Saving Elijah

Afterward, Sammy said, "Wait, I can't fall asleep without my musical accompaniment." So we turned it back on. Elijah had stopped singing.
    In the morning, I was cooking pancakes for the kids, trying in my mind to flesh out my send-up of the fashion industry. It was an amusing image—the average woman wearing haute couture to her daily activities, the PTA, the market, the office. What would my patients think if I showed up one morning with a triangular little hat perched smartly on my head, with a feather sticking out of it: "So how are we feeling today?"
    Alex was erasing and repenciling figures from last night's homework, Kate was grumbling about a history test, Sam was drinking coffee.
    Becky called while I was cooking pancakes, and I carried the cordless receiver to the stove. "I just wanted to tell you I loved the 'self-helpaholic' piece," she said.
    I'd called it "How to Stop Improving Yourself: The Self-Helpaholic's Survival Guide."
    "As the inspiration for the piece," Becky said, "I must protest. You left out my favorite self-help book of all time."
    Becky was forever reading the self-help books I wouldn't read and swore I'd never write. "Which one's that?"
    "The Science of Bunnetics. Now there was a piece of work. Have you seen my tush lately?"
    Becky and I chatted for a few minutes while I cooked pancakes and stacked them on the plates beside the stove. As I hung up I was wondering whether Elijah would be well enough to go to school. I went into his room to wake him. Maybe he'd be well enough to eat some pancakes, which he loved, though the syrup usually ended up all over his face.
    The room was dark and very quiet. He was lying half on his side. I said his name and moved closer. He did not answer or sit up or turn to greet me.
    I moved up to his bed. His eyes were open, staring. He was awake, after all. "Elijah?" I reached down to touch his forehead. "Sweetie?"
    A steady and rhythmic motion in a bed, delicate, like the wing beats of dying birds.
    "Elijah?" I moved in closer.
    Why was he staring that way? What was he staring at?
    My God. It was a seizure.
    Wait. Wait. This wasn't fair. He'd been tested for seizures. He'd never had seizures. And it was quiet, so quiet. Just the tiniest motion of his hand, his shoulder, his head, just like a little bird struggling on the sand.
    How long? How long? How long?
    Sammy had gone out to get the newspaper from the driveway, and when he came back, everyone in the house was screaming.
    This is how it happens. You are just doing normal things, concentrating on the details of your life, counting on the givens, relying on the universe, fixing pancakes. And then the next moment arrives.
    Wait a minute. Second-quarter rule violation: Foul.

six
    After the intern left with Elijah's history, I realized I wasn't hearing the guitar anymore, hadn't heard it for quite a while. I went out into the PICU and walked past the other NAR. The curtain was open and I could see Jimmy through the glass, swathed in bandages and tubes. His parents were hunched over his bed.
    I walked into the corridor. The ghost was gone. Jimmy's sister was there, though. She wandered around the PICU like a second wraith, drifting into the corridor, the waiting room, the room with all the couches where some of the parents slept, the bathroom where you'd go for a sort of break. She was maybe nine years old, pole skinny, and her eyes were wide and strange. She never used her own name, only wanted you to know she was Jimmy's sister. And talked, endlessly.
    "What time is it? Aunt Ellen was supposed to be here at six, and if it's six already, I'd better get back in because I don't want to miss her."
    "I'm sorry, I don't know." I tried to smile.
    "She's going back home to Indiana tomorrow, and this is the last time she'll be coming."
    Jimmy's sister followed me right into the bathroom, telling me, again, how if they'd stayed in Indiana this would never have happened because the bus drivers drove a lot slower there.
    I looked into the mirror, thinking it was possible I'd become as invisible as dust.
    "I'm glad my aunt came." She spoke to my reflection. "But Mommy and Daddy were kind of mad because she only came to see Jimmy two times. I want to go back home with her but Mommy and Daddy say I can't. The kids in my new school are nice and all, but I wish I was back home because all my friends are there."
    I nodded, splashed some cold water on my face. I wanted to tell her my friends mostly hadn't come either, and they