As the dizziness subsided, Sam found himself curled in a ball, wrapped entirely in cloth, his legs up over his belly. He couldn't move. When his vision cleared, he looked up to see the face of a beautiful woman, not much more than a girl, really, gazing down at him. She held him in her arms and smiled.

"Well, you got quiet all of a sudden, little boy," she told him in a soft voice. Sam tried to stretch out, but the blanket was wound tight. Something told him he needed to keep still.

The woman fiddled with her clothing, a white terry cloth bathrobe, and pulled one side away to bare her breast. Sam's mouth fell open at the sight. Creamy, white skin jiggled right by his nose.

"Oh, boy." This was sure an interesting surprise!

Before he could think, she shoved it into his mouth. He turned his head, shocked.

"Mickey, come on." She pressed his face to turn it back toward her and shoved her breast into his mouth again.

Sam then realized what he'd leapt into. It was feeding time and his new "mother" was going to keep shoving herself into his face until he took the breast. He sucked this time. The first shot of milk hit the back of his throat and made him blink. Sweet. It was very sweet. Nice. He took another, gently, and it felt good going down.

The nipple was hard in his mouth, but the rest of the breast was soft against his nose and chin. He had one free hand and reached up to touch the smooth skin. Mom began to rock back and forth. His breaths blew softly against her, and as he drank he discovered he was hungry.

With one eye he glanced up at the woman feeding him. Her head rested on the back of the chair and she seemed lost in thought. She hummed a tune, but so softly it almost wasn't identifiable. Something by The Carpenters, maybe. Her face was pretty, even from down here. Young. Extremely young, Sam thought. Dark hair cascaded over her eyes though it was short overall. His heart swelled. Such a pretty woman! Such a lovely, generous woman!

His eyelids drooped. The rocking and the sweet milk put him in a drowsy mood. Whatever he was there to put right could wait till he'd rested. Surrounded by softness, cuddled by his mother, completely peaceful for the first time in memory, he closed his eyes and went to sleep with his lips slack around the breast.

"Sam, wake up."

No. Don'wanna.

"Sam...Sam, get up."

His eyes fluttered and focused on Al's knees which were at eye level behind turned wooden bars. "Go 'way."

"Sam, you can't just lie there."

"Yeah, I can. I'm a baby." Sam muttered into the thin mattress of his crib. "This is what babies do; they get fed, they sleep and..." He raised his head. "Uh oh." With a wide yawn, he hauled himself up by the barred side of the crib to climb out.

"What are you doing? You can't be seen walking around. You're Michael David O'Hara and you're..." Al poked the handlink so it beeped, "...you're twelve days old. You're not walking anywhere."

Sam lowered his chin and whispered, slowly as if talking to an idiot, "But I have to use the bathroom."

Al ignored the tone. "So go in your diaper."

A short chuckle snorted from Sam's nose. "Yeah, right." He started to put a leg over the crib side.

"No, it's what they're for. You can't...Sam! Don't! Your mother will wake up and see you, and it'll be all over for her!" He waved his cigar to illustrate the extreme confusion Mickey's mother would experience.

Sam hesitated with one leg dangling over the bars and hissed, "I can't just go in my diaper!"

"Why not?"

"I...just can't."

"You used to."

"Not in almost forty years!" His eyes were wide with exasperation.

"Well, you'll just have to brush up on that skill then! 'Cause you can't go wandering around this apartment. You don't even crawl yet."

"Al, I'm going to the bathroom and you're not stopping me." Sam slid over the rail and onto the floor. "You go watch..." he gestured in the direction of the nursery door, "...Mom, and yell if she wakes up."

Al poked the handlink again, it beeped and he disappeared.

Sam found the bathroom, relieved himself, then discovered he couldn't replace the tapes on his diaper once they'd been removed.

"Oh, man!" He tried to get the small unstuck corner to stick, but it just wasn't enough surface to hold the diaper on.

Al called out, "Sam, she's getting up! Hurry!"

Like a streak Sam was back in the nursery and over the rail into his crib with one hand holding his diaper together. Al appeared.

"Lie face down, Sam, that's how she put you there. Remember, you're only twelve days old."

Sam flopped over onto his stomach in the nick of time. Mickey's young mother walked in.

Al gazed at her with twinkling eyes. "Oooh, Sam, you lucky! Oh, please tell me you're breast fed!"

"Al, that's none of your business!"

"Oooh, you are breast fed! You lucky dog!"

"Al!"

Mickey's mother tightened her bathrobe, then reached for Sam. "Well, you're certainly the blabbermouth this afternoon. You'll be talking in no time."

Al said, "He was talking before he was a year old. Whole sentences. Haven't been able to shut him up since."

Sam shot him a warning look.

Mom flipped Sam over as easily as if he were really a ten pound baby. His jaw dropped open and he looked at Al with wide eyes.

"Don't look at me." Al seemed just as surprised. "Maybe she just doesn't realize her son now weighs 180 pounds. You know how people sometimes can do things only because they don't know they're impossible."

