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               I was always one to take the lucky things.  I pluck four-leaved clovers from their brothers by the juicy stems, I pick pennies off the street and scrape the tips of my fingers on the sooty gravel, I wish on feathers and eyelashes and dandelions.  There are five rabbit feet strewn in corners and crannies about my house, seven outnumbering the lipstick cases in my purse, and a large green one that dangles morbidly from my rearview mirror.  There is a bamboo plant in every room of my house except for the closets, because they died when I put them there.  There is a horseshoe on my front door.
               My husband left me for his coworker.  My eldest son died of leukemia.  My computer has been destroyed by viruses on three separate occasions.  Last week, when I was making toast, the toaster caught fire and charred a section of my cabinets.
               Yesterday, my remaining daughter was in a car accident.  I shuffle with my back bent through the hospital parking lot, eyes scouring the ground for pennies.  I’ve found two already, though one was tails up and I didn’t dare touch it.  Liza is sleeping right now, and the doctors told me that I should either rest or pray.  So I’m out here.  The heel on my shoe broke an hour ago, but I’m still checking the pavement anyways.  It’d be horrible to have luck available and not take advantage of it.
               By the time a group of cocky teenagers curse at me and swerve gently into the bumper of a Mercedes, I decide to go back inside and see how Liza was doing.  She looks washed and delicate in the hospital gown and jewelry of plastic tubing, as if we are outside in harsh sunlight.  The doctors had finally cleaned the smears of eyeliner and mascara from beneath her eyes.  I smooth her eyebrow with the feather-fingers that come standard with being a mother and avoid the small scratches on her forehead with my hand and my eyes.  There are gashes on her left cheek, and a bad bruise seeping up like black water through a white towel on her forearm.
               My ex-husband enters the room behind me.
               “How is she doing?” he asks quietly.
               “You just missed her run the marathon,” I reply dryly, not looking up at him.  “How do you think she is?”
               “God, Monica, can’t you give it a rest, just for now?  You know what I mean.”
               He looks tired, and I sigh.  “The doctors don’t know.  They think the coma could last for anywhere from a few hours to a few months.  They just don’t know.”
He looks over at her, then strokes her arm a bit.  I instinctively move to stop him, but remember that he is her father, after all.  I put my hand in my pocket to stop it from jumping and shoving Kyle away from my baby, my daughter, and my fingertips meet the cool metal of the penny.  I place it on Liza’s nightstand with a tap that cracks and quivers in the intensity of the silence.
               On the way home, my car breaks down and it takes two hours for the tow truck to find me.

               The next week, I quit my job.  I spend my days in parking lots, trudging over fields of asphalt looking for heads-up pennies.  I don’t pay any regard to the friends that see me and ask how I am, how Liza is.  I pretend that they aren’t even there.
               I brought my snowman cookie jar full of a lifetime of lucky pennies to Liza’s hospital room.  She still hasn’t woken up.  Every day, I visit, and every day, I bring more and more pennies and things to hold them in.  I throw out the bundles of flowers in their gowns of grocery store plastic wrap and put the jars and cups and bowls and vases and pans of luck pennies in their places.  I even dig out the old hamster ball that Liza used to keep Henry the Hamster in and fill it with the copper coins.  One of the nurses slipped on it and broke her ankle.
               I come in one night with two Tupperware containers of pennies and meet Kyle.  He has cleared a space on one of the chairs and sat down.  He eyes my pennies distrustfully as I stack them on top of other containers as if they might spring from their plastic confines and scratch his cheeks so that he matches his daughter.
               “I’m worried about you, Monica,” he says softly.
               “Your daughter’s been in a coma for three weeks and you’re worried about your ex-wife?”  I return, skimming a finger over Liza’s eyes and the roadmap of thin blue veins that are starting to appear.
               “This can’t be healthy.”
               “I’m keeping Liza lucky.”
               “Luck has nothing-”
               “I’m keeping her lucky,” I hiss, and he quietly leaves the room.  I press a penny into Liza’s hand and pray that her fingers come up to clench around it.  They don’t.

               Doctor Beufort calls Kyle and me and asks us to come in.  Kyle still looks at me with the same wariness as he did last week as I take a seat beside him.
               “The parents of Elizabeth Mitchell…?”  he asks awkwardly.  He doesn’t look nervous.  I wonder absently how many times he’s done this.  We both nod.
               “We’ve been monitoring your daughter for some time now.  The coma that she’s in… Well, we don’t think that it will be going away any time soon.”
               Kyle and I stare at him blankly.
               “Technically speaking, Elizabeth is in a persistent vegetative state.”
               I’m vaguely aware of Kyle asking the doctor what the chances are that she’ll wake up.  Beufort says that they’re very good, that she could wake up at any time.  Of course, as time goes on, the chances get slimmer and slimmer.
               “No, she won’t wake up,” I reply softly.  I knew it.  Just like I had always known everything else.
               “Monica…” Kyle begins, but he can think of nothing to say and I leave the room.  I return to Liza’s room and fill several bags with all of the pennies.  I stroke her cheek and lug the bags down to my car.  They tear on the way, leaving a trail of shining copper luck behind me.
               I stop by the side of the road and take the pennies out.  One by one, I open the bags and cascade them down into the gutters.  A homeless man watches from across the street and I ignore the pain in his eyes.  Every last penny down into the dark, rushing depths.
               When I get home, I dig my rabbit’s feet out of the corners and crannies and put them in a pile with my shoebox of shriveled four leaf clovers in the center of the study.  I drop a match and two cans of gasoline in and watch it go up in glorious flames.  I see fire begin to spurt from the windows and tap my finger against the dashboard to the metallic rhythm of the fire alarms as I watch from my car.  I drive away when the fire trucks start to come.
              I get back to the hospital as dawn is beginning to break.  I go to Liza’s room and kiss her forehead, then climb up the stairs to the top of the building.  It’s cool today, and the morning wind coaxes goosebumps from my bare arms.  A man bends over the railing on the other side and turns to glance at me before returning to his silent monitoring of the traffic below and his cigarette.  He doesn’t notice as I sit up on the railing and gaze down at the dark alley thirteen stories down.
               The air tastes good in my mouth, and I take a few slow, deep breaths with my eyes closed.  Off in the distance, I can see the dark tower of smoke that marks my house stabbing up into the pink sunrise.  I lick my lips and pull one last penny from my pocket.  It’s a 1989- Liza’s birthday.  I smile and toss it out in front of me.
               The man turns and sees my body break free from the metal railing and he yells, “Lady, stop!”  But I have already gone.  I plunge down through the crisp morning air in pursuit of the penny that sparkles as it beats me to the darkness.

                    Down in her room, Liza’s eyes flutter open.