She moaned. “Mom. Oh, Mom.”

For the first time in my life, my heart began beating erratically. It was the damnedest feeling. Suddenly it appeared to climb higher in my chest until it felt like it was at the bottom of throat. Then it began pounding hard and unevenly. My cheeks got hot. I touched one of them and my fingers felt very cold on it. My heart pounded throughout the whole top of my chest. It went fast fast fast, then seemed to stop, go fast a couple more times, stop... The normal rhythm was gone, it was on its own, lurching around inside me like a car being parallel parked at high speed.

While still holding Pauline, I slid my hand down from my cheek to the left side of my chest. I thought I could feel my heart banging away under there. It was strange, fascinating and terrible.

“Frannie, are you okay?” George was watching me.

“Yeah, I’m just having some arrhythmia. It makes sense though with the stress.”

“What is that, Frannie? What’s wrong with you?” Pauline’s voice was afraid. Was I going to collapse next?

“It means my heart’s beating fast. No big deal. Don’t worry.”

“You want me to check you out?” One of the men asked with the blood pressure cuff in his hand. I shook my head.

They moved Magda onto a stretcher and hooked up an IV. Pauline kept asking what they were doing at each step and she deserved to know. I carefully described the procedures, keeping my voice cool and confident throughout. That tone appeared to work because her shoulders unhunched and after a while she stopped nervously licking her lips every few seconds.

“We’re all done here. You want to ride with us to the hospital?”

“Pauline, you want to go with your Mom? George can drive me over in his car.” I thought I needed about ten minutes alone with George to talk about things. Just enough time to ride from our house to the Crane’s View hospital.

Her body immediately clenched again. “No! I’m not riding in any ambulance. I don’t want to, Frannie. Please let me go with George. Please!”

Her quick, unexpected hysteria threw us all off. Bypassing the diplomatic, I took her firmly by the shoulders and gave her a shake. “Stop! It’s okay, honey, everything is okay. You don’t have to go in the ambulance. Go with George and I’ll ride with Mom to the hospital. Just take it easy, huh? Everything will be okay.”

While I spoke she looked at the floor, nodding the whole time like her head was mounted on a spring. “Good. Okay. I’ll come right behind you. But, Frannie? Should I ask the doctors about my tattoo when I get there? Do you think I should ask them why my tattoo disappeared?”

What the hell was she talking about? When it eventually dawned on me I had to squint to focus my mind on what had happened to her earlier that morning. “Uh, no. We’ll do that another time. Right now let’s take care of Magda.”

“Okay. But Frannie, will Gee-Gee be at the hospital?”

“I—I don’t know, honey. I don’t really know where Gee-Gee is right now.”

Magda regained consciousness riding in the ambulance. I had been talking to one of the paramedics who, it turned out, went to the high school the other day to pick up Antonya Corando’s body. I hadn’t recognized him.

“Frannie?” My wife’s voice sounded very soft and sexy. It sounded perversely like she was inviting me to bed. She might even have said my name more than once but her voice was so faint that it would have been easy to miss.

“Magda, how are you? How do you feel? Are you a little foggy?” I touched her temple and stroked it. Her face felt cold in some places, hot in others.

She blinked a few times, never taking her glassy eyes off me. Once she opened her mouth a long few moments but said nothing. Her tongue looked gray and shriveled. Moving her head slowly from side to side, she looked blankly around, apparently trying to figure out where she was.

“You fainted, Mag. We’re in an ambulance going to the hospital because I want them to check you out. I’ve called Dr. Zakrides and he’ll be waiting for us there.”

She gently touched the back of my hand with one of her fingers. Slowly she stroked it once and then her finger fell away. She said something I couldn’t hear. I leaned in closer. From whatever well of small energy she had left, she was able to say it again: “Knock-knock.” I gasped back a short harsh breath. It was our password and secret smile. Whenever one of us felt sexy and wanted to make love, we went to the other and said that, “Knock-knock.” Not so much knocking on their “door” as meaning the silly line kids have used forever to begin a million bad jokes. I don’t know where it came from or remember which of us had been the first to use it in that context. But the only time we said the phrase to each other was for that reason alone.

Hearing those wonderful words now in this place and circumstance was hideous. But how amazing that that’s what she wanted to say to me now, when fear would own most people. Every couple has an intimate, secret vocabulary only they speak or understand. Until this moment, “knock-knock” had been our great lewd line that meant only one thing to us and was therefore irresistible. My heart galloped up a hill in my chest. My wife was going away.

One side of Magda’s mouth twitched. Seeing it, I was afraid she was about to have a seizure, a common side effect of brain tumor. But almost worse, that twitch turned into a smile. How did she do it? Everything was gone in her but here she was smiling. When she tried to speak again she had no energy. All she could do was mouth the words but that was enough. She said slowly, “I like you.” Another major phrase from our shared history; the result of an old wound that had healed into a joke, then a joy and a memory neither of us would forget.

A decade before we married, Magda and I had a very serious affair. But it blew up and rained pieces of pain down on both of us for a long time. It was all my fault. By some miracle years later Magda was able to forgive my great shittiness and give me another chance. Nonetheless both of us had scars up and down our souls from what had happened. So when we started dating again, we moved around each other like two dogs mat have never met before—slow approach, backs stiff, tails up, circling. Even when we knew we were onto something bip here, neither of us dared say any of the magic words or phrases that seal the deal.

This went on for more than a while. Eventually after one particularly nice time together, I screwed up my courage. Looking her square in the eye I said, “I like you.” Of course I wanted to say the big stuff but was worried she might bolt if she heard “I love you” or “I want you” or “you’re the one for me.” Instead, she smiled like someone who’s come home and said, “I wish we were in a bedroom now.”

I smiled back. “Why?”

“Because I could be naked for you there. No, nude. No, naked. Well, both and then you could choose.”

Naturally both “I like you” and “naked and nude” became honorary members of our relationship. Both were frequently used as assurances, reminders, and surefire alternatives to “I love you.”

“Don’t talk anymore now, Mag. Save your strength.”

What strength? Nothing in her expression or the broken lie of her body indicated there was more than a firefly’s light of strength left in her. Whatever owned Magda now had taken full charge and it was definitely not her friend. She closed her eyes and I took her hand. She gave a weak squeeze and stopped.

I closed my eyes and summoned the image I always did in situations like this: A close-up of a finger going into the white number holes of an old black 1940s style telephone. Finger in a hole—turn the wheel—do it again, dial the number digit by slow digit. It rings on the other end. Two, three times, sometimes four but eventually it is picked up. A nondescript male voice asks calmly, “Yes?” I’ve got him—it’s God. He always picks up and always listens. It does not mean He’ll do what I ask. He only listens and mat’s our deal.