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The building was a square little plot of aged wood and green paint, with a tall, slanted roof of red shingles set atop the second floor, and large curtain-less windows that faced out in all four directions. There was a walkway that lead up to it, made of large stepping stones bought from a local craft supply store (probably a Michael's) with pebbles of colored rocks with painted-on flowers and faces and any assortment of other things on them set in between the large, flat, grey stones. It was fenced in with a beautiful iron bar fence, and year round ivy and other vines grew around the bars. Every spring, the vines would come alive with rich red, and vibrant violet flowers. There would be apples, too, from the lone apple tree that made its lonely orchard in the front right corner of the building's lot. When summer came, and the flowers had receded and the apples fallen, the rosemary bushes that lined the building's foundation would fill the air with its sweet, herbaceous scent, almost like I would imagine an Indian incense bush would act like were you to set it alight. In autumn, the apple leaves would wilt and fall, and to that side, there would be a quilted blanket of orange and reds and yellows and browns that would fall so perfectly, I would lament the day it became my job to rake them up and leave the bagged quilt out for the garbage men to take away.

It wasn't spring, or summer, or autumn, though; it was winter. Cool and harsh, with ice coating the streets and freezing wind cutting through my windbreaker jacket as I walked down the block towards the little green building with its red shingled roof. It was less than a ten minute's walk away from my house, just a few blocks up the street, and when I first started making the daily trek, all my neighbors thought I might be having some secret affair with whomever lived there. At first I tried desperately to explain to them that no, it wasn't a residence, and no, I wasn't cheating on my wife (though the fact that was their first assumption definitely colored my opinions of them), and for weeks none of them were convinced. The proof came in my second month of employment there, when one of those neighbors, a petite little doe of about seventy years, ended up in one of the beds in that little green building with its red shingled roof. It was a bittersweet thing, really, because the rumors died there, but so too did she, not long after, since, after all, not many leave the Grace Hart Hospice House except in the back of a funeral home's shuttle, and those that do leave alive are quick to return. I remember she died the same morning the trumpet flowers bloomed their first, that Spring. I went out and picked some for her, which the family was grateful for. Her son stops by every spring to pick some more for her grave.

Of course, that sparked all sorts of other rumors about me, particularly how I had to be some macabre, twisted pagan amongst all their upright, Christian community members - a heathen, and a bad influence on the neighborhood. Most of my neighbors told their children to not play near my house, or to not speak to me if they saw me out and a bout. All the better, for me. I don't like children. It's why I work with the old and the dying.

I walked through the front door and hung my coat on one of the coatrack'ss pegs just off to the right. I was pulling off my scarf and gloves when Agatha, the fifty-something (unless you ask her, of course, and then she's "thirty-something") chamois that usually sat behind the reception desk, charged up to me and gently touched my shoulder with a hoofed hand. "Thank goodness you're here," she said. Her voice was high and sweet with the slightest hint of a gravely crunch at the end of her words. "A patient came in, today."

"Isn't Becca here?" I said. "She was supposed to pull a double-shift last night through to the morning."

She nodded. "And she did, but they don't want Becca."

I tilted my head. "Why not?"

Agatha shifted her weight from foot to food for a moment. She looked down, then up, then sighed and looked back at me again. "The man's almost a hundred, you see, which means he lived through the Civil Rights movement, but not everyone who lived through the Civil Rights movement ..." she trailed off, collected her thoughts. "Not everyone who lived through it ... agreed with it, you understand?"

I was beginning to. "Becca's a rabbit," I said.

"A 'Prey' species," Agatha said.

"And I'm a wolf," I said.

"And so is he and his wife," Agatha said.

I felt the urge to sigh, and let myself, knowing I wouldn't be able to for the next ten hours. "Which room are they in?"

"Four," Agatha said. She leaned in close and kept her voice low. "The furthest from the rest of the rooms, so none of the other patients would be bothered by anything they might say." I could smell the stale cigarettes and burnt coffee on her breath.

"Alright," I said. I straightened my scrubs. "Anything I should know?"

"Throat cancer," Agatha said. "It wasn't caught early enough, so it's spread, and there are tumors in the jaw and throat that have made it almost impossible for him to breathe on his own. They're really visible, so fair warning."

I nodded. "Room four?" I said. I started walking through the lobby area, towards the short hallway leading to the patient rooms.

"Yup," Agatha said. "He's already been situated and meds already adjusted."

