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me, filled with all the things I wanted—a career and love and all I was going to be and do. And you’re holding out scraps of it, little pieces that won’t add up to anything. How can you expect me to be happy about that?”
    “I didn’t say ‘happy.’ I want you to simply make the most of the life you do have.”
    I close my eyes and shake my head. “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”
    “All right,” he says. “Let’s talk about your leaving the hospital.”
    For a moment I can’t breathe. My eyelids snap open. “You mean I can go back?”
    “No,” he says. “You need to live here in San Antonio, where you can be treated at the hospital as an outpatient.”
    “But where? I don’t know anyone here.”
    He smiles again. “Oh, little Dina, do you think we’d turn you out with a map and an apartment guide? Believe me, we’ll find a foster family who’ll take good care of you.”
    I realize I’m not thinking clearly. I’m trying to absorb this news. I’m surprised to find that I dread having to live with strangers. I long for the comfort of the home that’s familiar to me, the people I know.
    And there was a promise.
    “What about the little girl they put in this room—the one who was in the accident—Julie Kaines? What are they going to do about her?”
    “I don’t know,” he says. “She isn’t my patient.”
    I lean forward and grab his arm. “Listen, Dr. Cruz, she’s awfully frightened. She hasn’t got any relatives and doesn’t even want to talk about where she’s lived. I think she’s afraid to tell anyone—even me. But she does trust me, and she made me promise I’d stay with her. I can’t break that promise.”
    “You can’t stay here,” he says. “You’re well enough to leave the hospital as soon as they find a home for you.”
    “I guess what I mean is, could they put both of us in the same home? At least for a few months? I think it would help her if we stayed together for a while.”
    He studies me for a moment. Then he says, “I’d have to talk to her doctor, of course, and I don’t know how all the red tape works. I’ll ask a few questions. We’ll see what we can find out.”
    I know what he’s thinking. He’s wondering if this will help me get my mind going in the direction he wants. I’ll let him jump to any conclusions hewants. I won’t tell him that it’s not going to do me a bit of good.
    It’s just that I made a promise to Julie. And I can understand how scared she is. I’ve been scared, too. What I don’t understand is why no one around here seems to be worried about what Julie said—that she was supposed to die, too. I can’t walk away and leave her with a fear that she might be murdered. Just because no one saw that guy Sikes doesn’t mean he wasn’t in the room.
    Dr. Cruz picks up his clipboard and makes some notes. Then he gives me another big smile. I automatically smile back, and he looks pleased and encouraged.
    “I’ll try,” he says again, and leaves the room.
    A hospital volunteer comes by with the mail, and I reach for my letter, hoping it’s from Holley Jo, who hasn’t written for almost two weeks. Or Rob. Just once, if it could be from Rob. But it’s never been from Rob. I open a funny card from Carlotta, just signed with her name.
    The morning sunlight hurts my eyes, making them water, and I blink. I’m glad she sent me the card, but couldn’t she tell me what was happening at the home? Couldn’t anyone write that the six-year-olds had started their swimming lessons and they wanted me to come back and be their teacher, or that whoever had replaced me in the first-aid class wishes I was still there?
    Couldn’t someone say how cool the lake water is early in the morning before the sun has warmed it?And if the old, blue station wagon still makes that
buckety-buckety
noise that the mechanic never has been able to fix? And if the driver’s-ed teacher still keeps teasing the kids in his class, telling the slow, scared ones