"Hope, darling. It's the greatest tonic in the world even if there's no good reason for it." She squeezed Ally's hand. "And I do so wish Arthur could be here now. I miss him so much."
"I know, Mom. He was as much a friend to me as he was a dad" She thought back fondly over her father's many passions and how she'd shared a lot of them with him. One had been the nineteenth-century Romantic poets, particularly Wordsworth and Shelley. Then he'd had his astronomy period and they'd spent a lot of time together at the planetarium. But he took an interest in her passions as well. When at age eight she decided to collect coins, he went to the bank and brought back rolls and rolls of dimes and nickels for her to go through. And during the summertime he'd take her and Grant on the LIRR to Long Beach, every other Sunday, all summer long.
That was why the pain, the personal loss, of his horrible death had never fully subsided. Perhaps it never would. But the difference between them was that he had finally lost his will to live, whereas Ally found her own will growing all the more with every new adversity she faced. The weaker her heart got, the more determined she was to exercise, whatever it took, to make it strong again.
"He would be so proud of the way you pulled CitiSpace back from the brink." She let a tear slide down her left cheek, smearing her makeup. "And I'll tell you something else, young lady. You take after us both when it comes to guts. My memory may be slipping, but I remember you were always willing to take chances. And I guess that's what we're doing here now. Both of us. We're gambling on life. In your case, you've got a lot to lose."
Ally looked at her. Nina was having one of her moments of incredible lucidity, but how did she know so much about what was really going on.
"The head nurse, Ellen, told me that you're going to undergo a procedure for your heart. That you're going to start today." Her eyes darkened. "She also admitted he'd never used the procedure on a condition like yours. It's completely experimental."
"She took me downstairs, where they did my hair. She said Dr. Vee thinks it's important for everyone here to have a positive attitude. They ask you what you'd like and then they try to do it. Now I'm ready for whatever comes next." She stared directly into Ally's eyes. "But that doesn't mean I still can't be nervous about all this untried stuff."