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289She stabbed him with an uppercut to the solar plexus and he stumbled back, eyes wide. His submission, his surprise: She felt like she had spent years alone in a rollicking sea and suddenly someone had thrown her a rope, told her what direction to swim in.%u201cWhat now?%u201d Kayla asks.%u201cNothing happens.%u201d Mary presses her head down into the white pillow. Her voice grows louder, filling all four corners of the room. %u201cNobody comes, nobody goes.%u201d%u201cDidn%u2019t the doctor just come by?%u201d%u201c%u2018Let us do something, while we have the chance!%u2019 It is not every day that we are needed. That we personally are needed.%u201d Her eyes snap open. Her pupils are ringed with gold. %u201cDo you know what you are doing here?%u201dKayla jumps up from the chair, worried that Mary has turned delirious. She stands at the head of the bed and wonders if she should touch her forehead and talk about warm and quiet caves, like Mary did when the man in the coveralls was bleeding on the gas-station floor. She remembers a stray line from a song her mother used to sing when she was a child.%u201cTo see a fine lady,%u201d she whispers. %u201cUpon a white horse.%u201dMary closes her eyes again and appears to drift, her hands still at rest on her stomach. Kayla decides that she will stay until Mary is wheeled into the operating room. Then she will take a rideshare to the gas station, retrieve her car, drive home. She opens the black coin purse and digs out the psychic adviser%u2019s card. She writes her name and number on the back, returns the card to the purse. She imagines sitting with Mary at Perks, when all of this is over. The fragrant heat of coffee. The sweet stick of pie.At three in the morning, a nurse preps Mary for surgery. An orderly transfers her to a gurney and then they%u2019re off. Kayla follows them into the elevator and then back across the skybridge%u2014by now it feels like they are traversing a black sea%u2014and into another elevator, which delivers them to an entirely different wing, on an evenhigher floor. It is like a kingdom, this hospital. Labyrinthine, vast. All the hallways aggressively illuminated. She tries to recall where exactly in this kingdom her mother died, but she can%u2019t remember the unit or the floor; she must have been too young to retain such details. She only remembers the way her mother%u2019s skin had turned gray and spongy as putty.%u201cThere, there,%u201d Kayla says at the mouth of the operating room. She stares down at Mary%u2019s long ashen face. Her maroon hair, her colorless lips. 1055 Laura van den BergSuperStock/Bridgeman Images This cover art from a 1945 magazine depicts one of the stories within, %u201cHit with Your Heart.%u201dTake note of details like the boxer%u2019s towel, the weapon flying from his enemy%u2019s hand, and the reaction of the woman in the foreground. In what ways does this scene convey the feeling of control and power that Kayla finds in boxing more than any other part of her life?Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.