“What does the doctor say?” Tolliver asked. I sat beside Manfred and put my hand on his shoulder. Tolliver sat at right angles to us and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. I looked at his face, so serious, so focused, and I felt a wave of love that almost knocked me over. I had to concentrate to get my mind back on Manfred and Xylda’s misfortune.

“It’s the same doctor that saw you, Harper,” Manfred said. “The guy with white hair. He seems okay. He says he doesn’t think she’s going to wake up. He doesn’t know why she took such a turn, but he says he’s not surprised. It’s all…it doesn’t seem definite enough. No one’s telling me exactly what’s happening with her. I thought medicine was sharper than that now.”

“Have you called your other relatives?”

“My mother is on her way. But in the traffic conditions between Tennessee and here, there’s no way she’ll get here before Grandmother passes away.”

This was awful. “Your mom’s relying on you to make the decisions?”

“Yeah. She says she knows I’ll do the right thing.”

What a great thing for a mother to say, but what a huge responsibility.

“I was hoping,” Manfred said after a long moment, “if you could go in to see her, you’d be able to give me some advice.” He was looking at me when he said this, and he said it very seriously. I understood what he meant, after a moment. He wanted to know if her soul was still there.

Okay. I was cringing inside, but I nodded.

He showed me the door to the ICU unit, which of course was quite small at such a little hospital. I thought Xylda would benefit from going to somewhere larger with more machines—isn’t that what it boils down to?—but there was no way to get her there. Nature had overthrown technology once again. That seemed amazing to me, as I looked at all the machines Xylda Bernardo was connected to. They silently recorded everything that was going on inside her; and yet, when Manfred wanted to know something as basic as whether or not his grandmother’s soul was still attached to her body, he had to ask me to do it.

I held Xylda’s limp hand for a moment, but it wasn’t necessary for the task that had been set me. Xylda’s soul was still there. I was almost sorry. It would have simplified the decisions ahead for her family if her soul had already departed.

Barney Simpson stuck his head in the door and looked at me quizzically.

“I thought we’d kicked you out,” he said, keeping his voice low out of respect for the quiet figure on the bed.

“You make visits to the patients in the ICU?”