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of losing hold. The mother, thin and short like Ms. Hinds, looked as though she was fighting back cries, tears, a tempest of anger, barters with God.
    Instead she fussed, trying to wrench the discharge papers and the bag from her daughter, irritating Ms. Hinds, who raised her pad from beneath the bag and scribbled quickly, “Nurse Osnac, my parents, Nicole and Justin Hinds.”
    Nadine shook each parent’s hand in turn.
    “Glad to make your acquaintance,” said the father.
    The mother said nothing.
    “Thank you for everything,” said the father. “Please share our thanks with the doctors, the other nurses, everyone.”
    The elevator doors suddenly opened and they found themselves staring at the bodies that filled it to capacity, the doctors and nurses traveling between floors, the visitors. The Hindses let the doors close, and the others departed without them.
    Ms. Hinds turned to an empty page toward the back of her pad and wrote, “Bye, Nurse Osnac.”
    “Good luck,” Nadine said.
    Another elevator opened. There were fewer people in this one and enough room for the Hindses. The father pushed the wheelchair, which jerked forward, nearly dumping Ms. Hinds facefirst into the elevator.
    The elevator doors closed behind them sharply, leaving Nadine alone, facing a distorted reflection of herself in the wide, shiny metal surface. Had she carried to full term, her child, aborted two months after his or her conception, would likely have been born today, or yesterday, or tomorrow, probably sometime this week, but this month for certain.
    She thought of this for only a moment, then of her parents, of Eric, of the pebble in the water glass in her bedroom at home, all of them belonging to the widened, unrecognizable woman staring back at her from the closed elevator doors.

THE BOOK OF MIRACLES
    Anne was talking about miracles right before they reached the cemetery. She was telling her husband and daughter about a case she’d recently heard reported on a religious cable access program, about a twelve-year-old Lebanese girl who cried crystal tears.
    From the front passenger seat, the daughter had just blurted out “Ouch!”—one of those non sequiturs that Anne would rather not hear come out of her grown child’s mouth but that her daughter sometimes used as a shortcut for more precise reactions to anything that wasn’t easily comprehensible. It was either “Ouch!” “Cool,” “Okay,” or “Whatever,” a meaningless litany her daughter had been drawing from since she was fourteen years old.
    Anne was thinking of scolding her daughter, of telling her she should talk to them like a woman now, weigh her words carefully so that, even though she was an “artiste,” they might take her seriously, but she held back, imagining what her daughter’s reaction to her suggestions might be: “Okay, whatever, Manman, please go on with your story.”
    Her husband, who was always useful in helping her elaborate on her miraculous tales and who also disapproved of their daughter’s language, said in Creole, “If crystal was coming out of her eyes, I would think she’d be crying blood.”
    “That’s what’s extraordinary,” Anne replied. “The crystal pieces were as sharp as knives, but they didn’t hurt her.”
    “How big were these pieces?” the husband asked, slowing the car a bit as they entered the ramp leading to the Jackie Robinson Parkway.
    Anne got one last look at the surrounding buildings, which were lit more brightly than usual, with Christmas trees, Chanukah and Kwanzaa candles in most of the windows. She tried to keep these visions in her mind, of illuminated pines, electric candles, and giant cardboard Santas, as the car merged into the curvy, narrow lane. She hated the drive and would have never put herself through it were it not so important to her that her daughter attend Christmas Eve Mass with her and her husband. While in college, her daughter had declared herself an atheist. Between her daughter,