Police. Margo answered some of it but they wanted him. Doctor’s hands cupped in front of her — clasped, he thinks he means, and at her chest, serious expression unchanged, takes a breath to speak. He looks away and says “I know she’s dead, that’s what you came over to tell me, let’s keep it between us and not the kid, but isn’t that so? Don’t answer if it is, and notice I’m not looking at your face to see what your expression says. Or maybe she’s alive. That you can tell me — no, don’t answer that either, for now if you didn’t tell me that’d mean she was dead, right? But if you just threw out that she was alive you’d see a man jump or rise but go clear up to the sky and take you and my daughter Margo here with him. Tell me she’s saved,” still not looking at her, looking at the curb, road, doctor’s shoes, even white eyelets for the white laces, car driving past, Margo still sleeping or resting or pretending to sleep or rest, not at the walk to the entrance where they were working over Julie on the run, or something they might have dumped or dropped on the ground along the way, a towel, tubing, syringe cap, bloody strip of gauze, but he doesn’t look. “Or just still alive, that she is, but not out of danger and that I can speak to her, even if for now she wouldn’t be able to hear. Too critical, but that can change, and it seems when people are critical, young people particularly, they always rally. Rally, what a word, Let’s all rally around, really rally around. If only we could, and prayer helped, and so on. My father, the doctors used to say, was a goner I can’t tell you how many times when we took him to the hospital in a coma, but he always, till he died at home in one — our home, a coma, meaning my home as a child, though I was a grownup when he died — managed to survive. I didn’t make myself clear then and haven’t been, but as I was telling myself before, something personal between me and me, I shouldn’t be able to — expected to, is what I told myself. Another bad example. And he was old and she’s so young, his body had gone through lots of drink and cigars and all that crap, while she hasn’t even started — milk and English muffins are what she loves most to drink and eat, chocolate milk, even better, and the muffins buttered with real butter — so I don’t have to believe in miracles regarding her survival. The young always have a greater chance of beating the odds or just surviving a tremendous body trauma, as they say, isn’t that true? And they should too, for reasons of living and right and what ought to be and what’s due them and also if there’s a God in heaven or some place, just because they are young and haven’t, so to speak — and not just the cigars and drink — lived, though there’s a lot of life in six years, little that it is. You must know what I mean. And six years, that’s how old she is; this one’s nine, and that’s it for my kids, meaning all there are. Anyway, I can believe anything you say so long as it’s good and hopeful, and I’m not taking you away from her, am I? and please excuse me that I didn’t go into the lobby to make it easier for you to speak to me and not have you come out so far, but there are people and police there I didn’t want to see. Keeping you, I mean,” looking at her, “I’m not keeping you away from her where you can be an important part of her surviving?” “No.” “You are a doctor, yes?” “I’m a doctor. Doctor Jones.” “I can see that and I can believe anything you say if it’s good or just a little hopeful, but I said that. I should say something I haven’t said, but what? I’m obviously in bad shape, that’s obvious, and you’re obviously a doctor, I can see that as I’ve said, the tag, but she’s dead, right? Don’t say it or even give it away with your face, try not to, at least, but she is, isn’t she, which is what you came over to tell me and I absolutely don’t want to hear. No one wants to die before his kids do more than I.” “We probably shouldn’t talk about it here, Mr. Fry.” “Frey, it’s pronounced, Frey, but that’s not important, so what is? Not my name.” “Mr. Frey, excuse me — but it’s probably not a good idea to discuss this in front of your daughter unless you’re sure she’s asleep and can’t hear.” “You mean this one.” “Yes.” “She’s asleep. I can tell by her light breathing and easy way she’s lying on me. But the other one. Don’t say.” She bites her lips. “There was no conceivable way,” she starts to say. “No conceivable way,” he says. She nods, is talking, saying something, something’s being said, thought he told her not to say anything, but she did, so what? Won’t listen, or can’t hear. No insides, nothing inside, so cold inside, no conceivable way she started to say, or said but it was part of something else she started to say that he missed, because nothing to hear with, everything’s frozen, all of him’s sick but he doesn’t want to vomit, can’t, if it’s coming up, even feel it, though he is faint, so good, let me go. Screens coming down around him, bang-bang. Shields, really, sky to floor. She’s talking, saying something, something’s still being said, she’s still standing, shaking her head now, commiserative look, though he told her not to look, whatever you do don’t give it away, windows closing around him, thick, then door following door following door, slamming shut and closing him off, voice in his head saying “I’ve been cut