"Good," I said without turning around.

"Oh," Agatha called out. "And his name's Alec Weißmann, wife's Helga."

"Noted," I said. I walked to the door leading into room four, and stopped there to straighten my scrubs again. There was a ritual I always went through before seeing a patient for the first time, something needed as much for myself as for the patient and their family. Ears perked, face relaxed, shoulders down, tail loose and unhinged (swinging behind me, but neither wagging nor tucked), warm smile, sympathetic eyes, and mind completely blank; it was meditative, almost. I developed it after I read a Zen book, about ten years ago - shortly after starting this job. If I walk in with nothing, I react to nothing; if I feel nothing, nothing can hurt me. The moment I sympathize with a patient is the moment I sympathize with them all. In a job that dealt in daily death, there was nothing more detrimental than to grieve with each and every one of them. There was no quicker avenue to burning out at a job like this.

I drew in a deep breath and opened the door, regulating my gait to be as innocuous as I could manage it. I saw the wife first, sitting by the bed with her legs crossed in a rather simple and unadorned lime green dress with a matching knitted cardigan, slightly darker in its shade, with little orange floral designs along the fringes and sleeve cuffs. Her fur was trim and shone in the soft morning light that seeped through the window with the curtain drawn across it, and had a uniformity in its grey color that smacked of artificiality - it was dyed, and not convincingly. In profile, backlit by the shaded sun, she looked very elegant and picturesque. It was when her ears flicked at the sound of my entrance and she turned to look at me as I approached that I saw the age. Not in her face, that was dyed as well, and the sagging had been managed by what I assumed was injections and surgeries. No, it was her eyes that betrayed all her efforts to still look forty.

I ran through all the scripts in my head the moment her eyes met mine. I smiled a little more, softened my eyes, lowered my ears respectfully, bowed my head. "Hello, Mrs. Weißmann, my name is Neil Erickson, and I'm going to be taking care of you and your husband." I gave her a momentary pause. She didn't react. She just kept watching me, her aged eyes scanning over me as I walked to the foot of the bed. "Do you have any questions, or concerns, maybe?"

She shook her head. Her eyes moved away from me and back to her husband, and I followed her gaze. I have seen many cases of cancer of all kinds in my stay here at Grace Hart, some with tumors and some without. Some post-chemo and some during. I'd seen men and women whose bodies had so utterly shut down that their most basic functions relied on externalities like colostomy bags and breathing machines. I'd gotten accustomed to the smell, as well, that acrid stench of waste and chemical decay. The man that lay beside Mrs. Helga Weißmann was no different.

He was thin and frail, his face sunken in and bones poking out from beneath his stretched and leathery skin, and what patches of fur still remained over his body after (what I assumed was) chemo therapy looked brittle and bristly - like brush grass in the open plains in the middle of a dead-heat Texan summer. There was an oxygen tube shoved down his nose, and his chest rose and fell shallowly and regularly. He had a few IV's, a few monitors hooked up to him, the usual shebang of mechanical paraphernalia that came with being nearly one hundred and having cancer. There was just one thing that set him apart from the hundreds of others I'd cared for in my tenure here. A great mass of flesh and veins protruded from his throat and back of his jaw. It was bulbous and lumpy, and spread down to his shoulder and up to his cheek, and didn't even have the flattering dressing of a patch of fur to cover and smooth it over. The mass looked as if it had broken his jaw, and his mouth hung open because of that. His head was turned to the side, his tumorless cheek pressed into the pillow, which left the cancerous mass proudly displayed upon his face like an idol upon a pedestal - All attention was drawn to it; it was as if it screamed to be observed.

And all I could think, while I stood there, at the foot of his bed, beholding his broken and decrepit body, was how glad I was that my mind was empty, and that I had walked in with nothing, because there was a lot to react to.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" I said. I was proud of the evenness of my tone. "Either of you, Mrs. Weißmann?"

She shook her head.

"Some coffee, perhaps, or some tea?"

She shook her head.

"Maybe something to eat? I think we have some bagels and cream cheese in the fridge."

She turned her head to look at me, said nothing.

