In the days that followed he had only to yearn for them to conjure them up, and not merely the bone parents of the aging man but the flesh parents of the boy still in bud, off to the hospital on the bus with Treasure Island and Kim in the bag his mother balanced on her knees. A boy still in bud but because of her presence showing no fear and shoving aside all his thoughts about the bloated body of the seaman that he'd watched the Coast Guard remove from the edge of the oil-clotted beach.

He went in early on a Wednesday morning for the surgery on his right carotid artery. The routine was exactly as it had been for the surgery on the left carotid. He waited his turn in the anteroom with everyone else on the surgical schedule until his name was called, and in his flimsy gown and paper slippers he was accompanied by a nurse into the operating room. This time when he was asked by the masked anesthesiologist if he wanted the local or the general anesthetic, he requested the general so as to make the surgery easier to bear than it had been the first time............