Time was running out. My open-heart surgery and sterile implements replaced Mrs. Abrahamson’s second-grade classroom just as the tulips broke free from winter slumber.
“Count backward from one hundred,” a distant voice said.
I heard the tick, tick, tick of the wall clock’s second hand sweeping me along the edge of consciousness as numbers fell off my lips.
Was it minutes or hours later when my foggy eyes opened to the trembling smiles of my parents?
“There’s our princess!” dad said.
“No better time than now,” mom murmured.
She fastened my new Cinderella watch’s pink strap around my pale wrist.