"Alright," I said. "Well, let me know if there's anything I can do for you. Any questions you have later, anything you need, just come find me, and don't be afraid to ask." I turned to walk away, but stopped mid-stride. I turned back around to look at the pair. Helga had looked back to her husband. There was tension in her shoulders, an unnatural stiffness in her back, an almost unnoticeable twitch in her ears, something about her that made me pause. I walked back up to the bed, this time standing beside her, and laid a paw down on Mr. Weißmann's leg. "Does he look comfortable to you?" I said, looking down at Helga.

She snapped her head up at that question, looked at me with an expression of tight bemusement that relaxed into one of bitter amusement. "Comfortable?" She said. Her voice was high and wispy and sounded as if she were loudly whispering from a great distance. She snorted and shook her head. "Comfortable. Al always hated comfort. He was a military man, you know. Lived through the war - went to the war! He slept on cold floors in nothing but his fatigues for four long years; that never leaves you, you know. He'd always get so annoyed when I'd buy a new comforter, or sew a new quilt for our bed. He's always say 'woman, now why the hell'd you go and make such a thing,' and I'd tell him - I'd always tell him - 'you always say it's so cold at night,' and he'd always come back with 'yuh! But it was a lot colder back in the war!' And we'd argue and argue and argue for weeks about the dumb old thing, until he'd finally give in and let me keep it on the bed." A smile crossed her lips. "I'd go to sleep all nestled in my warm blankets, and then wake up to find him laying on top of them in the morning! Ah, that man. He always hated being comfortable since I knew him, that damned war."

She turned towards me, crossing her paws in her lap as she looked up at me with her sad, yellow eyes. "I met him after the war, over fifty years ago. He came back filled with piss and vinegar, looking for bar fights and pretty dames he could woo by punching drunk idiots that had been flirting with them not two minutes earlier. That's how he met me - he tried that with me. I was just out of high school working at a little bar on the corner of some street I can't recall. Some old fool, I can't even remember his name but I think he was a fox, had had just one too many and thought he'd have a chance with me, but I tell you: I'm a good Christian girl, always have been. I told him 'Sir,' I said, 'Sir, please don't be gettin' no funny ideas now, because I'll have none of that.' And he'd just persist! I was about ready to go into the back, tell the bar owner about this man, maybe get the bouncer to throw him, when out of nowhere this slick young wolf, all rippling with gorgeous fur and muscle with the most beautiful green eyes I ever done seen, comes sauntering right up and leans himself against the bar right next to this man. He said 'Sir, I believe the young lady asked you to stop,' and the drunken fool said back 'Don't be coming up here, telling me what to do! I heard the lady, and I tell you: she's just playing hard to get!'

"'No I am not,' I said, and this gorgeous wolf just turns back to that coyote - I think it was a coyote, not a fox, now that I'm thinking about it - and says 'No she is not.' Now, that drunken fool, he grumbled something 'aint no-one could understand, and pushed that wolf back, but he was ready! He grabbed that coyote's wrist, yanked it clear back around his body, put his paw to that coyote's back, and smashed his face into the top of the bar. He leaned in real close to that coyote's ear and growled out something that made that drunken boy's tail fly between his legs faster than a shot. Now, I couldn't hear what he said to him, but Al told me, years later, that what he said to that man was 'Don't you be disrespecting this woman, now, or I'll have your arm bending the wrong way before you can yelp!' I never believed a word of that, knowing how he was back then, but whatever he said sent that coyote running out the door like his tail was on fire.

"He leaned back against the counter after that, propped his head up on his paw and grinned at me with rows of straight, pearly teeth and said in his best smooth-talkin' voice he had, 'Sorry about that, little lady. Them civvy boys who dodged the war, they don't have no discipline, not with work nor woman.' He leaned in closer to me, right then, and said in a low, low voice, 'Why don't I get you a drink 'n make up for that ol' fool, treat you right. Show you how a disciplined man treats a real lady.'" She giggled, then. The skin around her cheeks reddened beneath her thin, dyed fur. "Do you know what I told him when he said that?"

"What, ma'am," I said. I sat down at the foot of the bed, being careful not to sit down on the frail old man.

