Think of the discipline of that, I remember thinking, the sheer daily discipline.

To wake each morning with your own death sentence sitting in your chest, and to get dressed anyway, and to drive to a place full of children facing the same fear you are facing, and to set your own terror aside for an hour so that you can make one of them laugh.

He could have spent those six months in bed, and no one would have blamed him.

He could have spent them raging, or drinking, or simply sitting in the dark.