Nancy Kerrigan flashed her ivories as she floated and spun across the television screen. She stepped to the beat of the EKG and the morphine drip; she glided to the constant rhythm of the ventilators rising and falling in the rooms below. Seeing her in the corner of the trauma ICU surprised me at first. She looked out of place, muted and tiny, transmitted from her ice palace to an alien world of comas and catheters. I suppose Nancy served some purpose there, whirling between sterile cream tiles and fluorescent lights. Whether she facilitated entertainment or escapism I can't say, but are they really different? This particular day, I directed my gawking eyes and hesitant steps to a glassed-in cubicle cluttered with machines. The main doors of the unit sealed behind us with a heavy lub-dup; there was no escape. To our left, gunshot victims groaned audibly with dimly lit rooms. “Gang fight,” mom explained as we paced rhythmically along the corridor past somber, faceless nurses and antiseptic white counters. Her typical crisp khakis swung loosely – too loosely- from her hips. Had she remembered to eat that day? Had I? My baggy grey sweatshirt hung like a hollow shell on my gangly 13-year-old body, but the icy emptiness felt pure, reassuring. It echoed my bond with my mom and even that solemn hallway. Together we formed a frozen, rawboned audience in anticipation of the evening’s main event. Nancy still smiled and twirled above it all, silently commanding attention, but she was really just a sideshow. Mom drew aside a colorless curtain to reveal the real object of our visit. The body, intubated and impotent, materialized as sallow bits of color against pristine white sheets. The tiny purplish toes of one foot peeked from the end of a mammoth cast. At the other end of the bleached expanse, a blue tube emerged and disappeared again between thin lips. One line ran yellow, the others clear, and a curious mix of urine, and disinfectant