I sighed, got up from my chair, walked to the opposite end of the room, and stared back at the writer. He had his head in his hands. His breathing made his head bob slowly up and down. Was he weeping?

“Of course this process is stressful,” I said, “but I must have definitive answers to reach the correct decision. I cannot spare your feelings.”

“I haven’t seen my wife in over a week, you know,” he said in a small voice. “Isn’t it against the law to deny me visitors?”

“You’ll see whoever chooses to see you after we finish, no matter the outcome. That I can promise you.”

“I want to see Hannah.”

“Yes, you talk a great deal about Hannah in the transcripts. It seems to reassure you to think of her.”

“If she’s not real, I’m not real,” he muttered. “And I know she’s real.”

“You loved her, didn’t you?”

“I still love my wife.”

“And yet you persisted in following your delusions?”

“Do you think I wanted it to be real?” he said, looking up at me. His eyes were red. I could smell the salt of his tears. “I thought I’d dug it all out of my imagination, and so I have, but at the time … I’ve lost the thread of what I wanted to say…”

Somehow, his confusion, his distress, touched me. I could tell that a part of him was sane, that he truly struggled with two separate versions of reality, but just as I could see this, I could also see that he would probably always remain in this limbo where, in someone else, the madness would have won out long ago … or the sanity.

But, unfortunately, it is the nature of the writer to question the validity of his world and yet to rely on his senses to describe it. From what other tension can great literature be born? And thus, he was trapped, condemned by his nature, those gifts and talents he had honed and perfected in pursuit of his craft. Was he a good writer? The answer meant nothing: even the worst writer sometimes sees the world in this light.

“Do you need an intermission?” I asked him. “Do you want me to come back in half an hour?”

“No,” he said, suddenly stubborn and composed. “No break.”