The next morning Tobias returned without his white coat.

He wore a gray sweater and held two paper cups of tea, one of which he set on the windowsill after checking with my nurse that I could have it.

“I’m off duty,” he said.

“I wanted to ask whether you’d like to hear about my childhood.”

I smiled through tears.

“More than almost anything.”

He showed me photographs on his phone.

A boy with missing front teeth holding a spelling-bee trophy.