TWENTY ONE
STEVE ARKIN strolled out the main doors of the Bronx Children's Hospital alone. Feet rose a few inches from the sidewalk, but then he decided to set back down and just walk it.
The neighborhood seemed dismal, dirty, with broken bottles, abandoned car skeletons. Homeless men lay wedged in beneath rusted iron structures. Brick and billboards, traffic lines and angry honking horns.
As Steve rounded the corner toward the nearest bridge, the scene appeared to change. The brick-faced towers of Manhattan dwarfed all the little lives, and their problems were rendered inconsequential. But this was just an illusion. Nothing had truly changed, only a simple view, a matter of focus, perspective.
Steve jumped up onto the bridge walkway and continued his stroll back across the placid grey
