This is the best summary I could come up with:

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A fan hummed in the corner, lifting the limp tentacles of the spider plant that hung from the ceiling in a white plastic pot.

The tests involved surgeries for no good end and holding my mother pinned to the hospital bed in traction (like isolation – also a place to be avoided).

She brought dinner, sometimes, cold meatloaf covered in condensed cream of mushroom soup or porkchops baked in consommé.

My grandmother sat on the blue visitor’s chair in the corner and passed these foods to my mother while she lay in bed propped on the pillows.

She read a story about a vagabond and dreamed of freight trains made of shivering metal, of climbing aboard alone in the middle of the night.

The multiplication of malignant cells, however much in my heart they coalesced into material that made my son and then my daughter, soft baby hair and outstretched arms.

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