"I told him to get lost!" She said. There was life in her eyes when she said it, too, and a genuineness to her smile that was somewhat infectious. We laughed together at that, and I don't know why. "'Get lost,' I said, and boy did he leave right quick. Almost as fast as that coyote, but he made sure to make it look all smoothe-like, sauntering away just like he'd come up." She moved a paw from her lap and moved it over to one of his, lacing her fingers with her husband's and squeezing it tightly. "I thought for sure he'd give up after that, go look for another easy mark to get in with, but something made him come back. He kept trying, again and again, and I kept turning him away, again and again. It became a little game we played, and we played it for months until I finally said 'Fine!' Boy, I tell you, the smile that split his face, he looked about ready to jump straight to the moon when I said that. He was so happy I said that, but at the time I was just fed up. I asked him, years later, if he would have kept going even if I didn't say yes, and he told me 'no.' He told me he made a pact with God, that day - like Abraham on the mountain - that he would ask me just one more time, and that if God would grant him the joy of my saying yes, he'd marry me, and treat me right for the rest of my life, and never miss a day of church again! And you know what? He did, he has, and he never has."

She looked down at their paws, rubbing her thumb over the back of his furless paw. "And to think, that was the last day he would have ever asked me. I almost ... I almost never had this." She squeezed her fingers with his even tighter. The man stirred, then, but didn't wake. His breath remained shallow and even, mouth still open, eyes still closed. "It's always felt like God really meant for us to be together, like this."

A silence hung then. I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded and said, "Yes, ma'am." She seemed to accept that response.

"He took me to a drive-in movie," she said. "Some awful love story, I wasn't really paying attention to it, and neither was he. We spent the whole movie sitting in his car, he in the driver's seat and me in the passenger's, and just talked. Not to say he didn't try nothin', but I told you: I'm a good Christian girl, and I shut his advances down as soon as they came, and told him 'If you try that again, I will get out and walk home!' And what do you know, he didn't try them again. So we talked. About our parents, about the war, about politics and money and faith and family, and when the movie ended and everyone else drove on home, we stayed there and kept talking. It had to be around midnight when we started the car again, and he went and drove me back home - I was staying with my sister and her husband at the time - and we talked the whole way there, too. He walked me up to the door when we got there, and gave me a right and proper goodbye, as any man should, and he was about to turn away to walk back to his car when I grabbed him by the shoulders and just ... spun him around! And I grabbed his head and pulled him down and gave him a goodnight kiss to remember. He swears he was the one who kissed me, but don't believe a word of that - it was me that kissed him.

"We dated for a few months after that, going to more movies, going to dinner at fancy restaurants, taking walks in the park or driving out to the beach - we lived in Virginia, back then. I remember, it was at the end of one of those beach walks that he turned me around and got down on one knee, pulling a little felt blue box out of his trunks pocket and holding it up to me, and asked me, right there on the beach at sunset, to marry him. God, I tell you, I can remember how his fur shone in the light of that setting sun, how the oranges and yellows and streaks of red reflected in his gorgeous green eyes, and how his tail was wagging so hard behind him it was kicking up clouds of sand behind him. I was so shocked, and thought he looked so darned cute down there that I bust out laughing!"

"No," I said, a wide grin curling my muzzle.

"Yes!" She said. And we laughed again. "Ah, I doubled over from laughter, and the poor boy, he thought that meant 'no.' Lord did he sputter and apologize. He stood up so quickly he nearly knocked into me and almost fell over himself! He stuffed that ring back into his pocket and just kept saying sorry and sorry and he knew he shouldn't have, but it just felt right at the time, and he'd go return the right first thing - first thing! - the next morning, and never bring it up again, and I had to grab him by the head and kiss him just to shut the blathering boy up! He got the message after that, I tell ya!

"We had a real small wedding about a month later, in the church we both went to, but hadn't realized we both went to until we started dating. Both our families came, immediate and extended, and just filled the pews during the ceremony. I remember how nervous I was right before I had to make my walk through the isles, and I thought 'God, what am I doing? Is this the right thing for me, or am I just being an idiot girl pledging my life to this man I barely know?' Because I'm a good Christian girl, and wouldn't be having no divorce, I tell you! God, I almost ran away that day, all get up in my wedding dress of flowing white and floral patterns. I felt like a doe ready to bolt until those doors opened up, and I saw him standing there, at the altar, as nervous as I was, and then I saw him smile at me. Oh, how he smiled, all teeth and green eyes and wagging tail. It was that moment, in that very moment, that all doubt melted away, and I knew God meant for us to be together till ..."

She trailed off, then. She squeezed her eyes shut and tilted her muzzle downwards as her throat clenched. I could see the pain in her face, and felt my chest start to tighten up just from watching her. I had to remind myself to stay empty. Stay Zen. For my own sake, I had to set aside my sympathy, and so I did the most sympathetic thing I could think of in that moment and I reached out to touch her arm. Helga Weißmann drew in a rattling breath, then. She looked up from her husband. She didn't look at me, though. She kept her eyes distant, looking out the window near her dying husband's bed.

