Tolliver gave me a hug before he left. He would pick up something to eat on his way back to the motel, he said, and stay in the rest of the evening to dodge the reporters. “Not that there’s anywhere to go,” he said. “Why don’t we get more work in cities?”

“I’ve asked myself that,” I said. “We had that job in Memphis, and that other one in Nashville.” I didn’t want to talk about Tabitha Morgenstern again. “And before that, we were in St. Paul. And that cemetery job in Miami.”

“But most of our calls are from small places.”

“I don’t know why. Have we ever done New York?”

“Sure. Remember? But it was really really hard for you, because it was right after 9/11.”

“I guess I was trying to forget,” I said. That had been one of the worst experiences I’d ever had as a professional…whatever I was. “We’ll never do that again,” I said.

“Yeah, New York is out.” We looked at each other for a long moment. “Okay then,” he said. “I’m gone. Try to eat your supper, and get some sleep. Since you’re better, maybe they won’t come in so much tonight.”

He fussed around for a minute or two, making sure the rolling table was positioned correctly, clearing it for the supper tray, drawing my attention to the remote control built into the bed rail, moving the phone closer to the edge of the bedside table so I could reach it easily. He put my cell phone in the little drawer beneath the rolling table. “Call me if you need me,” he said, and then he left.

I dozed off for a little while, until the supper tray came. Tonight I got something more substantial. I’m embarrassed to say that I ate most of the food on my tray. It wasn’t awful. And I was really hungry. I hadn’t exactly been packing in the calories the last two days.

After that, by way of excitement, a different doctor dropped in to tell me I was making progress and he thought I’d be able to go home in the morning. He didn’t appear to care anything about who I was or where home was. He was as overworked as everyone else I’d encountered there at Knott County Memorial Hospital. He wasn’t from around these parts, either, judging from his accent. I wondered what had brought him to Doraville. I figured he worked for the same emergency-room-stocking service that employed Dr. Thomason.

Barney Simpson’s assistant, a very young woman named Heather Sutcliff, came in soon after the doctor’s visit.