"If only we hadn't waited. If we had only brought her in sooner," said Angela. Her husband Peter was across the bed from her. On the bed was their four year-old daughter, Meg. The child was asleep, as she was more and more these last few days. A monitor was screaming in four different lines of color, silently, insistently, ominously.

"We couldn't know," Peter said. "I really don't think we could ever have suspected this."

"I was a cold, a bad cough, I thought." Angela's voice quivered like aspen leaves twittering in a breeze. Her whole being was as unsteady as wind.