A tremor in his hand, something small, something he assumed was stress or too much coffee or too little sleep.

It was not any of those things.” David’s voice was thick and careful, the voice of a doctor who has had to deliver terrible news before and has never gotten used to it.

“The tests found something none of us expected.

Marcus was diagnosed with an early-onset form of ALS.

A disease of the nerves and the muscles.

It had already begun to affect the fine control in his hands, the very hands his whole life had been built on, and it was progressing more quickly than anyone had hoped.”

I will not try to describe exactly what happened inside me in that moment, because I am not sure the words exist for it, and because some things are private even from the page.