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Show in my father's house/ 223 Sally guiding me up the front steps, telling me when to step up. The smell of pencil shavings and floor wax hit my senses with the freshness of the first day at school. The hall became a conveyer belt, moving me along. The school nurse took one look at me and set me on the cot. She put a pillow under my broken arm. I had passed the infirmary before and had seen a girl lying Dn this cot. She was beautiful but very pale, her blue eyes like empty cups, the overhead light pouring into them. Something about ier - not her coloring, but the fragile, tentative quality of •\er expression - reminded me of my mother. Someone said the girl had leukemia, that she was slowly dying. She spent most of ier school day on the cot. I stared up at the glaring white expanse of the ceiling, so bright, all that light in a small square 3f white invading my pupils, threatening to engulf me. I thought 3f the dying girl. It was strange and frightening to be in her slace. Her spirit, her claim to this cot was stronger than mine C looked away from the ceiling with its waves of white light, my leart pounding. The nurse placed a scratchy wool blanket over me, but I didn't i'eel any warmer and the grey-green folds made my stomach turn. To divert my attention from the rolling, sickening waves of blanket, - watched the nurse who was talking on the telephone. She was Italian, I knew from her name - Mrs. Pianella. She hung up the >hone and gave me a sharp look. "Your mother doesn't want me to :ake you to the hospital. She wants me to take you home. What lo you think about that?" I looked at her, blinking, trying to focus my eyes elsewhere |