Life Expectancy

the right thing, yes. Not for a winning lottery number, not for love or health, or happiness. Prayer is not a gimme list; God isn't Santa Claus.
        As they have taught me, I believe that without asking, we are given all we need. We must have the wit and wisdom to recognize the strengths and tools at our command, and find the courage to do what must be done.
        In this instance, however, we seemed to have done all that we humanly could. If her fate had been in the hands of God now, I would have rested more easily. But her fate seemed to be in the hands of Punchinello Beezo, and anxiety, like swarms of something winged, flew around and around in my stomach, fluttered in my bones.
        And so I prayed to God to give me back my tomboy, and asked Him to ensure that Punchinello did the right thing if even for the evil reason of buying Virgilio Vivacemente's murder.
        Even God himself might need a fancy calculator to compute the mathematics of that morality.
        While I sat with Annie, immobilized by anxiety, Lorrie was all motion, making phone calls, coordinating things between the hospital and the penitentiary officials.
        When Annie was awake, we talked of many things, of cabbages and kings, of next year at Disney World and the year after in Hawaii, of learning to ski and bake, but never of now and here, never of the dark what-if.
        Her brow was warm to the touch, her delicate fingers cold. Her slender wrists had grown so slight that it seemed they might snap if she risked lifting a hand from the sheets.
        Philosophers and theologians had spent centuries debating the existence and the nature of Hell, but I knew there in the hospital that Hell existed and I could describe its streets. Hell is a child lost and the fear of never being reunited.
        Healthcare and prison bureaucrats proved extraordinarily helpful and expeditious. During the afternoon, Punchinello Beezo arrived in a prison van, handcuffed, fettered ankle to ankle, under the watchful eyes of two armed guards. I did not see him, only heard reports.
        Tests were done. They said he was a match.
        At six in the morning, the transplant would be performed.
        Midnight of this terrible day still lay hours away. He could change his mind before then-or escape.
        At 8:30, my father phoned from Snow Village to fulfill Grandpa Josef's prediction in an unexpected fashion. After lying down for a nap before dinner, Weena had passed away peacefully in her sleep at the age of eighty-six.
        Lorrie drew me against my will into the corridor to share this news, lest Annie hear.
        For a while I sat in a chair in an empty hospital room, so Annie wouldn't see my tears and become anxious that they were shed for her.
        On a cell phone, I called Mom, and we talked for a while about Grandma Rowena. You feel grief for a mother and a grandmother, of course, but when the life was very long and happy, and when the end came without pain or fear, it would almost be blasphemous to grieve too hard.
        "What surprises me," my mother said, "is that she would go just before dinner. If she'd known what was going to happen, she wouldn't have laid down for a nap until after we'd eaten."
        Midnight came. And Thanksgiving morning.
        Considering that Annie's deteriorating condition might have made her too weak for surgery in another day, the transplant procedure began none too soon at six o'clock.
        Punchinello didn't welch.
        I visited him hours later in his room, where he was chained to his bed and watched over by a guard. The guard stepped into the hall to give us privacy.
        Although I knew well the nature of this beast, my voice broke with gratitude when I said, "Thank you."
        He conjured that movie-hero smile, winked, and said, "No thanks necessary, bro. I'm looking forward to birthday cards, candy, mystery novels… and one snake-hearted aerialist tortured with red-hot pliers and dismembered alive. I mean, if it works for you to do it that way."
        "Yeah, that sounds about right to me."
        "I don't want to cramp your creativity," he assured me.
        "Don't worry about me. What you want is all that matters."
        "Maybe you could nail him to a wall before you really start on him,"
        Punchinello suggested.
        "Nails don't hold in drywall. I better buy a stud finder."
        He nodded. "Good idea. And before you start