my eyes. There was nothing left for me to ask, nothing else to say.

After Maxi left I slept for a while, curled up on my side. If I had any dreams, I didn't remember them. And when I woke up Bruce was standing in the doorway.

I blinked and stared at him.

"Can I do anything?" he asked. I just stared, saying nothing. "Cannie?" he asked uneasily.

"Come closer," I beckoned. "I don't bite. Or push," I added meanly.

Bruce walked toward my bed. He looked pale, edgy, twitchy in his own skin, or maybe just unhappy to be near me again. I could see a sprinkling of blackheads on his nose, standing out in sharp relief, and I could tell from his posture, from the way his hands were crammed in his pockets and how his eyes never left the linoleum, that this was killing him, that he wanted to be anywhere but here. Good, I thought, feeling rage bubble up in my chest. Good. Let him hurt.

He settled himself on the chair next to my bed, looking at me in quick little peeks- the drainage tubes snaking out from beneath my sheet, the I.V. bag hanging beside me. I hoped that he was sickened by it. I hoped that he was scared.

"I can tell you exactly how many days it's been since we talked," I said.

Bruce closed his eyes.

"I can tell you exactly what your bedroom looks like, exactly what you said the last time we were together."

He grabbed for me, clutching blindly. "Cannie, please," he said. "Please. I'm sorry." Words I once thought I would have given anything to hear. He started crying. "I never wanted... I never meant for this to happen"

I looked at him. I didn't feel love, or hate. I didn't feel anything but a bone-deep weariness. Like I was suddenly a hundred years old, and I knew at that moment I would have to live a hundred more years, carrying my grief around like a backpack full of stones.

I closed my eyes, knowing that it was too late for us. Too much had happened, and none of it was good. A body in motion stays in motion. I'd started the whole thing by telling him I'd wanted to take a break. Or maybe he'd started it by asking me out in the first place. What did it matter anymore?

I turned my face to the wall. After a while, Bruce stopped crying. And a while after that, I heard him leave.

I woke up the next morning with sunlight spilling across my face. Instantly my mother hurried through the door and pulled a chair up beside my bed. She looked uncomfortable- she was good about cracking jokes, laughing things off, keeping a stiff upper lip and soldiering on, but she wasn't any good with tears.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm s.h.i.tty!" I shrieked, and my mother pulled back so fast that her wheeled chair scooted halfway across the room. I didn't even wait for her to pull herself back toward me before continuing my tirade. "How do you think I am? I gave birth to something that looks like a junior-high science experiment, and I'm all cut open and I h-h-hurt..."

I put my face in my hands and sobbed for a minute. "There's something wrong with me," I wept. "I'm defective. You should have let me die"

"Oh, Cannie," my mother said, "Cannie, don't talk that way."

"n.o.body loves me," I cried. "Dad didn't, Bruce didn't..."

My mother patted my hair. "Don't talk that way," she repeated. "You have a beautiful baby. A little on the pet.i.te side, for the time being, but very beautiful." She cleared her throat, got to her feet, and started pacing- typical Mom behavior when there was something painful coming.

"Sit down," I told her wearily, and she did, but I could see one of her feet jiggling anxiously.

"I had a talk with Bruce," she said.

I exhaled sharply. I didn't even want to hear his name. My mother could tell this from my face, but she kept talking.

"With Bruce," she continued, "and his new girlfriend."

"The Pusher?" I asked, my voice high and sharp and hysterical. "You saw her?"

"Cannie, she feels just awful. They both do."

"They should," I said angrily. "Bruce never even called me, the whole time I was pregnant, then the Pusher does her thing..."

My mother looked shaken by my tone. "The doctors aren't sure that's what caused you to..."

"It doesn't matter," I said querulously. "I believe that's what did it, and I hope that dumb b.i.t.c.h does, too."

My mother was shocked. "Cannie..."

"Cannie what? You think I'm going to forgive them? I'll never forgive them. My baby almost died, I almost died, I'll never have another baby, and now just because they're sorry, it's all supposed to be okay? I'll never forgive them. Never."

My mother sighed. "Cannie," she said gently.

"I can't believe you're taking their side!" I yelled.

"I'm not taking their side, Cannie, of course I'm not," she said. "I'm taking your side. I just don't think it's healthy for you to be so angry."

"Joy almost died," I said.

"But she didn't," said my mother. "She didn't die. She's going to be fine"

"You don't know that," I said furiously.

"Cannie," said my mother. "She's a little underweight, and her lungs are a little underdeveloped..."

"She was deprived of oxygen! Didn't you hear them! Deprived of oxygen! There could be all kinds of things wrong!"

"She looks just the way you did when you were a baby," my mother said impatiently. "She's going to be fine. I just know it."

"You didn't even know you were gay until you were fifty-six!" I shouted. "How am I supposed to believe you about anything!"

I pointed toward the door. "Go away," I said, and started to cry.

My mother shook her head. "I'm not going," she said. "Talk to me."

"What do you want to hear about?" I said, trying to wipe my face off, trying to sound normal. "My my a.s.shole ex-boyfriend's idiot new girlfriend pushed me, and my baby almost died"

But what was really wrong- the part that I didn't think I'd be able to bring myself to say- was that I had failed Joy. I'd failed to be good enough, pretty enough, thin enough, lovable enough, to keep my father in my life. Or to keep Bruce. And now, I'd failed at keeping my baby safe.