Her breathing is labored after these visits, either from the exertion of talking and smiling or from suppressing the panic that rises up when she tells them goodbye, unable to confess her plan, to take proper leave of her friends. She retreats to her bedroom and lies on top of the covers, arms folded around a pillow to keep from coughing, tethered to an oxygen tank by a length of clear tubing. The cancer has taken over completely now, crowding her out of her own body. When she touches her chest, it’s the monster she feels.

In eleven days it will be over. Eleven! Alone in her room, she whimpers with the terrible grief of it, of being forced to abandon herself like a smoldering ship. It’s impossible to imagine not existing, she discovers, because in order to imagine, you must exist. The best she can do is picture the world as it is now, without her in it. But even then, she’s the one picturing.

On the morning of day nine, she rests on the sofa and watches, absorbed, as a man climbs a telephone pole, his belt weighted with tools and an oversize red telephone receiver. He stabilizes himself with a safety harness and then gets busy untangling a skein of multicolored wires, holding the red handset to his ear, possibly even speaking into it, although she can’t imagine to whom. Once, he takes pliers off his belt, gives something a good twist, and a sprig of snipped wire falls through the air to the grass below. Something about the scene, framed behind the glass of her living-room window, embodies what she’s been struggling to understand. It’s momentary, a flash of insight so brief it can’t be seen but must be remembered, like the glimpse of a shooting star. The man with his cleats thrust into the pole, his weight tangible in the leather harness, the dark red of the telephone against the bright yellow of his hard hat, and then the tendril of wire falling away from his pliers—this is the world without her in it.

On the eighth day, she imagines dying with her eyes open, the naked vulnerability of it. She’s got to remember to close her eyes and keep them closed, no matter what. And if Kevorkian approaches her and she panics or starts bawling, will he give her a chance to calm down or will he take it as a sign that she is conflicted, not ready, and refuse to go through with it? She forces herself to visualize the final scene over and over until it loses its meaning and becomes as ritualized as taking communion. No last-minute change of mind, no hysteria; she will simply greet him, explain herself in measured tones, express her gratitude, offer her arm for the needle, close her eyes.