Within about ten minutes, the rhythm of Raymond’s breathing changed, and grew shallow and strange, and the fingers that had squeezed my hand that very morning went slack and would not respond to my touch at all.

Whatever was in that syringe had reached down into him and switched something off.

“He’s fading fast now,” Dr.

Wallace observed, and the calm in his voice as he said it was the most frightening thing I had heard in that house.

“Five days left.

Six at the very most.” He said it the way a man reads aloud a weather report, without weight, without warmth, as though he were noting the chance of rain.

And then I saw the second thing, the thing my tired mind snagged on and would not let go of.