Will turned to look down at his boss, but the man was doing what he was usually doing when they stood anywhere together, which is to say: not looking back at him. Unless Will was seated and Dr. Abraham was standing, eye contact in general was a no-go, though Will had learned not to take it personally. Right now Dr. Abraham was staring at the coffee counter with absolutely fixed concentration, but Will knew the truth.

He was waiting on an answer.

“No one important,” Will tried.

“I certainly hope you are not referring to a patient.”

“Certainly not.”

Will drank a too-hot gulp of coffee instead of wincing. In addition to the Vader voice, he also hated the way he always ended up weirdly mimicking Dr. Abraham’s formalities. A lately deceased kinsman, his Abraham-infected brain said, and out of sheer annoyance at his inner voice he blurted, “My dead uncle.”

That almost got the man to turn his head. Instead, he cleared his throat, rocked back on his heels in that way he had. If he did this while you were on the floor, giving orders for meds or settling on a diagnosis, you knew you’d done something he didn’t like, something he’d tell you later was an “unusual choice” or a “departure from our normal procedures.”

Will waited.

“I assume he’s done something pre- or postmortem to deserve this language?”

Where to begin? Will thought. But he only took another sip of his coffee and said, “He left me his apartment.”

Everything in it, too. Near as he could tell, the same brown recliner was still there. It smelled the same, a fact that flooded him with terrible memories of that terrible day. Getting out of there, it’s what had sent him onto the balcony in the first place. Where he’d met the—

“An unusual reason to curse someone,” Abraham said. Janine was handing him his coffee across the counter. Frankly, she looked nervous, too, so Will sent her what he hoped was an I get it smile when Dr. Abraham stepped forward to take it, briefly nodding his thanks. Abraham wasn’t just a know-it-all; he was also bare-minimum polite, a fact that was confirmed when he turned to leave the cafeteria, clearly intending for Will to follow.

And since the man wrote his performance reviews, Will did.

“The apartment is here?” Abraham said, once Will was in step with him again.