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weekend day off from the hospital schlepping Heath and me around the city for Beatrix-approved birthday activities. We waited in early-morning fog for forty-five minutes to have milk shakes for breakfast at St. Francis Diner (my favorite) before nerding out at Green Apple Books (where Heath ponied up for a 1960s coffee table book about medical oddities that he’d had on hold for me). We finally ended up at the Legion of Honor, which, in San Francisco, is an art museum—not a brotherhood of knights, or whatever it is in France.
    I know a museum may not be everyone’s idea of Super Birthday Funtimes, but I really wanted to see this exhibition called Flesh and Bone , and it featured one piece in particular that had me salivating: a Max Br ö del diagram of a heart. I’d posted a link to it on the Body-O-Rama site when I’d blogged about my birthday plans, and, holy smokes, seeing it in person didn’t disappoint. Br ö del is pretty much the godfather of modern medical illustration. He was a German who immigrated here to draw diagrams for Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the early 1900s. His illustrations were beautifully detailed and had this weird, surreal quality.
    I’d studied his stuff in books and had even copied a few for practice. But seeing the actual carbon-dust-on-stipple-board drawing was breathtaking.
    In fact, even after I’d looked at everything else, I went back to that heart diagram for one last look, admiring every detail, including the tiny handwritten labels: AORTA , LEFT VENTRICLE , TRACHEA . It was so completely perfect. And I couldn’t help but think he’d drawn it from a dissected heart. If Dr. Sheridan would just let me spend some time the anatomy lab, I might be the next Max Br ö del. I mean, anything’s possible, right?
    But even though I was currently in muscle-and-sinew heaven, it didn’t mean that my family was. Mom kept trying to steer me into one of the permanent collections to see Rembrandt and Rubens: “They’re famous, Bex. And so beautiful.” Eventually Heath griped and groaned and yawned us into the museum’s overpriced cafe for lunch. It was pretty much the same kind of food we had in the deli at Alto Market, so none of it was all that appealing to me. But we ordered, then snagged seats on the patio outside. And because I was a total loser, I checked Body-O-Rama ’s comments one more time, only to be disappointed anew.
    My mom was checking her phone, too. I so wanted to ask her about that weird late-night phone call she’d gotten the other day, but I was worried I’d end up incriminating myself. I’m a terrible liar.
    â€œYou’re eating that, Bex,” she said, nudging my shoe beneath the table as she futzed with the fanning dark hair around her temples. She had a pixie cut, which was pretty much just a shorter version of Heath’s haircut—only where his was all blown up, hers was blown down. She was tiny, like me, and the elfish thing looked good on her. But as long as I lived with the two of them, I could never cut my hair short, or we’d all look like some freaky family gang, ready to lure strangers into our house with Kool-Aid. Hence the braids.
    I made a face at Mom. “The bread’s stale.”
    â€œIt was twenty dollars. It can’t be stale.”
    Heath slung his arm over the back of my chair. “Sure it can. Noah says half the starred restaurants in town recycle bread from other tables.”
    â€œSaint Noah is never wrong,” I pointed out. Noah was my brother’s latest boyfriend, a twenty-five-year-old engineer who had a million-dollar condo in the Castro. He’s stable and smart, and even though Heath had yet to bring him home and introduce us, we’d heard so much about him that we were kind of in love with him, too—especially my mom. I think she was hoping he’d be a positive influence on my not-so-stable brother, who had already