Whatever it is.”

He turned on the lightbox, and the black-and-white CT scan bloomed onto the screen — shadows, and bone, and the soft gray shapes of my mother’s organs.

And he raised his hand and pointed, deep into her abdomen.

“We found something,” he said.

“A tumor?” I could barely get the word out.

He hesitated, and my mother closed her eyes very tightly, and he said, “It doesn’t look like a tumor.”