And here I was again in a hospital, and this time I was not a solitary link but part of a chain, one man in a line of people all reaching, all connected, the Tillman kids’ hands on mine and mine on Trudy’s and hers, in her mind, on Del down the hall in surgery.

I had come to Coldwater a man attached to nothing, a link that connected to no other link, and somewhere over a year of Saturdays and suppers and a rebuilt truck I had been welded back into the chain of humanity, given people to hold and people who held me, made once again a part of something larger than my own solitary self.

That is what a friend does, in the end.

That is the whole of the gift.

He takes a man who had become detached, floating loose in his own life, and he reaches out a hand, and he connects you back — to him, and then through him to his wife and his kids and his town and his supper table, until one day you look up and find you are no longer a single link lying alone in the dark but part of a long bright chain of people, holding on, in a hallway, waiting together for good news about someone you all love.

Chapter 13 — Recovery