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  Toy thought it strange how the area had changed in such a short time. The city of Santa Ana is located in Orange County, only a few miles away from Disneyland. At one time, it had been predominantly white and Protestant, but today it was far from it. The Hispanic culture was dominant, but there was also a large Asian community made up of Vietnamese and Koreans who had fled their own land for the promise of America, many of them boat people. When Toy was growing up, there had been no exit on the freeway marked "Little Saigon" like there was today.

  She started to get out and head to the house when she suddenly felt overwhelmed and placed her head on the steering wheel, Sylvia's words playing over in her mind. She knew her friend's admonitions were right. Stephen had completely forbidden her to give the Roberts family any more money. The father didn't work, he said, and he wasn't about to support another man's kids, particularly since he and Toy were unable to have children of their own. She'd tried to explain the family's sad situation—that if the father worked a regular job, the family would no longer qualify for state assistance and would be unable to pay for Margie's treatment. And the mother was worse off than the father, confined to a wheelchair with rheumatoid arthritis. They had their own bills to pay, her husband argued, promptly re-

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  minding her of the enormous debts he had incurred while attending medical school, debts they had as yet to completely satisfy. I ler husband had his own surgical practice now, and as far as Toy was concerned, the money he earned every month amounted to a small fortune. Why couldn't they use some of it to help people in desperate need? A few months ago, her husband had bought himself a brand-new Mercedes. When he had wanted to buy Toy a new car as well, she had quietly declined. Her ten-year-old Volkswagen would do just fine, she told him. Children were starving. She could forgo the delicious scent of new leather that he found irresistible and make do with what she had.

  Toy could not comprehend her husband's miserly attitude when it came to helping others. The loans he always talked about had been outstanding for over ten years. Couldn't they wait a little longer? She wasn't providing luxuries for this family, only the dire necessities: food, clothing, shelter. What she prayed was that it would all add up to hope. Hope for a dying child. Hope for the future and the other children still in the home. Hope to make it through one more agonizing day.

  Lifting her head, Toy glanced at her own image in the rearview mirror, seeing a pale, drawn woman that she no longer recognized. She had to start wearing makeup, start taking care of herself. Maybe they were right. Was she hopelessly idealistic? Was she letting her own life slide through her fingers in her quest to help others? Could she stop? She shook her head, answering her own question. Sylvia could transfer to another school, even drop out of teaching if she so desired, but Toy didn't consider that an alternative. Something else drove her, something her friend couldn't understand and she could not bring herself to share with her.

  It had first happened in Toy's senior year in high school, the illness striking suddenly and fiercely. At first they had thought she had the flu, but when her condition worsened in the middle of the night, her parents had rushed her to the emergency room of a local hospital, where the doctors diagnosed her illness as pericarditis, an inflammation to the sac surrounding the heart. Only seconds after she arrived at the hospital, Toy had gone into cardiac arrest. Her mother was certain that she would not be alive today had she not been in a hospital when her heart stopped beating. But Toy seldom thought about that aspect to her illness. To Toy, her illness had occurred tor a purpose and that purpose was to change her lite forever. In the feu short seconds she had been technically dead, she had never felt more

  alive, more vital. She'd felt connected to the universe, to the trees, the wind, the earth, as if she were part and parcel to the whole.

  It was then that she knew administering to the needs of children must be her life's work.

  While the doctors were working frantically to revive her, Toy had seen herself in a room full of children. One boy in particular had spoken to her, reached out to her. She remembered the pain and loneliness sparking all around him, and developed the feeling that he was trapped in a place he could not escape. But before the dream ended, Toy sensed the presence of boundless hope and unlimited beauty, so awesome in its dimensions and scope that she would never forget it and would more than likely spend the remainder of her life trying to find it again. She didn't know who the boy was, but she was certain she had helped him in some way.

  The strange part about it was Toy had returned from her sojourn to the other side minus something tangible—the ring her parents had given her for her sixteenth birthday, one she distinctly recalled giving to the boy in her dream. Instead she awoke wearing a plastic ring, the kind that sometimes come in cereal boxes, and the small, worthless trinket instantly became her most cherished possession. When the world caved in on her, Toy would retreat to the bathroom and remove the ring from the bottom drawer where she kept her shampoo and other personal items, placing it on her finger and waiting. She never knew what she was waiting for—to be carried back to that moment perhaps. To Toy, the ring was like a talisman that had mysteriously fallen from the sky. It had to have some meaning, some mystical connotation. She had brought it back with her, brought it back from the brink of death. She didn't know how and she didn't know why, but she knew wearing it made her feel better, calm and peaceful. By the time she removed the orange plastic pumpkin and put it back in its hiding place, she was ready to tackle the world again.

  Her parents played down her strange experience, elated that their daughter had survived a terrifying ordeal. They insisted that the ring had simply been lost in the confusion, possibly even removed by the emergency room staff when she had first been admitted. But Toy knew differently. She had been terribly ill when she'd arrived at the hospital, and they had rushed her immediately to the team of doctors waiting to treat her. She was certain the ring had been on her finger, just as she was certain that something miraculous had occurred that night, something she could not explain or fully comprehend. As the

  years passed, she studied near-death experiences and other related phenomena, trying to put her own incident into perspective, but the

  articles and first-person accounts she read indicated the people saw visions of Christ, long tunnels, and blinding bright lights. Some people claimed they saw long-dead relatives and loved ones.

