“Yeah, sick girl with a doctor dad. Pretty lucky.”

He does this low whistle then points through the window of the drip room at a guy signing paperwork at the counter.

“That’s your dad?” I say.

“It is.” He looks young, maybe late thirties, and like he does a lot of hiking. Probably not with this sick boy next to me. “He comes with me every week,” he says. “I’m sixteen and three months, and I’ve been doing this my whole life, and he comes with me every time.”

“That’s sweet.”

“It is, yeah.”

“You’re younger than me.”

“That’s why it’s up to me to take over your advice column.” He coughs a little. “How old are you? Thirty-five?”

“Thirty-five,” I say. “Seriously?”

“Do you have a career? Are you retired?”

“I’m sixteen and nine months.”

“So I was close. What’s your name?”

“Isabel.”

“That was my grandmother’s name,” he says.

I laugh accidentally.

He puts his hand on his chest like he’s offended. “Hey, she was a lovely woman,” he says. “She wasn’t allergic to poison ivy. Used to pull it right out of the ground with her bare hands. I tried to copy it once.”

“Didn’t go well?”

“It did not.”

“Is that how you got your disease?”

“It’s genetic, doctor,” he says. He pushes his hair back from his eyes and smiles at me. “Sasha.”

“What?”

“That’s my name. Sasha Sverdlov-Deckler.”

“No shit,” I say.

He tilts his head back and grins. “No shit.”

“That’s quite a name.”

“Eh,” he says. “It’s no Isabel. So what’s your answer?”

“What?”

“To your question. What’s your favorite place in New York?”

“Oh,” I say. “I don’t answer the questions. I just ask them.”

“Hmm,” he says.

“It’s actually for the best.” I shift around in the chair some. “Sometimes I can sneak in, like, questions about me and my life and make people answer them.”

“That’s smart,” he says. “That’s some clever shit right there.”

“Sometimes I get way too specific, and then I can’t use them in the paper,” I say. “But I still get the advice. And an excuse to talk to people. I like to talk to people.”

“Sure, how else are you gonna ask them when they’re going to die?”

“Please,” I say. “We’re gonna pretend that didn’t happen. We have to.”

“So ask me your question, then,” he says. “Change the subject.”

“Okay. What’s your favorite place in New York?”

“My favorite place… I think it’s right here.”

“The drip room.”

He laughs. “Not the drip room specifically. Just…here. Linefield and West Memorial Hospital.”

“You like the hospital.”

“I know,” he says. “It’s weird.”

“No, I…I’ve never met another person who likes hospitals.”