"Your sister may have a brain tumor," my mother told me three days ago. I was sitting in the den, watching TV. She walked in very quietly and told me this. Then she turned and looked out the window with her hands in her pockets. She stood there for a long time, looking out, but I could tell she wasn't seeing anything. I watched her the whole while, waiting for her to say something else, to make things more clear. But she didn't move, didn't speak. Finally she turned and walked out of the room.

My sister had gone to the doctor last week because she was missing her period. Everyone had been pretty excited, thinking she had another one in the oven. They ran some tests. They ran more tests. She wasn't pregnant. Then something about prolactin levels. Excess hormones. The pituitary gland.

I'm watching my niece today, my sister's daughter. My sister and her husband have gone to get the CAT scan and my mother had gone to work. "Listen for the phone," she said before she left. "I told them to call if there's any news."

I'm up in my room, looking through medical dictionaries, trying to assess my sister's situation, when my niece rushes in, huffing and puffing. She's very excited about something and I can't understand what she's saying, so I say, "Slow down, just slow down." I say this real slow, and it's like I can actually feel the words coming from my lips.

She takes a breath and looks around my room, as if she had walked in through the wrong door.

"What's up?" I ask.

"A bird." Catching her breath. "A bird and a cat. I've got the bird."

"A cat got a bird?"

"Yes, but I've got the bird. I have it downstairs. We need a box."

I get up from my chair and walk over to the closet. "Was it our cat?" I ask as I pull down a box from the top shelf.

"No, some other cat. Some mean cat. Not ours."

I open the box and lay it on the bed. It's filled with pictures of my ex-girlfriend, who I haven't seen in a couple of months. There are also pictures of the two of us together. I note how much younger I look in those pictures, although they were taken only a year ago, then I place them down on the bed and hand her the empty box. "There," I say.

"Thank you. Do you want to come see it, the cute little bird I saved? It's really tiny and its wing is all torn up from the mean cat, but it's still breathing, and once a while it moves its wings, like it might fly. Wanna see?"

"Sure," I say, because I'm tired of looking through the medical books.

I close the dictionary and set it on my night stand, on top of some others. We walk out of the room together and I close the door.

On the porch I examine the bird; a little city bird with gray and brown feathers. One of its wings is mangled and wet from the cat's saliva, and its large black eyes look straight ahead, like it doesn't notice us there watching. My niece lays the box down next to the bird and says, "Wait. Wait. Hold everything. We need to get some paper. You know, like a nest inside the box. So she’ll be comfortable."

She goes inside and I sit petting the bird. I start on the top of its bony little head and run my fingers down the body. I can feel its skeleton beneath the feathers; the hard, narrow backbone; the fine, hollow bones of its wings. My niece comes back with a handful of paper towels and starts tearing them up into little pieces. Then she lays them inside the box, spreading them around with her hand. "There, now it's like a nest," she says.

Just then the phone rings so I get up and walk inside. I let it ring once more and the sound echoes in my head. Then I pick it up, but whoever it was, they hung up. For some reason, I think it may have been my ex-girlfriend. I call her number but all I get is her answering machine, so I put the phone back down.

"Was it Mommy?" my niece asks.

"I didn't get it in time. Probably not. We won't hear anything yet."

The bird is sitting in the box now, very comfortably it seems. But you can never be sure with a bird. Something in the sight of it lying in the square box bothers me, but I can't place the feeling.

"What's its name?"

"Bushnell," she replies without a pause.

"Where did you find it?"

She points up the street to a chain link fence that borders a hill with trees and weeds growing along the side. "I was playing up near that fence just now when I heard something move in the bushes. I thought it was a lizard, or a snake, you know how they make that sound?"

I nod.

"Anyhow, I moved back, you know, away from the fence. And that’s when I saw the mean cat with the little bird, with Bushnell in its mouth. So you know what I did then?"

"Tell me."

"I picked up a rock and made like I would throw it. But the cat didn't let Bushnell go, he just sat there staring at me. But I could see he was afraid."

She stops her story, pets the bird, and moves some of the paper towel strips closer around its body.

"He wouldn't drop her, so finally I threw the rock up on the hill, right above the cat, and he got so scared that he dropped Bushnell and ran for it."

"Good thinking," I say.

She smiles and continues, "So then I thought she would fly away, but every time she tried to move her wings, she didn't go anywhere. So I bent down and said: 'It's okay, girl, I've got you.' And I picked her up and brought her to the house. She's a bush bird."

I look down at the bird try to imagine this. It seems pretty clear that this is the only way it could have happened.

Then the bird starts moving its wings a little, but I can tell that the bad wing, the one the cat took a bite from, is too damaged.

My niece bends down close to the bird. Her face is nearly in the box.

"It's okay, Bushnell. Rest a bit," she whispers. She looks up at me and smiles. I think about calling my ex-girlfriend again, but it seems too soon. I'll probably only get her machine.

"Did you ever save a bird?" my niece asks.

I think back to a time my sister and I had taken a baby bird in from the sidewalk. It had fallen out of its nest, a nest we could see above us in the tree. It was small and frail, and it only had a few tiny feathers. I was pretty sure it was going to die, but my sister couldn't believe in that. She fed it broth from an eye dropper for two days, and for a time I believed it might pull through.

"No," I lie, not wanting to go into the details.

"Look!" she shouts. "Look at Bushnell!"

The bird is trying to move her wings again, but the paper around her makes it hard.

"Lift it out," I tell my niece.

She cups her hands around the bird and lifts it from the box. I reach over and pull a strand of paper towel from its wing, the good wing. Then it flies up out of my niece’s hand and lands on the grass across the street. We run over but it doesn't move. My niece reaches down and picks it up again, and we carry it back to the box.

"Nice try, Bushnell," my niece says.

Then the phone rings again so I walk inside and answer it right away. It's my mother calling from work.

"Any news?" she asks.

"No, nothing. Did you call before?"

"I'm just taking my break. I haven't called."

"We haven't heard anything. The phone rang once, but I couldn't make it in time."

"Stay close to the line, you don't want to miss the call if there’s news."

"Right," I say, and we hang up.

My niece is fixing up the box again, moving more paper toward the center.

"Maybe she needs something to eat," she suggests as I walk outside. "A worm, or an insect. Something to get back her strength."

I tell her that's a good idea but where are we going to find a worm or an insect. She looks around the porch.

"There!" she cries, pointing to a dark bug on the floor. She leans over and pinches it between her fingers. Then she lays it inside the box, but it doesn't move. I'm not sure if she killed it picking it up, or if it was already dead, but I know the bird won't eat it now.

My niece looks down at the bird and then points to the dead bug.

"Go ahead, girl," she says encouragingly. "Get some strength."

The bird doesn't move or even turn its head. It just sits there. I look closely at the bug and see it's a spider. Its legs are curled up beneath it and it looks as if it's been dead for some time.

I'm hoping the bird will try again. Maybe move its wings and make like it might fly. Just a little gesture. Then I wish it would fly away, at least around the corner where we wouldn't see it anymore. But it just sits there looking straight ahead.

I get up and dust off my pants. Looking around for the first time I realize it's not a bad day. A little too hot maybe, but that will fade. I think about calling my ex-girlfriend again. There are some things I need to talk about; things she might understand. I'll call and let it ring. If I get the machine again, I'll hang up. I only want her human voice. And if she answers, my ex, I won't rush into anything. I'll take it slow for once, let things happen.

"I'm going in for a minute," I say.

My niece reaches into the box and picks up the dead spider.

She lays it in her palm, then blows it onto the grass. She shrugs.

"Oh, well," she says, "We’ll just have to try something else."