I have thought a great deal about what would have happened to me if Esme had arrived at the hospital ninety minutes earlier, before the swelling had developed.

Dr.

Bright, when I finally asked her that question — two years later, at a conference where she was speaking and where I approached her afterward like a lunatic — said: “Then it would have been harder, and it would have taken longer, and the ribs would still have been there.

“The ribs were always going to be the case.

The femur is what got her in the door.”

Part Ten: The Corridor