She sighed, then, and squeezed his paw. "Yet look at this, at him." She looked down at her husband, at his furless body, frail limbs, broken jaw, at the cancerous mass that clung to his throat and face like a child to his mother's breast. There was a growl in her throat, tempered with bitter tears she wouldn't let fall, and choked out by the breath she found difficult to draw. "He was always so strong, so beautiful, so smart, dedicated, devout, determined. So proud and hard working. In his prime, he was a man, and it was that man I fell in love with.

"And now, now what is he? Just a husk of what he used to be. It wasn't war or work or wicked women that killed him like a man should die, but this. Like this, all empty inside. There's nothing left of him to love, but damn, if it isn't love that's making me keep him here." She looked up at me, then. Her yellow eyes were filled with bitter rage. The sun had shifted in the morning sky, and the angle it poured into the room had changed, now casting long shadows over her thin, willowy face that accentuated the wrinkle lines and wear of age that she wore like battle scars in the face of her husband's coming death. I envied her, for some reason. There was resolve in that face, love in those eyes. "He'd hate me, you know. If he knew I was keeping him here. He'd want to leave, but I just can't bring myself to let him. I love him too much to just let him go. Too selfish to let him go, maybe."

Her eyes danced over me, then, as if she were seeing me for the first time. Her eyes met mine, and a sort of softness took over her face. She smiled warmly, but there was still that undertone of bitterness beneath its warmth. Like coffee, I thought - add cream and sugar to it and it'll taste sweet and thick, but no matter how much you dump in there you can never completely cover up the thin, bitter acrid taste of the coffee itself. "You look a lot like him," she said. "Like he used to, years and years ago. You have his eyes."

That made my stomach clench. Not knowing what to say, I simply nodded my head. "Thank you, ma'am."

She turned away, then. The bitterness overcoming her face again as she looked back out the window. "I think I'd like that coffee and bagel, now," she said to me.

"I'll get that right out for you, ma'am," I said. Probably a little too quickly, too. I reached out and gave her arm one last squeeze, to which she neither resisted nor reacted, and I left the room much as I entered it: ears perked, face relaxed, shoulders down, tail loose and unhinged, and mind completely blank.

I couldn't force the warm smile.

I passed Agatha on the way to the little kitchen attached to our break room, hidden in the back end of the building where few patients ever wandered. I must have looked as worn as I felt, because she gave me a tired smile and a firm squeeze to my arm as I passed her. She held me still, there, and looked as if she were going to say something, but before she could we both heard the front door open. She turned her squeeze into a gentle pat at my shoulder as she walked on past me.

I heard her greet the newcomer as I was stooping down to pull out packet for the single-serve coffee maker. Their conversation was drowned out by the hiss of the coffee maker, spewing the instant-brew coffee into the little white, Styrofoam cup I'd set under the spigot while digging through the fridge for the pack of plain bagels hidden among the pudding cups and bowls of jello. I found one - the last one - and gave it a cursory sniff to make sure it was still good, and when I was sure it was, I dropped each half into one of the slits in the toaster and pressed the lever down. I was back to the fridge, looking for the cream cheese, when I heard the telltale patter of little running paws coming my way.

"Marcy!" Somebody called from down the hall. I heard somebody much larger chasing after the runaway child. When I stood and turned from the fridge to look at the doorway, I found them both there, watching me. A mother and daughter, wolves both, the mother somewhere in her late thirties, maybe pushing forty, wearing bellbottom jeans and a black turtleneck that dated her more than the lines in her face. The daughter was no older than six. She wore (what I had to assume) was her Sunday morning best, a moss green dres with yellow accents that looked much cleaner than she did.

"I'm so sorry," the mother said. She scooped the child up into her arms and stepped into the kitchenette. "The woman at the counter said she could wait in here while I visited my father, and she just took off running when she heard there were cookies." The mother gave the child a slight shake. "She knows she's not supposed to run indoors, though. Doesn't she?"

"Sorry," the child said. She looked down, folded her ears, tucked her tail - but it was a show, and her mother and I both knew it.

