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DON ZACHAR IA
with pails filled with crabs. They wave to me, and Loie looks at
their crabs, keeping her distance the whole time. I am lost in
Queens.
I have nothin g to do while I am waiting for J's doctor, so I
think about children pulling grass out of the ground. "There has
been spread." He doesn't look at me, and I don't look at him.
There is no need for that now. Neither of us have to be men. "We
don't know much about it, only th a t it happens. We don't know
why, and we have no idea how to stop it. The parti cular process
that is involved is called metastasis. In J's case, there is now a large
tumor located in her cerebellum. Keep her out of the sun . Keep
her in the shade."
3. In astronomy, the fourth sign of the Zodiac, entered by
the sun about June twenty-second.
J smiles and claps her hands
repeatedly, fifteen, twenty, thirty times. She straightens her head
scarf, pulling it down even further over her forehead. There is
something strange about the way it looks. Something doesn't quite
register about the way it sits on her head. What could it be? Of
course. How could I forget? She's bald.
"I caught two minnows," Loie shouts excitedly, holding up
her net. "They're squiggly and I'm gonna let 'em go." Cancer is a
disorderly, purposeless growth of cells. Living things grow by an
orderly process of cell division called mitosis. In mitosis one cell
divides into two, two into four, four cells become eight, and so on.
NOW LISTEN. Normally mitosis is controlled naturally so that the
body produces only the kinds a,1d amounts of cells needed. When
anything interferes with this control, the cells grow without stop–
ping and build up masses of tissues without stopping. OH, WOW!
AH, YES. Malignant tumors are not self-contained . ARE YOU
LISTENING? I SAID MALIGNANT TUMORS ARE NOT SELF–
CONTAINED. They invade the tissues near them by a little under–
stood process called metastasis. Cancer may set up new growths in
parts of the body far removed from the site of the original tumor.
Loie blows bubbles in the water.
"I remember that," I say to the cop .
"Gowanus to Utopia to Tinker," he says.
"Ah, yes."
DANGER--Cobalt is being given. Do not proceed beyond
