“David, what is going on?

Is Marcus hurt?

Did he collapse?

Did something happen to him?

Tell me right now.” David did not answer me there in the corridor.

Instead he placed a firm hand on my arm, and I could feel that his hand was trembling too, and he guided me gently but insistently away from the busy hallway, through a door, into a small private consultation room.

He closed the door behind us, and the sounds of the hospital, the monitors and the footsteps and the paging, fell away to a muffled hush, and it was just the two of us in a small quiet room, and I understood that whatever he was about to tell me was the kind of thing you tell someone behind a closed door.