The doctor stepped back toward the screen.

My mother squeezed my hand tighter.

And Richard’s eyes went to the CT scan, and found the small dark capsule glowing on the display — and his face, in an instant, drained of every drop of its color.

He did not look confused.

That was the thing I would come back to, again and again, in the days that followed.

A man who saw a mysterious object inside his mother-in-law’s body should have looked confused, or worried, or bewildered.