When Lorraine finally e-mailed me Daphne’s questionnaire, it was from an AOL account and she didn’t apologize for the delay. She said they hadn’t gotten very far but she wanted to introduce me to Daphne so we could start getting comfortable with each other. Daphne’s answer to “Do you believe in God?” didn’t illuminate anything new for me. She wrote: “I was brought up Catholic. I had no choice.”

Daphne was sixty-four and had Stage 4 cancer, which had moved from her breast to her lungs. It had been lodged in those parts of her for a decade, small and unmoving, but recently the mass decided it had been dormant long enough. Daphne was having trouble walking, heading toward bedridden. She was hovering around 50 or 60 percent on the PSAC, Lorraine told me on our drive to the house.

Daphne lived in one of those ranch homes with wood paneling covering the walls and a pool in the concrete backyard—relaxed, casual, and very California 1970s. She also had a small dog, a beige cocker spaniel named Pierre.

“Pierre’s nice, but you have to watch out for his little dickie.”

This was one of the first things she said to Lorraine and me after we held the living room in silence for her.

“He likes to get overexcited, and then watch out.”

“Has he always been like that?” I asked.

“I don’t know. He was a rescue.”

I leaned down to pet him, and he seemed normal enough. I wondered why Lorraine hadn’t warned me in the car on the way over.

Daphne’s house was nearly tidy, though evidence of her depleting state was casually strewn about. She had a Styrofoam head with a bobbed wig sitting on a side table like an accessory. Her soft gray hair was shaved short, only an inch or two, but it wasn’t patchy. It still looked like a choice. Baggies of coiled plastic tubing from her oxygen machine were piled next to the sofa where she was reclining. Just beyond her were large canisters of emergency oxygen. In case the power went out and she had to go old-school, she told us. I could hear the familiar whizz and click of the oxygen machine she was supposed to be hooked up to, but she didn’t have tubes coming out of her nostrils when she talked to us. She noticed me staring at her hair.

“I only realize I’m sick when I pass a mirror,” she said.

She told us she just needed a hit of oxygen sometimes; she didn’t want to get hooked on it.

“I sleep with it in, though. I’m afraid I’ll stop breathing in my sleep.”

I told her regulating it was probably the right move.

“If you rely on it too much, then you’ll be tied down to a machine, with only a twenty-foot radius to walk in,” I said.