Trapped, silent, unable to lift so much as a finger most of the time, but wholly himself, wholly awake, a sharp mind sealed inside a body that had stopped obeying it.

When I had the language working, I asked him the question I most needed answered, and most dreaded.

“Can you hear everything people say around you?” I whispered.

“All of it?

Even when they think you cannot?” He gave me one slow, deliberate blink.

Yes.

And a cold shiver went straight down my spine, because I understood in that instant what it meant.

For weeks, this man had lain here fully aware, listening, while his family stood over his bed and discussed his funeral as though he were already gone.