I walk out with her, pull the heavy front door shut. And then I watch as she is driven away. Her head seems so small, framed in the rear window of a car driven by a stranger who is focused mainly on getting a big tip.

• • •

At four o’clock, Chip, his parents, and I are seated in his living room. For what seems like a long while, there is only the sound of the grandfather clock ticking, the occasional bird call coming from outside. Finally, Chip says, “So! Are we done yet?”

Mrs. Reardon looks at me. “I’m not sure what the point of this is, Myra. I told you I’ve agreed to let Chip do as he sees fit.”

“Yes, I know that. But I thought it might be helpful for all of us to … Well, just to make sure each of us feels as though we understand—”

“There’s nothing difficult to understand,” Mrs. Reardon says. “It’s simple. What Chip wants is to make no effort whatsoever to help himself.”

“Ma,” Chip says. “Jesus!”

“Don’t give her a hard time,” Mr. Reardon says.

“I’m not!” Chips stands; then, abruptly, sits back down. He turns toward his mother, shakes his head. “What do you want, Ma? You know what the prognosis is. You know I’m not going to be cured.”

“I don’t know that,” she says. “And neither do you. I read in the library just the other day about a man in Italy who had exactly the same thing you do. When he was diagnosed, they had very little hope—his sister had died from a brain tumor just two years earlier. But he had surgery and then radiation, and he lived. They checked on him fifteen years later and he was fine—married, working full time. And the father of two daughters!”

“Myra,” Chip says. “Help me out, here.”

“There are exceptional cases, that’s true,” I say. “But the chances for cure are really very—”

“You don’t know!” she says. “No one does.”

I lean forward, speak directly to her. “I think what needs to be decided here today is how we can best support Chip in the decision he has made.”

“He has made? I’m not so sure about that.”

“What are you talking about?” Chip asks.

She says nothing.

“I came here knowing what I wanted to do. What are you suggesting? I decided myself what I want to do, which is nothing, Ma, can’t you get that through your head, what will get that through your head? I know everything! Don’t you think I researched the hell out of this before I decided I didn’t want to go through the treatment? Don’t you think I’d want to live if I could?”

“You don’t listen to anyone else’s ideas,” she says. “There are things going on in other places that—”

“I researched everything,” Chip says. “Ma!”