You cannot stand.

You cannot walk to the lavatory alone.

You cannot lift the thing you have spent a decade trying to get.

You cannot reach the water.

You cannot pick up a dropped muslin cloth off the floor.

You are, for about two days, entirely dependent on whoever is in the room.

And the entire architecture of that Thursday, in my head, for five weeks beforehand, had rested on one fact: Kevin would be in the room.

That was not a hope, it was a load-bearing assumption.