Nita scrambled out of bed, shut the noisy thing off, and went to see if her dad was up yet. Pausing outside the master bedroom, listening, she couldn't hear any sound of anyone stirring in there.
She knocked softly on the door. No answer. "Dad..."
Still nothing. Nita eased the door softly open and peeked in.
Her father was asleep in the reading chair in the corner between the two bedroom windows. He sat slumped over, his mouth hanging open a little, a slight snore emitting from him—almost the same sound Ponch made when he lay on his back with his feet in the air and snored; the thought almost made her smile. But smiling about anything right now seemed like some kind of betrayal.
She glanced at the bed, which had not been slept in, and let out an unhappy breath, then went over to her dad and crouched down beside the chair. "Daddy," she said.
His eyes opened slowly; he looked at her as if he couldn't understand what he was doing here.
Then it all came back to him. She saw the pain fill his eyes. Nita clenched her jaw and managed to keep from getting any weepier than she already felt. "It's eight-thirty, Dad," she said. "You said we should go to the hospital in an hour or so."
"Yeah." He slowly sat upright and rubbed his face. "Yeah." He looked at her then. "How are you doing, honey?"
"Better. Maybe better," she said. "Daddy, I guess I was so scared, I forgot for a minute." "Forgot what?"
"Maybe I can do something."
Her father looked at her, uncomprehending.
"Daddy," Nita said, "I am a wizard. In fact, we've got two of them in the house. And we know a bunch more of them, all over the place. Wizardry's about fixing broken things, healing hurt things... saving lives. We must be able to do something."
Her dad's expression went curiously neutral. "Honey," he said, sounding slightly embarrassed, "you know, that's the kind of thing I...try not to think about. It still seems like a fairy tale, sometimes. Even when everything's all right, I don't think about it much. And right now... now I'd be afraid it'll..."
Fail, Nita thought. It was the thought that had been nagging at her, too. "Dad, in Mom's case, it's really complicated. I've barely had time to start working out what to do. But there has to be something. I'm not going to do anything else until I find out what."
Her father rubbed his face again. "Well... all right. In the meantime, we'd better get ourselves over there. Have you had your shower?"
"Not yet."
"You go ahead. I'll make us some breakfast. Is Dairine up?" "I don't know. She had trouble getting to sleep last night." "She wasn't alone," her father said softly.
He reached out to Nita and hugged her. "Oh, honey..." He ran out of words for a few moments. Then he hugged her harder. "You hang in there. We'll all keep each other going somehow, and it'll be all right."
"Yeah," Nita said, hoping that it was true.
When they got to the hospital, Nita's mother was sleeping, having been up early for the MRI scan. "She was awake late last night," the head nurse, that large lady with the bun hairstyle, told Nita's dad, "and it seems like a good idea for her to get caught up on her sleep now. But her doctor's finishing another procedure, and she asked me if you could wait for half an hour or so. She'd like to see you."
"No problem," Nita's father said. In reality it wasn't even that long; after she and Dairine went up to take a quick look in at their mom, and Nita saw that she was indeed sleeping peacefully, Nita left Dairine there to have a moment with their mom by herself, and made her way back to the little waiting room, where she found her dad already talking to Dr. Kashiwabara. The doctor looked up as Nita came in.
"Good morning," she said as Nita sat down. "Well, your mom had a quiet night—except for the scans, of course. She's been doing the sensible thing, and sleeping when we weren't actually running her in and out of the machines. In fact, she fell asleep during the MRI this morning, which I wouldn't normally have thought possible; it's like sleeping in a garbage can while someone's banging on it."
"If you lived long with our daughters," Nita's dad said, "you'd be surprised what you'd learn to sleep through."
Dr. Kashiwabara smiled faintly. "Come to think of it," she said, "where's the younger one?"
Nita looked around in surprise. Dairine should have come back from their mom's room by now. "Be right back," she said.
Nita retraced her steps. Slipping quietly into the room, she found Dairine standing there, her back against the wall near the door, looking across the closer, empty bed at the curtained one where their mother lay. In her arms she was holding Spot—which Nita hadn't noticed Dairine bringing to the hospital in the first place—and the whole room was sizzling with the electric-air feel of a wizardry on the ebb, either newly dismantled or incomplete.
"What are you doing?" Nita whispered, and grabbed Dairine by the upper arm. "Come on\"
Dairine didn't resist her; she didn't have the energy. Nita was sure she knew why, but there was no dealing with it right now. She hustled Dairine back to the little conference room and sat her down.
Nita's father gave Dairine one of those looks that said, Misbehaving again, I see, but said nothing aloud. The doctor greeted Dairine, then turned back to their father.
"Well," she said, "Mrs. Callahan's status is pretty stable. And now we've had the scans that I wanted. I've had a chance to look at them, and this morning I had a couple of my colleagues look at the results. We're all in agreement."
She took a long breath. "Mr. Callahan," she said, "I don't know; you'll have to tell me whether you think it's better that you and I should discuss this alone first."
"Not a chance," Nita said. Dairine shook her head.
Her father swallowed. "They're both intelligent girls, Doctor," he said. "They're going to have to hear, anyway. Better they should get the explanation from you than secondhand from me."
The doctor nodded, then got up, shut the door to the corridor, and sat down again. "All right," she said. Her voice was measured, gentle. "Mr. Callahan, the growth in your wife's brain is definitely a tumor. We're ninety percent sure that it's a growth of a type called glioblastoma multiform. This kind of growth is very invasive, very fast growing. It invades nearby tissue quickly and destructively. And it is usually malignant."
They all sat still as statues.
"The only way we're going to be a hundred percent sure of the assessment is to do a biopsy," Dr. Kashiwabara said. "We'll do that in a day or two, so that we can determine our course of action. But I want to stress to you that the tumor itself can be removed. That will relieve the pressure on the surrounding structures." "But that's not everything, is it?" Nita said.
The doctor shook her head. "I said that this kind of growth is invasive. It has a tendency to spread—to seed itself throughout the body, to other organs: the lymph nodes, the liver and spleen, the bone marrow. Because glioblastomas grow so quickly at this stage in their development, it's hard to tell how long the tumor may have been there in 'silent' mode, seeding itself. The important thing is going to be to start chemotherapy as soon as possible after the surgery to remove the tumor. Possibly radiotherapy as well."
Nita's father nodded. "Have you discussed this with my wife?" he said.
"Not yet," said the doctor. "That comes next. I wanted a chance to prepare you first, since you two will want to talk about it together, and it's important that you both have all the facts."
"The 'seeding,'" her father said. "It's cancer that you mean. Spreading." "Yes," said Dr. Kashiwabara.
Nita felt as if she had been turned to ice where she sat. Cancer was a word that she had come across repeatedly in her reading that morning, but she had been trying to ignore it. Now she realized her folly, for the most basic tool of wizardry is words, and a wizard who ignores words willfully is only sabotaging herself.
"What are her chances?" Nita's father said. "It's too soon to tell," said the doctor. "Right now our priority is to get that tumor out of there. Afterward there'll be time to look at the long-term options." "Is the operation dangerous?" Nita said.