Dad has another coughing fit that ends in retching. I jump up, sprinting over to his door and knocking.

“Dad? You okay?”

I push the door open. He’s sitting up on his bed, hunched over, hacking into the crook of his arm.

When he looks up, his face is gray. There’s red froth on his lips.

“DAD!”

“I’m alright. I just need a rest—”

“We’re going to the hospital!”

I pull him up from the bed, holding him steady by the elbow. He’s not that hard to hold up. He’s lost at least thirty pounds. Why didn’t I pay attention sooner? He’s been sick for a couple of months. I thought it was just a stubborn cold . . .

I help him down the stairs, though he keeps telling me he can walk on his own. I doubt it—his color is awful, and he doesn’t look steady on his feet. I take him out through the auto bay ‘cause my car is parked out back.

“You finish that Chevy?” my dad wheezes.

“Yeah,” I say. “Don’t worry about it, Dad.”

We get in my Trans Am and I take him to Midtown Medical. We have to wait forever, because it’s Saturday, and because “coughing” isn’t exactly a high priority in the ER. Plenty of people stumble in with head wounds or dangling arms, plus one dude who shot a nail right through the palm of his hand, during a little home improvement gone wrong.

“Now you know how Jesus felt,” a blue-haired grannie tells him.

“Jesus didn’t have to sit around looking at it,” the man says, staring at the nail with a nauseated expression.

Finally, a nurse takes us back and we have to wait even longer while they run a bunch of tests, including a chest x-ray.

I’m so stressed out that I don’t even recognize the technician for a second.

“Hey!” Patricia greets me. “Is this your dad?”

“Oh, yeah.” I smile weakly. “Dad, this is my friend Patricia.”

“I like your scrubs,” my dad says. “I didn’t know they made them like that.”

Patricia’s wearing a set of lavender scrubs with a pretty floral pattern on the top.

“Oh yeah.” She grins. “It’s a regular fashion show back here.”

Patricia sets up the x-ray, then has me stand safely around the corner with her while she takes the images.

“How does it look?” I ask her nervously.

“Uh . . . well, I’m not really supposed to say anything until the doctor takes a look,” she says.

But I see a little stress line appearing between her eyebrows when she looks at the images forming on the screen.

My heart clenches up in my chest.

I’m thinking he probably has pneumonia. There was blood in his cough, but nobody gets consumption anymore, or whatever that disease was that killed all the Victorians. It’s gotta just be pneumonia. They’ll give him some antibiotics and he’ll be fine in a couple of weeks.

After the tests are done, Patricia leads me and my dad to a little curtained-off cubicle.

“They’ll be with you soon,” she says, giving me a sympathetic smile.

Another forty minutes drags by, then a young, chipper-looking doctor comes in. He looks like Doogie Howser, if Doogie were Asian and wore Converse sneakers.

“Mr. Rivera,” he says. “I have the results back from your x-ray.”

He pins the images up on an illuminated board, so the white portions of the x-ray glow brilliantly against the black. I can see my father’s ribcage, but not the lungs themselves. There are several grayish masses below the ribs that I assume are organs, or maybe his diaphragm.

“So we’ve looked at your lungs, and we’re not seeing fluid down here.” The doctor points to the lower half of the lungs. “However, you’ll see that there is a nodule or mass right here.”

He circles his index finger around a slightly pale area, to the right of the spine. It’s not bright white like the bone. In fact, it’s hard to see at all.

“A nodule?” I say, confused. “Like a cyst or something?”

“It’s possible,” the doctor says. “We need to get a tissue confirmation before we can diagnose. We can do this by a CT-guided biopsy or through bronchoscopy—”

“Wait, diagnose what?” I say. “What do you think the problem is?”

“Well.” The doctor shifts uncomfortably. “I can’t say for certain until we get a sample back . . .”

“But what else could it be? If it’s not a cyst?”

“Cancer,” the doctor says gently.

“What?” I’m staring at him, open mouthed. “My dad doesn’t smoke.”

“A lot of things can cause lung cancer,” the doctor says. “Exposure to radon, pollutants, diesel exhaust . . .”

I’m shaking my head. This can’t be happening.

“Nothing is certain yet,” the doctor says. “We’ll take a tissue sample and—”

I can’t even hear the words coming out of his mouth. I’m looking at my dad, who’s sitting silently on the edge of the gurney, coveralls swapped out for one of those humiliating smocks that don’t even close all the way up the back. He looks skinny and pale.

He’s forty-six. There’s no way he has cancer.

“Don’t worry, Dad,” I say to him. “It’s probably something else.”

I’m forcing a smile.

Meanwhile I’m sinking down, down, down into deep black water.

12

Nero

I head back to Levi Cargill’s house because he’s throwing another party and I assume Bella will be there. He makes a good little racket off these shindigs—charging a cover at the door, five dollars for shitty beer, and then selling harder stuff through his little army of minions.

He never touches the product himself. That’s what makes him a good kingpin—always delegating.

Also, he loves a good theme. Tonight is some kind of foam party—he’s got machines spraying spurts of rainbow-hued bubbles all over the front and back yards. The swimming pool is so full of soap that it’s more suds than water.

Most of the girls are wearing bikinis, or they were when the party started. Now they’re naked and slippery, tossing around beach balls, or making out with each other to attract all the more male attention.

Trust me, I’d love to give them that attention. Unfortunately, I’ve got to find the one girl I’d rather not see.

Sure enough, Bella is reclining on a giant inflatable flamingo in the middle of the pool, along with her best buddy Beatrice. The two girls are wearing matching white bikinis. Bella’s is the kind that basically consists of three little triangles held on with string.

She’s tanned and fit. She’s managed to keep her makeup in place, despite all the foam. I really should give her credit.

But I’m not going to.

Bella demands that I be attracted to her. She expects it.

I hate being told what to do.

Still, I need something from her. So I slouch down on one of the pool-side lounge chairs, letting Bella float around right in my line of sight. I give her exactly what she wants, which is my eyes on her bare flesh. I watch her giggling and posing with Beatrice, throwing glances my way. Until she finally rolls off the flamingo and paddles over to me.