"Uh-huh," the mother said. She turned back to look at me. "Anyways, do you mind looking after her, here? I don't want her seeing my father like he is right now, and I didn't have time to arrange for somebody to watch her today."

"Sure," I said, without really thinking. The bagel popped, then, and I was about to turn and finish preparing it for Mrs. Weißmann when I noticed the other wolves' eyes. The mother's a piercing, bright yellow. The daughter's a mossy green that matched her dress. "You're here to see Mr. Weißmann, I take it?"

The mother furrowed her brow at me, caught off guard. "Yes," she said. I held out the cream cheese for her. Her confused expression deepened.

"For your mother," I said.

"Oh!" She took the cream cheese from my paw - snatched it, really - and pushed past me to take the bagel out of the toaster and set it on a paper towel. "I'll take it to her. Thanks."

I nodded to the back of her head. I was turning back to the child when Agatha appeared at the door. She shot a perturbed look at the mother and then looked at me with an apologetic expression. "I'm sorry, Neil, I was going to come back with her, but she took off. I've got Becca covering for me at the desk, you can get back to your duties."

I looked back down at the child. Agatha knew I wasn't big on them. But something about this child, this Marcy, made me hold up my paw and say, "It's alright, Aggie, I got it covered."

The chamois just looked at me. "You sure, Eric?"

"Becca's useless behind that desk," I said. "You're the only one that really knows what you're doing on the front end. Besides, her shift should be ending soon." And though it wasn't said, it was understood by both of us that Mrs. Weißmann would throw a fit if a 'prey' species was watching her granddaughter. Natural order of things, and all that nonsense people of her aged still believed. "It's best I watch her," I said.

Agatha nodded. "Alright," she said. She patted Marcy on the shoulder. "Let me know if you change your mind."

"I will," I said. Agatha turned and walked away, and I followed her as far as the connecting break room, gently leading Marcy ahead of me with a touch to the shoulder. "Come on," I said to her. "Why don't you sit at the table."

Marcy was climbing into one of the chairs when her mother came out of the kitchenette, the coffee and bagel in each of her paws. "Thank you," she said more to the room than to me. She gave her daughter a harsh look. "Stay with him. Don't go wandering off." She looked at me. "And don't let her come to my father's room."

I started to say "Yes, ma'am," but she had charged out of the room before I even finished the first word.

I sat down at the table across from the child, folding my arms along the tabletop and slouching forward slightly to level my head with hers. I didn't know what to say - like I said, children weren't my favorite thing - and I didn't really know what to do, so I watched her, waiting and hoping she'd tell me what I should do. When all she did was look back at me with those deep, green eyes of hers, I gave up on direction, and fell back on the icebreaker I knew universally worked: "Would you like something to eat?" I asked.

"No," Marcy said.

"How about something to drink?" I said. "I don't think your mom would like me giving you coffee, but I think we have some juice or milk in the fridge?" I gave her a hopeful, and hopefully warm smile.

"No," Marcy said.

"A board game?" I tried. "Or cards - I think we have some cards in here, too."

"I don't want to play cards," Marcy said.

I bit back a sigh. "What would you like to do?"

"I want to see my grandpa," she said.

My gut clenched. "I know," I said. "But your mother doesn't want you to, right now."

"She never lets me see him," Marcy said. There was a pout in her voice, and a little bit of a whine, but it was an old whine, a tired pout, one that had been repeated and used up for what had to have been days. An eternity for a child. "She says I'll be scared if I see him."

My ears perked up at that. "She says that to you?"

"No," Marcy said. "She says it to my daddy and grandma. Grandma wants me to see him, and daddy doesn't know, but mommy keeps saying 'no,' and they always start yelling about it after I go to bed. I don't think they want me to hear them, but they always get so loud."

I nodded. "Sometimes grownups forget how to use their inside-voice," I said. I felt dumb as soon as I did; I felt so outside my element. I was used to the worn out and elderly, the other end of the spectrum of life, not the fresh, young, and new.

"I never forget," Marcy said. Matter-of-factly. "Mommy yells if I forget, so I never forget."

I grinned. "Seems kinda silly, doesn't it? Yelling about being too loud?"

"It does!" Marcy said. Her eyes brightened, ears perked up a bit. "But mommies are silly, sometimes. Daddies, too. Sometimes I think, I think that they forgot how to listen to their mommies and daddies, and get silly because of it."