  All Toy had seen were children's laces.

  Pulling herself from her thoughts, she opened the car door and headed up the walkway to the front door. It was the fifteenth of the month. Toy knew that meant the bills from the first of the month had not been paid and were now past due. If the rent wasn't paid by tomorrow, the family would be evicted. How could a desperately ill child survive in a filthy and crowded public shelter, where half of the occupants were mentally ill or drunks off the street? Once Toy had placed a family with several children in a shelter and had been devastated to learn that the youngest boy had been molested by an older man. She just couldn't allow it to happen to Margie or one o her brothers or sisters. Fate had been cruel enough to this family. What they needed was a break, and the only break she could find was herself.

  Before knocking on the door, she opened her purse and checked the balance in her checkbook, chastising herself for not going to the bank. If she wrote another check, Stephen would find out. She should have brought cash instead. She closed her purse with a feeling of doom, knowing she had made her decision, and promptly knocked on the door. If Stephen valued a new Mercedes over human life, then he'd just have to trade her in for a flashier model.

  She could change her hair for him, even let him buy her fancy dresses for exclusive parties with his fellow doctors and their wives, but she couldn't change what was in her heart.

  Toy arrived home before her husband and rushed to the kitchen to prepare dinner, careful to remove her shoes and leave them in the entryway on the little mat she had placed there for that purpose. St
ephen had insisted on decorating the house in black and white. and the plush carpet under her feet was difficult to maintain. Walking through the living room in her bare feet, she saw all the dust on the shiny black surfaces and wondered if she would have time to dust before her husband came home. Sometimes when she got realK annoyed at him, she gave thought to dumping ink all over the white carpets and taking a carving knife to the black lacquered furniture. She detested it. She wanted her home to be just that—a home, a

  place of warmth and comfort, not sterile and forbidding. She wanted knicknacks and other collectibles, warm, rich woods and colorful prints, but Stephen didn't like clutter, and he hated bright colors. She wanted a dog, but with the white carpets, Stephen said it would be a disaster.

  Sometimes she thought she lived in an operating room.

  In the all-white kitchen, Toy tossed several potatoes on the cutting board and started chopping them, but her thoughts kept returning to Margie and the time they had spent together. Even though the girl was doing well and the cancer was in remission, she was desperately fragile, so weak and wasted that she could not get out of bed. Today she had brought her fears out in the open, talking to Toy about death and the feeling she had that her own was imminent.

  "You're fine," Toy had insisted, sitting on the edge of her twin bed. "You're not going to die, Margie. You're going to beat this and have a wonderful life."

  "I don't think so," she said softly. "I feel it, you know. I know it's waiting." Then the child's voice dropped to a whisper as she leaned close to Toy's face. "Sometimes at night," she said, "when everyone is asleep, I look by my bed and I'm certain I can see it. It's like a big, ugly shadow just standing there staring at me."

  "That's your fear you see," Toy told her, her voice soft and consoling. "That's not death, Margie. Death is beautiful, painless, magical. Can't you see? It's living that's tough. Death is our reward."

  "I know all that," the girl answered weakly. "You've told me that before, but I don't believe it." She stopped speaking and looked out the window by her bed. A few moments later, she turned back to Toy. "I got you a present. It's supposed to be a Christmas present, but I want to give it to you now."

  "Save it," Toy said. "I'd rather open it with you on Christmas morning. You know I'll be here. I was here last year, wasn't I?"

  The girl's lips compressed and she shook her head. She didn't have to tell Toy what she was thinking, that she wouldn't be there for Christmas, that by Christmas it would all be over.

  "Don't think like that," Toy said quickly, gently stroking her thin arm. "Did I tell you what I dreamed the other night? I dreamed I saw you in this beautiful white dress, a wedding dress. And listen, Margie," she said, "you were the most gorgeous bride I've ever seen."

  The girl ran her tongue over dry and cracked lips, her voice

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  wheezy now when she spoke. "Get the present. It's on top of the chest."

  Surfacing from her thoughts, Toy dropped her knife on the kitchen counter and went into the bedroom, removing the small package the girl had given her and lovingly touching the contents. Margie had given her a California Angels baseball T-shirt, exactly like the one-she had been wearing the night she became ill. One o her boyfriends had taken her to an Angels game and bought it for her. Toy had ended up using it as a night shirt. It was such a strange coincidence, she thought, that Margie would give her the same T-shirt. Of course, she told herself, the child hadn't bought it. One of her relatives had given it to her as a gift, and she in turn had wanted Toy to have it. Suddenly she decided to wear it, and removed her dress, hanging it up in the closet. Then she pulled the T-shirt over her head and stepped into a pair of faded Levis. Padding barefoot to the kitchen, she remembered the bedroom slippers she had been wearing that night when she went to the hospital, and wished she still had them. They had been funny actually, those big, silly slippers made to look like animals. Hers had been penguins. She decided to get Margie a pair next week. She'd get a kick out of them, and a smile was worth everything right now. She had to get the little girl's spirits up and dispel her fears of impending death.

