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eyes—a montage of stray dogs and trailer parks and high school equivalency tests. “Well,” I say, “it’s easier when there are siblings still alive.”
    The coordinator glances at me. “She’s only thirty-four.”
    “Jesus. Breast?”
    She nods and we both instinctively let our hands flutter across our own chests, in a gesture that’s part prayer and part self-exam. Breast cancer is usually one of the luckier ones—it involves a part of the body you can live without and is statistically quite survivable, if caught early. But they don’t always catch it early, especially in women who don’t go to the doctor unless they’re sick. Women who wait until they can feel the lump through their shirt before they make an appointment.
    “Kids?”
    “Twelve and fifteen.”
    “Husband?”
    “Not in this jurisdiction.”
    “I’m not sure I want this one, Teresa.”
    “No one does.” She hands me the folder. “Just go meet her. Give it a chance. She’s very . . . plucky.”
    For the first time in a year I walk down the hallway that leads to the patients’ rooms. I started volunteering here after Mark had his first heart attack and we moved to the gated community. He would have preferred I go on the board of the symphony or head a gala for the art museum. Something elegant and clean, but the doctor had told me that the walls of his heart were as thin as tissue paper and I’d headed straight to hospice that very afternoon. It was pure superstition. A search for some sort of talisman. Maybe I thought that if I faced death head-on every day, then it could never sneak up on me.
    I didn’t even try to explain this to Mark. He was angry all the time by then and he took my choice of hospice as a major rebellion, some attempt to humiliate him at the club with what he called my Jesus complex. He didn’t like the fact that I spent my afternoons cutting old people’s toenails and driving their spouses to Kmart, or the time I came home smelling of some poor woman’s postchemo vomit. “Why are you wasting your time?” he’d ask me. “Anyone can wash hair and pick up pizza. You should be doing something that matters.”
    When I walk into the Dogwood Room—we name them after flowers—Carolina is propped against a wall of pillows with the TV remote in one hand and the bed control in the other. A lumpy red afghan is stretched across her knees and her hair is thin but neatly tucked behind her ears. Her expression is a little expectant, as if she were sitting in a plane on a runway.
    I introduce myself and she gives me a big crooked smile and says, “I just love this place.”
    Not the most typical reaction to finding yourself in hospice, but maybe this was what Teresa meant when she called Carolina plucky. Because the woman doesn’t seem that sick and certainly not confused. In fact, considering the age of her kids and her general condition, I’m surprised she elected to come in as early as she did, but she seems to be treating the place like a hotel. This may be the first time in her life she’s had a bed, a TV, and a toilet all to herself.
    I start toward the chair but she pats the bed with surprising vigor, so I sit down beside her. Or, more accurately, I lie down beside her, because the minute my butt hits the sloping mattress I roll flat on my back, looking up at the clouds painted on the ceiling.
    “Tell me all about yourself,” she says.
    I’ve never had a client ask me anything about my own life. I sneak a peek to my left. Carolina is also staring intently at the clouds, like they might start moving.
    “It’s more important that I understand what you need me to do,” I say. Apparently I’ve just agreed to be her volunteer. “I know you have kids. Do they need help with homework? Groceries brought in? Rides to soccer practice and things like that?”
    She shakes her head. “My sister, Virginia, never had her own and she came straightaway and I’ve lived in the same development and worked at the same