And the number at the end of it was zero, and it had been available the entire time, and no human being in that chain — not the hospital, not the agency, not the hospice, not the shelter — had ever once said the words financial assistance policy to me.

I had to find it in a grey box on page two.

Part Thirty-Four: The Question I Could Not Put Down

From the twenty-first of February to about the following October, I had one question and it was not about the money.

The money resolved.

It cost me four months and a great deal of sleep and in the end it cost me nine dollars and forty cents in postage.

The question was: did he know?