By day, whenever Christopher darkened the doorway, Raymond would let his jaw fall and his eyes go blank and become once more the helpless dying man everyone believed him to be, and he played the part flawlessly.

“I never imagined,” he whispered to me dryly after one such visit, “that pretending to be a helpless corpse would turn out to be such a useful skill.” I had to press my hand hard over my mouth to keep from laughing aloud, there in that room of all rooms.

It was the laughter of two people who have found, in a very frightening place, one true ally, and are absurdly grateful for it.

Those small moments of shared laughter, in the middle of something so frightening, were more important than I can easily explain.