Chapter 23: The Name

At noon the lobby was so full that the fire marshal stood in the doorway and gave up counting.

Three hundred people had come, in church clothes and work boots and scrubs from the night shift.

They lined up along the new donor wall in front of the glass, and a few of them found their own names with a finger and showed their children.

The council's table stood in front of the bare stone.

It held a cardboard ballot box from the church, a stack of index cards and a pen on a chain.

The grandmother sat behind it in the good hat as acting chairwoman, because nobody had dared to argue.

"One name per card," she announced. "No names of the living or the dead. Nothing with a dollar sign. Put it in the box."

"What about Della's name?" someone called from the back.

"Della has already said no, and she said it twice," the grandmother said. "I wrote it down."

The room laughed.

I stood against the wall by the wing's front doors with Junie on my hip, and I did not make a speech.

Colt stood next to me and did not touch me.

He had asked me that morning on the dock steps how I was, and I had said fine, and he had asked again.

I had said: tired, and scared of today.

It was the first true answer I had given him in weeks.

They voted for a long while, one card at a time.

Then my father and the young father counted the cards in the corner, in two piles, with the grandmother watching.

"Three hundred and six cards," Gene said. "Two hundred and forty of them say the same thing."

"What do they say?"

"The Window."

He held up a card, and I saw the shaky blue capitals.

THE WINDOW PAVILION FOR NEWBORN CARE.

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