"You know?" I said. I reached out and touched her nose with the tip of my finger. "I think you're right." She giggled at me, and I felt a warmth in my chest I'd forgotten existed. I smiled. Warm and genuine. Something I'd never done at work before.

"That's why it makes me sad when mommy and grandma yell at each other," Marcy said. "Grandma doesn't have a mommy to listen to anymore, and has gotten silly, and now mommy won't listen to grandma and is getting silly, too. All they do is fight, now."

"Grownups do that, sometimes," I said. "Sometimes too much."

"Do you listen to your mommy?" Marcy said.

I shook my head. "They moved away a while back, and started fighting with each other," I said. "But I think you're right about mommies and daddies: without their parents to listen to, they just get silly, and my parents got silly so I stopped listening to them." I thought a moment, then said, "Maybe I should start listening again, before I get too silly, too."

"Maybe," Marcy said. We didn't say anything else for a while after that. Marcy laid her head down on her arms and looked off to the side. I decided to get up to get myself a cup of coffee. When I returned, steaming cup in paw, and sat back down across from Marcy, she sat up in her seat and looked right at me. "I wouldn't be scared," she said.

"Of your grandpa?" I said.

Marcy nodded. "They say he looks scary, and sickly, and gross, but I don't care. I just want to see my grandpa, and promise I won't get scared, but mommy never believes me."

"He doesn't look like he used to," I said. In my line of work, it was always best to give the truth. I couldn't bring myself to lie to a child, even to comfort and shelter her for just a little bit longer, with the inevitable so close.

"Mommy says he's going to die," she said. It was in that same matter-of-fact tone she used before, with only the hint of understanding what it was she was saying - she understood, on some level, but didn't on many more, and knew it.

"He is," I said.

"I hear her calling people on her phone, telling my aunts and uncles to come say goodbye," she said. "And she gets so angry when they won't." She flopped her head down on her arms again. "But she won't let me say goodbye, and gets angry when I say I want to."

"Mommies are silly like that," I said. The lameness of my words made me cringe, but I didn't know what else to say.

Marcy sat up suddenly, then. Her ears were up, eyes full of bright hope. "Can you make her let me see him?"

I've been told I have a "glass face" when I'm caught off guard, that I'm terrible at hiding my emotions when I don't have time to prepare. My expression must have been crystalline. "I can't," I said. But the hope had already drained from her face before the words even came. I took a sip of my coffee, just now remembering it was in my paws, and welcomed the scalding liquid into my throat graciously, thinking that maybe, just maybe, it'd help dislodge the stone that had formed in my throat and choked my breath.

And that's when I had the idea.

"But," I said. A little choked from the burns on my tongue and the firmness in my throat. "I think I can help you say goodbye."

Her face brightened again, just for a moment, and then sunk almost instantly. "How?"

"Do you remember those stones outside, by the front door?" I said. She nodded. "How some of them were painted?" She thought a moment, then nodded again. "We have a whole box of paint behind Agatha's desk specially for painting those rocks. Just for kids like you to say goodbye to your grandpas and grandmas. Why don't we go pick out a few pretty stones and paint them up for your grandpa?" I said. "When he wakes up again, maybe he'll get to see them, even if he doesn't get to see you."

Marcy's expression darkened further. "Mommy says he's not going to wake up. That there's not enough of him left in there to wake up."

It was true. Chances of him regaining consciousness were slim to none, and chances of him being lucid enough to recognize anything were even slimmer. Normally, I'd admit all this, and say it outright, even to a child; the truth, even if it hurts, hurts less than a pleasant lie will, in the end. Hope was folly in my line of work, and was dangerous if the patient's family had too much of it.

I was gearing up to admit all this to Marcy, but felt myself stop when I looked into her eyes. They were so young. They told no stories, not like the eyes of the aged, because no stories had been written by what they'd seen, yet. I'd become so used to reading the last few chapters of somebody's life, seeing everyone's life in review, but Marcy's was only just beginning.

When there are only a few pages left to write, there's little room for hope. But what's the harm in hoping, just a little, when one's only just beginning to close out their first chapter?

I stood up from my chair, set my cold coffee down on the table, and held my paw out towards Marcy. I smiled at her, and let my tail wag a little behind me. I looked into her eyes, her deep, green eyes, and imagined that they must be the same rich, vibrant green her grandfather once looked out with, when he, too, was so full of life.

"I think," I said to her, "There's a lot more of him left than everyone seems to think."