Mom lifted the torn tape on one side of Sam's diaper and sighed. "How did you do that, little boy?" A quick glance around the room, and she reached for a fresh diaper. Then she grabbed his near leg, lifted, and whipped the old one out from under him.

Sam gasped and curled his legs up over himself. Mom held his ankles with one hand, lifted, and slid the new diaper under him. Then she tried to spread his knees and he balked.

"Sam..."

With a sigh, Sam let this woman finish diapering him. Then she lifted him from the crib, careful to support his head, and held him over her shoulder to take him into the next room. The TV was tuned to an afternoon talk show: David Frost. She sat in the rocker and held him on her lap. Al watched with a dreamy look on his face.

"I envy you, Sam, I really do. To have the opportunity to be cuddled and cared for, your every whim catered to..."

"Al, how about telling me why I'm here?" Sam's legs dangled over the side of the chair and his face was pressed to Mom's bathrobe.

"I didn't think you were interested."

"My stomach is growling. As nice as they are, these breasts were never meant to feed a full-grown man."

Al started to say something, but was interrupted by the front door opening. A young man walked in, wearing jeans and a khaki uniform shirt bearing the logo of a petroleum company. Sam expected a greeting of some sort, but neither spoke until the man went to the kitchenette and opened the refrigerator.

"What's for dinner?"

"Dunno."

There was a dark silence.

Al poked the handlink, made it squeal, and said, "This is Michael David O'Hara, Senior. Your father."

"He's a kid."

"Nineteen years old. Your mother will be nineteen in a month. Her name is Dee Dee. 'Case you couldn't guess, they had to get married."

Sam could feel the tension between the teenagers. Dee Dee stared hard at the TV as if she wanted to be inside it, her lips pressed together so hard a white ring surrounded her mouth. Michael took a beer from the refrigerator and hauled a bag of potato chips out of a cupboard. Then he went to the sofa and joined Dee Dee in watching the program.

Al continued, reading from the handlink, "It's November 20, 1972. Back then when young couples got in trouble they either married or gave the baby up for adoption. Roe v. Wade was a year later, so abortion was illegal and unsafe."

"Abortion..." From Sam's new perspective, the word made him go cold.

"These two chose marriage. Michael dropped out of high school in his senior year and got a job at a gas station. Dee Dee was a junior. JV cheerleader, in fact."

"What am I supposed to change? I mean, what can I do as a twelve-day-old?"

"Perk up, Sam. Tomorrow you'll be thirteen days old."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Just tell me, Al."

"Ziggy's got nothing. Zip, zilch." He smacked the handlink. "We have no clue why you're here."

"Great."

A low voice came from the couch. "He's too damn noisy, Dee Dee. Take him into the other room."

"You can't send him into the other room every time he makes a noise forever, Mike."

"Yeah, I can. It's my house."

"Mike..."

"Take him the hell outta here. I come home, I want quiet for a while. Don't need no rugrat drowning out the TV. I'm supporting him, I'll kick him out of the room if I want!"

She fell silent. Sam's stomach growled. Mike took a pull from his beer and watched TV. Dee Dee got up from the chair and carried Sam back to the nursery where she sat on a bean bag chair with him in her lap.

All he could do was watch as she cried. Tears slid over her cheeks and she snuffled quietly so Mike wouldn't hear. Sam wished he could speak to her and let her know she wasn't alone, but she wouldn't understand him. He couldn't even wipe the tears for her.

A shuddering sigh shook them both. "Oh, Mickey, I'm sorry I got us into this. It's all my fault."

Her defeated tone rang alarm bells in Sam's mind.

"I'm a terrible mother. It's my fault you're going to have to live like this." A sob shook her. "Oh, God, what else am I going to ruin?" She dissolved in tears.

Sam almost reached up to touch her face, but hesitated, his hand hovering halfway. Just then he really felt like a little boy, powerless to help his mother stop hurting.

Later that night, Sam lay awake while his teenage parents went to sleep in the other bedroom. Once Mike's snores began rumbling from the other room, Sam figured it was safe. He climbed out of his crib and tiptoed out to the kitchen, his footed pajamas making little vinyl tappings on the linoleum.

The refrigerator was not exactly full, but there were some pieces of leftover chicken and an opened can of flat diet soda. He stuck a drumstick into his mouth, grabbed a thigh, and took the soda can.

"Those in between meal snacks aren't good for little boys, Sam."

Startled, he nearly dropped the soda. "Al!," he said, muffled by the chicken. He set the can on the counter, tore the drumstick from between his teeth, and chewed the bite. "Al, that woman...that girl, is severely depressed. I'm no psychologist, but I know clinical depression when I see it."

"Sure. Post natal depression. It's real common."

"You should have heard her this afternoon. In between crying jags she talked about nothing but how guilty she is and what a horrible person she is. Poor kid, she feels guilty for having the baby."

"Well, let me tell you what Ziggy came up with." Sam took another bite of chicken and chewed as he read over Al's shoulder. "He says there's a 79.6 percent chance you're here to save a grand." They both peered at the handlink and Al smacked it. "Save a grandparent. Uh, he says Dee Dee's grandmother is going to keel over from a heart attack in this apartment sometime tomorrow. He says you're here to save her."

