Was it an inability to accept what appeared to be a fact?

Was it something else entirely — the simple human refusal to treat a person he recognized as mere evidence of a tragedy, even when every indicator said the tragedy was complete?

Whatever drove him to make that drive, it was the right thing to do.

The faint whimper that Dr.

Sather heard was not audible to Wally Nelson on the porch step, or if it was, its significance was not clear in the chaos of the discovery.

The barely perceptible pulse was not something Wally could have detected in the field.