Pool_2

percolated as her picture was passed along the table circuit. "She looks the same," all the men swooned. The bellicose laughter brought on by Shannon's correction "Her nipples are browner, actually, but partially restored in hue," went on and on. It ground to a halt when from out of absolutely nowhere doctor Frank Sumner broke his silence, the long silence, "I'll be the father. Take me there. I mean it. I could be, no, I AM that young man's father. Does he look like me? Would it work?" Marcus and Shannon stared long and hard, "Could work," they both agreed, once again in unison. It did work. The young man simply accepted that this disfigured yet handsome man did not know that he had a child. He accepted that the very doctor who delivered him also delivered this man, his father, to him. Nora saw only the beauty in Frank. She embraced him and fulfilled the promise she had offered to Marcus. She made him happy beyond dreams. A false father? Or real? This little twist of facts brought a father to a young man needing a father, a loving wife to a man who carried the burn of his torch too long, way too long, whose pain was anesthetized in her breasts, and a caring stability and connection to family that this gorgeous creature had always wanted but never had. Where's the wrong? Nora wore Julie's red ribbon on her own jacket - always. She placed Julie's portrait over the mantle in the main room, and endowed the multimillion dollar Julie Sumner Cancer Research Foundation. She explained to her publisher, who later shared it, "He is a man of scars. All together, they are beautiful to me. She is his deepest and sweetest." There were no losers in this transaction. Yet this was a birth of good not fathered of truth. That did not matter at the table. In medicine, truths and cures are rare. Approximations, palliations, and salves are the day to day reality. Larry quipped, "It's