short,” but not his, knows whose it is. He believes in quick spirits? Thinks he gets what the whole thing means. Hears a bird and there is one, at first thought, well at first thought, it was just in his head, but a bird in a tree near them, answered by another in a tree across from it or one not too far away, same call, back and forth, cheep-cheep, cheep-cheep-cheep, and so on, like Morse, saying in code “We’re bell-like birds, knelling death.” Bellbirds, bell-bell-bell-birds. Grabs his ears, folds them over the holes and squashes them closed. It would be nice not to breathe now, not to breathe from now on in, just to instantly stop or disappear, right now and here the end, kaput for good. But Margo, his darling Margo, what would she do if he did and that sort of thing? Mein licht in heaven, huh? And Lee, for then there’d be two gone when she’d need him for Julie when that time comes, which it will, just wait. But Margo. Minor light in nacht, nicht in what, huh? Panic, her dead or disappeared dada stopped, run out into the driveway, under a car wheel, if one didn’t get her before that: all the way back to the highway to die. What’s he talking about? That plus the nicht what. She’d stay put but would never be the same. Hold her, stay, best thing, now you’re talking. But so fucking co, so co, can’t for the life of him stand it. And what’s there? Body all bare, blank and hollow and wet with icy sweat but why wipe it? besides: can’t. “Yes,” she’s saying, which he can hear now, her head bent to one side to show sympathy, and that sympathetic puss, one of her hands taking his which he shoves off. Don’t show, yes means death, show means no, co means what? can’t she see that? but “Yes, yes,” he says, hates them: give life, take life, work with their picks and drills on life, don’t be irrational, “that’s right, no,” since she seems to have answered something he seems to have said and in a way where he’d made sense, but what, he doesn’t know. “Yes, I’m afraid so,” she says, “I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you how much. What in the world can be worse? Doctors know. We haven’t seen it all, believe me. We’re human beings first — mothers, fathers, just people. One doesn’t have to have children to understand. I wish — we all do — some of them were crying when they were trying to revive her — it could have been otherwise. How much we do, honestly, sir, Mr. Frey. I’d have given anything. We all would have. But she wasn’t breathing and her heart had stopped and rigidity was already setting in.” Tries closing her off by waving her away with both hands. Wants her to disappear. The whole scene to go except Margo, and Julie, of course, but hears her. “When she got here we couldn’t do a thing. There was no conceivable way as I mentioned before. She arrived in an exanimate, unresuscitable, deceased state and we couldn’t for anything get her around, what more can I say?” Nothing, none, thank you, he thinks, you’ve said everything inconceivable, go away. “Nothing, none, inconceivable,” he says, “I heard. Amazing, just amazing. I always thought kids were so strong and savable no matter what the obstacles, but of course up to a point. But that point way beyond our point and that they bounced back, like that, or sort of,” snapping his fingers or trying to but they don’t snap. She’s saying no, it’s not always the case, that “up to a point” he said, though their reviviscent and recuperative chances are usually enhanced because of their youth, but again up to a point. Then he says “Injuries, not obstacles, and I want the truth. This some kind of ruse? I’m — even my other daughter here — are we being tested for some reason in this way? No of course not, why would anyone? no rest or ruse. Seeing is believing, hey? Feeling is. You feel and her skin’s got the feel of slick dried leaves and things are hardening up in her limbs and there’s no beat and nothing brings anything back and the rest of it, her breath and brain waves, and that’s the reason for your belief? Well why not. Let’s not just think of the poor survivors. She was dead coming here, dead down that road and along the way, over the overpass, under the under-something, onto the ramp and across the bridge, that’s from an easy-reader book I used to read to her when she was even a littler kid and then she learned by heart and ended up reading on her own, under, over, by the, all prepositions I for some dumb reason only just realized, out of, into, down the path, between the rocks, along the lake, through the woods, up Spook Hill, probably the hardest words for a kid to comprehend the meaning of, wouldn’t you say, for what are they? Nouns name things, verbs are active, even adjectives have a little more life or something to them. No,” and inside: all a lie. This, that, everything about her today. She wasn’t in the car; yes she was. She’s home, sleeping peacefully, missed her flight. Huh? There are drawings of hers at home. Oh boy there are. She loved to draw. “I like art best,” she used to say, for years. As a very little kid always scribbling pictures and recently subscribing them with titles and dialog. “The owl flies away.” (“Daddy, how do you spell ‘flies’? Not the flies that are pests but the ones where something flies away?”) “Mommy, Daddy, Margo, me and the Iguana I want them to buy for me.” (“Does ‘guana’ start off with