Victoria Turner put her hand on Lizzie’s forehead, and her violet eyes widened. Lizzie didn’t seem to know, her, that anybody was there. She gave another cough, a small one, arid started moaning. I felt despair start in my bowels, the kind you feel when there’s no hope and you don’t see how you can bear it. I hadn’t felt that kind of despair, me, since my wife Rosie died, twelve years ago. I never thought I’d have to feel it again.

Victoria Turner took a scarf out of her pocket and knelt by Lizzie. She didn’t seem at all afraid, her. One of the thoughts I’d had in the night, God forgive me, was: Is this sickness catching? Could Annie get it, her, and die too? Annie…

“Cough for me, sweetheart,” Victoria Turner said. “Come on, cough into the scarf.”

In a few minutes, Lizzie did, her, though not because she was asked. Big slimy gobs of stuff from her tortured lungs, greenish gray. Victoria Turner caught it, her, in the scarf and looked at it closely. Me, I had to look away. That was Lizzie’s lungs coming up, Lizzie’s lungs rotting themselves away.

“Excellent,” Victoria Turner said, “green. It’s bacterial. Now we know. You’re in luck, Lizzie.”

Luck! I saw Annie curve her claws again, her, and I even saw what for: This donkey was enjoying this, her. It was some kind of exciting. Like a holovid story.

“Bacterial is good,” Victoria Turner said, looking up at me, “because the medication can be far less specific. You have to tailor antivirals, at least grossly. But wide-spectrum antibiotics are easy.”

Annie said roughly, “What’s Lizzie got, her?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. But this will almost surely take care of it.” From another pocket she drew a flat piece of plastic, tore it open, and slapped a round blue patch on Lizzie’s neck.

“But you should force more water down her. You don’t want to risk dehydration.”

Annie stared, her, at the blue patch on Lizzie’s neck. It looked like the ones the medunit put on, but how did we really know, us, what was in it? We didn’t really know nothing.

Lizzie sighed and quieted. Nobody said nothing. After a few minutes, Lizzie was asleep.

“Best thing for her,” Victoria Turner said crisply. I saw again, me, that she liked this. “Not even Miranda Sharifi herself could equal the benefits of sleep.”

I remembered, me, hearing that name, but I couldn’t think where.

Annie was a different woman, her. She gazed at Lizzie, sleeping peacefully, and at the patch, and Annie seemed to shrink and calm down, both, like a sail collapsing. She looked at the floor, her. “Thank you, doctor. I didn’t realize, me.”

Dr. Turner looked surprised, her, then she smiled. Like something was funny. “You’re welcome. And maybe in return you can do something for me.”

Annie looked wary, her. Donkeys don’t ask Livers to do favors, them. Donkeys pay taxes to us; we give votes to them. But we don’t tell each other, us, more than we got to, and we don’t ask things of each other. That ain’t the way it’s done.

But, then, donkey doctors don’t go wandering around East Oleanta dressed in torn yellow jacks neither. We ain’t even seen a doctor in East Oleanta, us, since a new plague broke out four years ago and a doctor came from Albany to vaccinate everybody with some new stuff the medunit didn’t have.

“I’m looking for someone,” Dr. Turner said. “Someone I was supposed to meet here, but we apparently got our data confused. A woman, a girl really, about this tall, dark hair, a slightly large head.”

I thought, me, of the girl in the woods, and quick tried to look like I wasn’t thinking of nothing at all. That girl came from Eden, I was sure of it, me — and Eden don’t got nothing to do with donkeys. It’s about Livers. Dr. Turner was watching close, her. Annie shook her head, cool as ice, even though I knew she probably remembered that other girl, the big-headed one she said she saw at the town meeting when Jack Sawicki called the district supervisor about them rabid racoons. Or maybe it was the same big-headed girl — I hadn’t thought, me, about that before, me. How many big-headed maybe-donkey girls did we have running around the woods near East Oleanta? Why did we have any?

Annie said, polite but not very, “How’d you miss your friend? Don’t she know, her, where you are?”

“I fell asleep,” Dr. Turner said, which explained nothing. She said it funny, too. “I fell asleep on the gravrail. But I think she might be around here someplace.”

“I never saw nobody like that, me,” Annie said firmly.

“How about you, Billy?” Dr. Turner said. She probably knew my name, her, even before Annie said it. She’d been in East Oleanta for a week, her, eating at the cafe, talking to whoever would talk to her, which wasn’t many.

“I never saw nobody like that, me,” I said. She stared at me hard. She didn’t believe me, her.

“Then let me just ask something else. Does the name ‘Eden’ mean anything to you?”

A gust of wind could of blown me over.

But Annie said cool as January, “It’s in the Bible. Where Adam and Eve lived, them.”

“Right,” Dr. Turner said. “Before the Fall.” She stood up and stretched. Her body under the jacks was too skinny, at least by me. A woman should have some softness on her bones.

“I’ll come back to look in on Lizzie tomorrow,” Dr. Turner said, and I saw, me, that Annie didn’t want her to come back, and then that Annie did. This was a doctor. Lizzie slept peaceful, her. Even from by the door, she looked cooler to me.

When the doctor left, Annie and I looked at each other, us. Then Annie’s face broke up. Just went from solid flesh creased with worry to a mess of lines that didn’t have nothing to do with one another, and she started to cry, her. Before I even thought about it I put my arms around her. Annie clung back, hard, and at the feel of her soft breasts against my chest, I went a little crazy. I didn’t think, me. I just raised her face to mine and kissed her.

And Annie Francy kissed me back.

None of your grateful-daughter crap, neither. She cried and pointed to Lizzie and kissed me with her soft berry lips and pushed her breasts against me. Annie Francy. I kissed her back, my mind not even working, it — the words only came later — and then it was like we just met instead of knowing each other for years, instead of me being sixty-eight and Annie thirty-five, instead of everything breaking down and East Oleanta coming apart like it was. Annie Francy kissed me like I was a young man, me — and I was. I ran my hands, me, over her body, and I led her into the bedroom, leaving Lizzie sleeping peaceful as an angel, and I closed the door. Annie was laughing and weeping, the way I forgot, me, that women can do, and she lay her big beautiful body on the bed with me like I was thirty-five, too.

Annie Francy.

If that donkey doctor in yellow jacks had come back then and asked me again where Eden was — if she’d of done that, I could of told her, me. In this room. On this bed. With Annie Francy. Here.

We slept till morning, us. I woke up before Annie. The light was pale gray, thin. For a long time I just sat, me, on the edge of the bed, looking at Annie. I knew this was a one-time thing. I could feel it, even before she fell alseep, in that little space of time when we held each other afterwards. I could feel it, me, in her arms, and in the set of her neck, and in her breathing. What I needed, me, was the words to tell her that it was all right. That this was more than I expected, me, although less than I dreamed. I wasn’t going to tell her that part. You always dream more.

But Annie didn’t wake, her, and so instead I went to check on Lizzie. She was sitting up, her, looking woozy. “Billy — I’m hungry, me.”

“That’s a good sign, Lizzie. What you want to eat, you?”

“Something hot. I’m cold, me. Something hot from the cafe.” Her voice was whiny and she smelled awful but I didn’t care, me. I was too glad to her her cold, when just yesterday she’d been burning up, her, with fever. That donkey doctor really was as good as a medunit.