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girl spied him through the glassand weakly waved her hand in a sad little “I’m here again” kind of gesture.
    The woman entered the anteroom and removed her mask.
    “Hi,” she said. “Are you Tara’s dad?”
    He nodded and kept balancing on one leg, sliding on a shoe cover. He didn’t recognize her. He was sure he would have remembered that face.
    “I’m Doctor Frost,” she said with a light, faintly musical twang. She was older and more self-confident than a med student or resident but still a young woman. She pulled off her gloves and started to untie her gown as he was tying his. There was something oddly intimate about a man and a woman dressing and undressing together in a small room.
    “What are you, neurology? Infectious diseases?” Cyrus asked.
    “Psychiatry.”
    He was startled. “What’s the matter with her?”
    “Well, you know she had a seizure this morning and was readmitted with low blood counts and fever.”
    “Mentally,” he pressed. “I mean mentally.”
    “Emotionally, nothing beyond the obvious.”
    “Then why are you here?”
    “I’ve seen Tara before. Her mother requested a consult during her last hospitalization.”
    “A consult for what?”
    She looked at him square on and said, “I’m helping her with her fears.”
    With her gown off he could see she was petite and small-waisted. The photo ID hanging off her pocket showed her even younger, a tyro with long hair disappearing behind her shoulders. It was short now, businesslike but the same color as in the picture—of light passing through ancient amber. She had a natural kind of beauty requiring only a dusting of makeup, so unlike Marian, who habitually plastered layer upon layer. She met his now evident fury with luminous blue eyes and a disarming blend of firmness and fragility in the way she set her small jaw.
    Still, he angrily towered over her, a threatening presence in the tight confines of the gowning room. He snapped the surgical mask around his face in rage. “What the hell do you mean by fears?” he said too loudly, quickly dialing it back for Tara’s sake. “Are you talking about dying?”
    She held her ground and said softly, “Your daughter has end-stage brain cancer. She’s young but she knows thescore. In my experience it helps kids to talk about their feelings and their fears.”
    “I’ve got news for you,” he spat through the mask in a whispered shout, “She’s not going to die! I don’t want you seeing her anymore.”
    She had shucked and binned the last of her sterile gear, maintaining her composure. She replied evenly, professionally, “I think you and Tara’s mom should talk about this.”
    “We’re divorced.”
    “That doesn’t mean you can’t make a responsible decision about your daughter. You might want to talk to Tara too. My only interest is her well-being.” Her hand was on the door. “By the way, it was nice meeting you. Tara talks about you all the time.”
    As soon as he entered her room, his daughter, a sliver of an eight year old, scolded him in a birdlike voice. “Why were you shouting at Emily?”
    “Is that her name?”
    “Emily Frost,” the small voice replied. “Like Jack Frost.”
    “I wasn’t shouting.”
    There was an infusion tube dripping blood into her arm and a spent bag of antibiotics. She looked limp. Her skinwas translucent, white and fine as rice paper. But even when she was sick, even without her silky hair, her small pouting angel face looked pretty. Freddy the Teddy, the omnipresent pink bear, was lying beside her, tucked under the sheet. She was a bit old for a stuffed animal but her illness knocked her back a few years. She set Cyrus on his heels by declaring, “She’s my dying doctor.”
    He was grateful he was wearing the mask. “You don’t need that kind of doctor!” he exclaimed, stooping to caress her, a frustrating barrier of latex between his fingers and her skin. He started spinning out mundane questions: When did she start