"A twelve-day..."

"Thirteen."

"Excuse me, a thirteen-day-old baby is going to perform CPR on his great-grandmother? That makes no sense."

"Ziggy says..."

"Then how come I didn't leap into Mike or Dee Dee? No, Al, it's got to be something else."

"Well, I can't imagine what."

"What if I'm here to save their marriage? I mean, you can see how badly it's going for them."

Al poked the handlink a few times and said, "No, the odds on that are so low Ziggy can't even come up with a figure. Not a chance that's what you're here for."

"They stay married?"

"No, they..." Al shook the link until it squealed. "Uh...they disappear, actually."

"What?" Sam peered at the readout.

"There's no record of a divorce, but neither is there anything on Michael O'Hara Junior or Senior after...after tomorrow. And nothing under Dee Dee's maiden name, either."

"You're not going to tell me about another flood destroying the records, are you?"

"No. There's just, nothing. Not that we can trace back to this family, anyway."

Sam's heart sank. "Great. Who knows what I'm supposed to change."

"Ziggy says it's the grandmother."

"Ziggy's wrong. I can feel it." Sam felt it as strongly as he'd ever felt anything.

The next morning Sam lay in his crib and stared at the sunrise coming through the Snoopy curtains. Idly his gaze moved between scenes of the World War I Flying Ace, Snoopy the Vulture, and the Dance of Joy, pas de deux a Woodstock. 1972 icons. Back then he'd been far too grownup at nineteen to have paid much attention to Peanuts...

Nineteen. Mickey's father had been born the same year as himself. Sam tried to imagine becoming a father back then, and couldn't. He'd been on his way to a Nobel Prize, hip deep at MIT, and there had been no chance of giving that up to raise children so early. Sam wondered what Mike had given up when he'd quit high school.

The morning passed as Sam waited for Dee Dee to wake up and feed him. His stomach urged him to find something to eat, but it was too risky. He rolled over onto his stomach, propped his chin on his hands, and stared at the door. Where was Dee Dee?

The phone rang. Three, four, five rings. Six rings. Seven rings. Then it stopped. Sam's eyes narrowed. Didn't Dee Dee hear? He sat up in the crib. Something was wrong.

The imaging chamber door opened and Al stepped through. "Sam, Ziggy found out why the family disappears. Dee Dee dies of an overdose of tranquilizers, little Mickey is adopted by his maternal grandparents, becoming Michael Stevens, and Michael Senior leaves town and never comes back."

"Al, an overdose?"

"Yeah."

Sam climbed over the crib rail. "Al..." He ran to the other bedroom and found Dee Dee curled up on the bed asleep. Sam shook her.

"Watch it, Sam."

"She's not breathing, Al." He shook her again. "Al, she's not breathing." Several prescription bottles on the night stand told him it might be too late. He pulled the covers from the girl and straightened her out on the bed. Then he pressed his mouth to hers to resuscitate. One breath, two breaths...nothing. Sam's heart clenched.

"CPR, Sam."

Sam took her under her arms and pulled her onto the hard floor, then began CPR. "Dee Dee...come on," Sam muttered, tears in his voice. "Don't die. Come on." Five beats, then a breath, five more heartbeats, then a breath. Sam said through clenched teeeh, "Don't die, don't die...come on, Mom. You've got to live."

Her eyes fluttered and she gasped. Sam picked her up off the floor. "Walk. Get up, dammit." Dee Dee was barely conscious and he carried all her weight as he tried to get her to stand.

The front door opened and Al said, "Hey, there's someone coming."

"Dee Dee? Are you here?" It was an elderly woman.

Quickly and carefully Sam laid Dee Dee back on the floor, then curled up on the bed. The woman entered the bedroom, tottering on a cane and carrying a small grocery bag.

Her eyes went wide and her hand went to her chest. The bag spilled cans of vegetables and tuna onto the floor. "Dee Dee!" For a moment, it looked like she might collapse, but then she knelt by the girl. "Oh, Dee Dee!" She leaned close and felt her wrist for a pulse. One glance at the nightstand sent her to the phone to call the fire department. As she tottered into the other room, she said, "Thank God you're still alive!"

Al, poking the handlink, said, "You did it, Sam. Apparently finding Dee Dee on the floor with no pulse had precipitated the grandmother's heart attack. You saved them both."

Sam leaned over the edge of the bed and brushed the hair out of Dee Dee's eyes. "She'll be okay, then?"

"She and Mike will have an average marriage with its ups and downs, but this incident makes Mike realize that he really does love Dee Dee and his son. Eventually they overcome their difficulties, gain some maturity...they do all right. Mickey grows up and goes to college. Makes his old man proud. He's..." Al peered at the readout, "...he's at MIT now."

Sam smiled, then leaned down to kiss Dee Dee on the cheek. "Bye, Mom." Then the dizziness came and she was gone.