  "What's going on?" Stephen said from the doorway. "Is dinner ready?"

  "Not yet," Toy said cheerfully, walking over to embrace him. Although Toy was five foot eight, her husband was over six three and completely engulfed her. He had the lean, hard body of a runner, dark hair and eyes, and an always confident look on his handsome face. She inhaled the musky scent of his aftershave and nuzzled her head against his chest. "How was your day, honey? Are you tired?"'

  "Don't ask," he said gruffly, pushing her away and then yanking his tie off. "Remember the gallbladder I did about three months ago? Well, the stupid woman is suing me for malpractice. I saved her life, and all she's worried about is how she will look in a bikini. She thinks the scar is too big."

  "I'm sorry," Toy said, kissing him tenderly on the forehead, 'it'll be okay. You know how the courts frown on these kinds of lawsuits." But she knew there was cause for concern. Every time Stephen was sued, his malpractice insurance went up, and lately eveiyone he touched had wanted to sue.

  "How long before we eat?"

  "Maybe thirty minutes," she said, returning to put the potatoes in a pot to boil, trying not to respond to the annoyed expression on his face. When they had first met, Stephen had been an intern and the life of the party, always cracking jokes and making Toy laugh. They'd sat for hours talking about their hopes and dreams, about how they wanted to make the world a better place. Nowadays they seldom talked at all. But Toy knew it wasn't easy being a surgeon. Even when you did your best, people didn't always appreciate it, and over the years Stephen had become tense and rigid. The carefree young man she had fallen in love with no longer existed. Now her husband was demanding and strident, barking orders at home just as he did in the operating room. He never seemed to be able to relax. Even when they made love, she could feel the tension coursing through his body.

  "You know I like to eat at six o'clock," he snapped. "I have to digest my food before I go to bed. Is that too much to ask?"

  "No, Stephen," Toy said, lighting a burner under the wok so she could prepare the vegetables. "I just got home. I had to do some things after school."

  "What things?" he asked.

  "Errands," she lied. Then she smiled brightly. "Hey, if you're hungry, I can make you a snack."

  "I don't snack," he said flatly, disappearing from the doorway.

  Five or ten minutes later, he came back. "Something peculiar happened today. Do you know someone named Rachel McGuffin?"

  Toy stiffened. Rachel McGuffin was the name of one of Margie's aunts, the one who normally cashed checks for the family because the Roberts' didn't have a bank account. "Why do you ask?"

  "Why don't you just answer the question, Toy?"

  Her eyes roamed around the room. "What question?" Then she giggled. "I thought we were just making small talk. I didn't realize this was an interrogation."

  "Stop this," he said loudly. "Do you know this woman or not? The bank called my office this afternoon, claiming she was trying to cash one of our checks for six hundred dollars. I told them it was a forgery."

  Toy let the dish towel in her hands fall to the floor. "You what? How could you do that? They probably arrested her. Good Lord, Stephen, I gave her the check. She didn't forge it." She started walking to the wall phone to call the Roberts' and apologize for the confusion, praying the bank hadn't called the police, but her husband blocked her way.

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  "No one," he said angrily, "and I mean m) one, is going to walk off with my money unless I say they can. Do you hear me, Toy? Who is this person and why are you writing checks to her? I demand to know, and I want to know right now."

  Toy's upper lip was trembling, and she had turned as white as the wall behind her. She hated arguments and nasty scenes. When she and Stephen got into a disagreement, she simply walked out of the room and stayed in the bedroom until he ealmed
down. She seldom raised her voice, and she despised friction of any kind. But this was a fight she couldn't avoid. The time had come to settle it once and lor all.

  "It's not just your money," she told him, meeting his harsh gaze with one of her own. "I bring in an income, too. The money that you managed to keep in your precious bank account today was supposed to keep Margie Roberts out of a homeless shelter. But you ruined that, didn't you?"

  He tossed his hands in the air. "I should have known," he said. "The damn Roberts family again. Don't you know they're using you, Toy? How can you be so naive?"

  She planted her feet and stood her ground. "How can you be so callous?"

  "I resent that," he snarled, his hot breath on her face. "I forbid you to give those people another cent. You do the cooking and cleaning, and I'll handle the money in this family. I told you it would be that way when we got married."

  Toy stomped over to the stove and turned it off. Before she knew it, he would go into his "only one boss in the family" diatribe. Toy decided it really was like the psychologists say. People emulate their parents, whether they were good parents or not. Stephen's father had been a surgeon as well, and he had run his household with an iron fist. Even though Stephen had balked against his father's rigid rules and dominating manner, he felt compelled to run his own home in an identical fashion.

  She grabbed her purse and pushed her way past him.

  "Where do you think you're going?" he barked.

  i have to take them another check now. The rent has to be paid tonight. They already got an eviction notice."

  "That's their problem, not yours,"' he said, following her to the front door.

  "It's everyone's problem," To) said. Then she spun around and faced him. "When a child is sick and in need, we're all responsible.