Let something of mine be taken from me! Let Father be returned to us. So the son David Rainey, thirteen years old, who prided himself on not-believing-in-God, prayed. 2. In the medical center whose higher floors were frequently shrouded in mist, in the men’s lavatory in the eighth-floor cardiac unit, he hid away to cry. What he hated about crying was his face shattering into pieces like a pane of struck glass. His eyes turned to liquid. His ridiculous nose ran. In a fury he tore off a long strip of toilet paper in which to blow it. A Möbius strip, unending. In despair thinking I hate them all! For it seemed to him that all of the family, not only his stricken father, had betrayed him. His father would be nine days in the cardiac unit. On the first interminable day, David entered the lavatory to hide and realized too late he wasn’t alone. Somebody was in one of the stalls, sobbing. A helpless muffled sound as if the invisible person (a boy David’s age?) was jamming his knuckles against his mouth.
