After leaving that meeting, I drove past my parents’ house and saw that my father’s car wasn’t in their driveway. On a hunch I drove by his office and found his old BMW parked in the back. That car was a gift from me, bought with my first big royalty check, and he’s kept it perfectly maintained ever since. Dad developed a love for German cars when he served in Bonn as an army doctor during the early 1960s, and he’s shown no inclination to trade in the old 740 for anything newer. With dusk falling and only one other car parked in the lot, I decide to brace him on his home turf.

I try not to get impatient as I bang loudly on the side door. Dad’s too deaf to hear the knocking, and anyone else will assume I’m an after-hours patient or a drug salesman. But after repeated efforts, a key rattles in the lock and the dark face of Melba Price appears in the crack. The nurse’s expression instantly morphs from a glare to a welcoming smile of relief.

“What’s he doing, Melba?”

“What you think he’s doin’? Goin’ over charts on the patients Dr. Elliott been seein’ for him.” Melba points down the hall. “Just follow the cigar smoke.”

A former schoolmate of mine, Drew Elliott is now one of my father’s junior partners. Drew has taken on as many patients as he can during Dad’s recuperation, but no full-time doctor—not even an athletic forty-two-year-old—can keep up with my father’s workload on top of his own.

I start down the hall, then stop and lay my hand on the nurse’s arm. “Melba, have you been going out to treat Viola Turner for the past few weeks?”

She takes a deep breath and tries to pull away, but I hold her arm. “I’m trying to help him, Melba. You know that. And I’d never hurt you to do it.”

The nurse sucks in her upper lip, and her eyes flick nervously toward the ceiling before finally settling on me. “I went out there a few times. Drove Doc out there a few more. Miss Viola was in a bad way, Penn. She really should have been in a hospital, but she said she’d seen too many folks die in hospitals, and she didn’t want any part of that.”

“Thank you. Don’t tell me any more.”

I squeeze her wrist, then follow the smoke down the hall. Turning right, I see my father through a cloud of blue haze rising from the Romeo y Julieta burning in an ashtray on his desk. His concentration is absolute as he pores over a patient’s medical record. Through the obfuscating cloud, I recognize the familiar clutter of his office, a room so packed with books and other objects that not even Melba’s constant labor can keep it in order.