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As he did so, blood welled out from under his left hand and started to slide down the wall. "Shit," he said. The cut didn't hurt but he didn't want to mess up the paper. He gripped the knife in his teeth and reached around for the damp cloth that was hanging from the back pocket of his jeans.

When he lifted his hand away from the wall to wipe it, he saw that he had somehow cut himself vertically all the way down from his wrist to his elbow—and cut himself deep. There was a bloody handprint on the paper, and now blood was starting to run down his arm and drip quickly from his elbow. Instead of trying to wipe the mess off the wall, he wound the cloth tightly around his arm and shouted out, "Alison! Alison!"

There was a pause, then: "What's wrong? Do you need any help with the wallpaper?"

"I've cut myself, can you bring me up a towel or something?"

He eased himself down the stepladder, holding his arm

upright to relieve the pumping of his circulation. All the

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same the cloth was already soaked a dark crimson and drops of blood were pattering across the bare-boarded floor. The piece of wallpaper slid drunkenly sideways and then dropped down by his feet.

"Alison!"

"I'm coming!" she puffed. She reached the top of the stairs and crossed the landing, holding a checkered tea towel and a packet of Band-Aids. "My God," she said, when she saw the reddened cloth and the blood spattered all over the floor. "My God, Jerry, how did you do that?"

"I don't know . . . I was just trimming the top edge. I didn't even feel anything."

"My God, let me look at it."

She took hold of his hand and unwound the cloth. The cut in his arm was far more than an accidental nick—it was the kind of cut that a determined suicide would make, and blood was welling out of it relentlessly. Alison dabbed at it, but it was bleeding faster and faster, and in less than a minute her tea towel was drenched red, too. She took off her apron and bundled it into a pad.

"My belt," Jerry said, unfastening his buckle. "Tie it tight around here." He was already beginning to gulp with shock. "That's it, really tight."

Alison pulled out his brown leather belt and lashed it around his arm just below his bicep. She pulled it so tight that it squeaked. "Come downstairs, quick," she said. "I'll call 911."

She helped him to the door and down the two flights of stairs. He leaned against the wall as he went, leaving a bloody smear on the primrose-colored paint. When he reached the last three stairs he stumbled and staggered for­ward, and Alison had to pull at his shirt to stop him from falling over.

"Here," she said, as they went through to the kitchen. "Sit

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down. Keep your arm up high and I'll call the paramedics." Jerry kept swallowing and swallowing as if he were thirsty. The bundled-up apron was already soaked, and blood poured onto the kitchen table, running along the grain of the freshly stripped pine.

Alison picked up the phone. "Yes, ambulance, please. It's really urgent. My husband's cut his arm and he's bleeding so bad."

There was a blurting noise on the phone, and then the operator said, "I'm sorry, can you repeat that?"

"It's my husband! There's blood everywhere!"

"There seems to be a fault on the line, please say that again."

"For God's sake! My name is Alison Maitland, 4140 Davis Street, Church Hill! It's my husband!"

Jerry was sitting with his arm still raised, but his eyes were closed. Alison said, "Jerry! Jerry! Are you okay?"

His eyes flickered open and he nodded. "Feeling woozy, that's all."

"Please tell them to get here quick," Alison begged the operator. "I think he's going to pass out."

"Ma'am, can you repeat that address, please? I can hardly hear you."

"Forty-one forty Davis Street! You have to help me! There's so much blood! I've tied his belt around his arm, but he's cut himself all the way down from his wrist to his elbow. Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? There's so much blood!"

Jerry suddenly slumped forward, so that his forehead was pressed against the bloody tabletop. Alison dropped the phone and went over to lift him up again. "Jerry, you have to stay awake! I've called for the paramedics, they won't be long!"

Jerry stared at her with unfocused eyes. "I feel cold, Ali­son. Why am I feeling so goddamned cold?"

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She bent over him and put her arms around him. "It's the shock, sweetheart. You have to hold on."

"What?"

"Think of our baby. Think of Jemima. Think of all the good times we're going to have together."

"Good times," he repeated, numbly, as if he couldn't un­derstand what she meant.

She heard a tiny, diminished voice. It was coming from the phone that was dangling from the wall. "Hello? Hello? Are you still there, ma'am? Hello?"

She went over and scooped up the phone. "My husband looks just awful. He's shivering and he's very pale. How much longer is that ambulance going to take?"

"Hello? I'm sorry, you'll have to repeat that."

"My husband's dying! How much longer are you going to be?"

"Do you have another phone there? Maybe a cell phone?" "Listen!" Alison screamed. "I just need to know when the paramedics are going to get here!"

"Only about a minute now. Hold on."

Alison turned back to Jerry. She was shaking so much that she could hardly speak. "They're almost here now, sweetheart. Hang on in there."

She opened the kitchen closet and pulled out five or six clean tea towels, dropping even more of them onto the floor. As she bent to pick them up, she heard Jerry say, "Ah!" as if something had surprised him. She turned around, and to her horror saw that he had a deep horizontal cut on his face, starting from a quarter of an inch beneath his left eye, across his cheek, and into his ear, so that his earlobe was dangling from a single shred of skin.

Blood was streaming down his chin and spattering his shirt-collar.

"Jerry! Oh my God, what's happened?"

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He was so stunned that all he could do was shake his head from side to side, so that droplets of blood flew across the tabletop.

Alison folded up one of the tea towels and held it to his face. "The knife, Jerry . . . where's the knife? What have you done to yourself ?"

She pried open his left hand, sticky with blood, but it was empty, and he wasn't holding anything in his right hand, ei­ther. She looked on the floor, but there was no sign of his knife anywhere. How could he have cut himself, without a knife? She lifted the tea towel away from his face for a mo­ment and she could see that the cut under his eye was so deep that it had exposed the yellow fat of his cheek and his cheekbone.

"Oh, sweetheart, what have you done?" she sobbed. There was so much blood in the kitchen that it looked as if they had been having a paint fight. But now she could hear the yip-yip-yipping of the ambulance siren, only two or three blocks away.

"Hear that, Jerry? It's the paramedics. Hold on, sweet­heart, please hold on."

Jerry rolled his eyes up and stared at her. He was shiver­ing, and he had the numb, desperate expression of some­body who knows that they are not very far from death.

"Jerry, you're going to make it. You're going to be fine, sweetheart. The ambulance is right outside."

Jerry had never felt so cold in his life—a dead, terrible, all-pervasive cold that was creeping into his mind and into his body and gradually freezing his soul. A few minutes ago the kitchen had been dazzling with afternoon sunlight, but now it seemed to be dimming, and all the colors were fading to gray.

"It's getting so dark," he said, and his voice was thick with shock.

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The door chimes rang. Alison said, "Hold on, sweetheart. The paramedics are here." She stood up and started to walk toward the hallway. Jerry thought, Please, God, let me sur­vive. I have to survive, for Alison's sake, for the baby's sake. They already knew that she was going to be a girl, and they'd already chosen the name Jemima.