"I feel just like a lamb about to be led to slaughter," Ginger told her husband. She'd just been admitted to the hospital and now lay in bed in her room waiting to be taken to surgery. Igor sat beside her, holding her hand.

"It will soon be all over, and you will be healthy again," Igor replied soothingly.

Cancer free, perhaps, but missing an important part of my body, Ginger wanted to say, but didn't.

An orderly arrived. "Ready to go for a ride?" he asked pleasantly.

"Good-bye for now, sweet Ginger." Igor kissed his wife's forehead."I see you again really soon. I love you."

"I love you, too." She clung tightly to his hand, reluctantly letting go at the last minute. Igor watched until the stretcher carrying his wife turned a corner, then joined the others in the waiting room.

"She is in surgery now," he announced, then joined his friends for what would seem to them a long wait.

Jonas, Gilligan, and Roy sat talking quietly together. Mr. Howell read the 'Wall Street Journal' while his wife read 'People' magazine. Mary Ann tried to concentrate on her knitting but kept having to unravel and repeat rows. Audrey walked a little way down the hallway, and Roger followed her. He found her standing beside a newspaper dispenser. The headline of the newspaper on top declared 'Movie Star And Former Castaway Ginger Grant Diagnosed With Cancer, Faces Surgery.'

"This is what it's like to have a movie star for a mother!" Audrey was practically shouting, and Roger could tell that she was near tears. "Your family's most private business is paraded right out in the open for the whole world to see!"

"I'm sorry," said Roger. He couldn't think of anything else to say.

"It wasn't so bad before," Audrey continued, calmer now. "I'd pretty much gotten used to it. But my Mom never had cancer before."

"I know that's tough." The flip side of being rich and famous, he mused.

"It's bad enough that we have to worry about whether or not she's going to be all right, but to know that complete strangers are reading all about it over their morning coffee is just..horrible!"

"Think about it this way," Roger suggested. "The more complete strangers who know about what's happened to your Mom, the more people she'll have to wish her well."

"Yeah, I guess so." Audrey sighed. "That makes me feel a little bit better."

Roger smiled gently. "I'm glad."

Mary Ann suddenly noticed that Igor was no longer in the waiting room. Curious, she went in search of him, eventually finding him sitting on a pew in the hospital chapel, sobbing his heart out.

"Igor!" Instantly alarmed, she went to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He looked at her with big tears streaming down his face.

"I cannot stand to lose her," he said. "If something happen, if she die, then I cannot bear it. I cannot live without my Ginger."

"Aw, she's not gonna die!" said Mary Ann. "She's got the best doctors in the world, and they're doing everything they can for her. She'll be fine, Igor!"

"Maybe. But what if she is not?"

"Would you feel better if I stayed here with you for a little while?"

"I would like that very much, Mary Ann."

Several hours later, the physician came into the waiting room to talk to Igor and Audrey. "The operation was successful," he told them. "There was some bleeding, but we quickly got it under control. She'll be back in her room in about an hour or so. You can see her then."

"Thank God!" Igor exclaimed. He and Audrey embraced one another.

Ginger felt dizzy and disoriented at first. Gradually her vision returned to normal, and she realized that she was staring up at the lights of the recovery room at the hospital.

It's all over. My uterus is gone. She had to blink back the tears.

"How do you feel?" asked a nurse.

"My throat is dry," Ginger complained. "And I feel queasy."

"That's just a side effect of the anesthesia," the nurse told her. "It'll pass very shortly."

The nurse offered her a small cup of ice water, and she eagerly gulped it down. She knew that she'd be taken to her regular hospital room soon, and she didn't look forward to it. She dreaded facing Igor. How would he feel about her, now that she no longer had her womb?