“I spoke with Peggy Peabody and told her to go home.  I told her that we would call her if there were any changes. “Do you think we should call the girls?”

“It’s a little late. I’ll call them in a few hours.”

“Whatcha got there?” Kit gestured with her head to the book Tina was holding and handed her a cup.

Tina accepted the cup and placed it on a table near the bed.  Tina looked down at the book and smiled softly remembering when Bette presented her with it.  “This is a journal that Bette gave me on our first Valentine’s Day together.”  Tina touched the cracked leather.

“What’s in it?” Kit pulled a chair closer to Tina.

“Oh pages filled with poems that Bette loves.  She took her favorite poems and wrote them in the journal.”  Tina flipped through the pages.  “There’s some Chinese fortune cookies she thought were funny.”  Tina opened to a page.  “Here’s some: ‘Buy red shoes’, ‘Chocolate makes everything better’ and this is her favorite, ‘Someone out there is in love with you’.”

Kit looked at the fortunes and poems. “Bette did that? My baby sister?”  Kit looked over to her sister. “Wow.”

“Yeah…wow.” Tina looked up at Bette.  “She’s really romantic, you know. Sometimes I would tease her about it.”

“So why do you have the journal with you?” Kit asked as she took a sip from her cup.

“I’m going to read to her…see whenever one of us was sick we would read from the journals. Tina flipped through the pages.

“How many journals do you have?” Kit leaned back in the chair.

“The first year we went through about eighteen journals.”  Tina paused and mentally counted the journals.  “We have about 73 journals.” Tina didn’t remember the last time they read from the journal and bring the journal was a last minute decision.

“ This one is our favorite.”  Tina took her cup from the table and took a sip of the hot beverage.  “This one is one of Bette’s favorite poems. It’s a poem by Pablo Neruda.  Bette discovered him when we were in Spain celebrating our first-year anniversary.   Kit, why don’t you sit back and listen.” Tina leaned forward and cleared her throat.