Chapter 24: The Same Corridor

On the morning of Christmas Eve, Lottie was discharged from the burn clinic for good.

The doctors said she would need cream on her scars for a year, and sun cream for life.

They said she could run, and swim, and climb anything she liked.

She asked if that included the Christmas tree, and the nurse said no.

Terrence had brought the tree home two weeks early, as promised.

It did not fit through the door, so he cut four feet off it with a handsaw in the front yard.

Sammy had held the other end and given advice.

Sawyer was serving three years, and the judge had forbidden him to write to Lottie.

Lottie had not asked about him once.

Her grandmother had come with us that morning, and she sat in the waiting room with a tin of cookies for the nurses.

I stood in the long corridor on the third floor of St. Brigid's Children's Hospital.

It was the same corridor.

The floor had been waxed, and there was a paper snowflake taped on every door.

Someone had hung a string of lights over the nurses' station.

At the end of it, the elevator was the same elevator.

I did not feel anything about it, which surprised me.

In my hands I had Biscuit.

Lottie had given him to me for the last exam.

She had ordered me to hold him by the middle and not the ear.

His left ear had a line of blue stitches across it, and it stood a little crooked.

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