God considers this and then nods. “But first we must get her blood pressure down and stabilize her condition. The pharmacists need to get a move on, but I’m going to administer the bolus myself. Please hurry up.”

As God is leaving the room I call out, “Excuse me, sir!”

He turns round. His face is deeply wrinkled, and his different-colored eyes are red and hard. “What do you want, Samuel?” he says quietly.

“I . . . I told Maddie that if she saw my father she should tell him . . .” I falter.

Wearily God says, “What, Samuel? What should she tell him?”

“That I knew he was on his way.”

God nods. He runs one hand over his face and it remains hovering by his mouth. When people do that I know they’re trying to control what they actually feel like saying. “I like you, Samuel, but now you’re behaving like the boy you still are. You have nothing to do with this. Madelyn has blood poisoning. Sepsis. We don’t yet know what caused it.” He pats me on the shoulder. “And, Sam,” he adds in a low voice, “Madelyn and your father are each in their own universe, wherever they may be. Do you get that? However comforting you may find the idea, they are not somewhere they might be able to meet.”

“Aren’t they?”

“Of course not.” He turns away.

I stare after him, my eyes tingling. I heard my father call me, and I can feel that Madelyn’s looking for something. She’s searching for something, and that’s why she has escaped from her solitude.

I know this, but I’ll never be able to prove it. Perhaps I am crazy because I’ve been crazy from the very beginning. I know that synes-creeps like me can often go mad without any warning because of a sudden shock provoked by too much suffering, too many emotions, too many sensations.

SHORTLY AFTERWARD, Maddie is pushed past me on a wheeled bed. Dmitry and Benedicta hurry almost at a run to the lift. I see the doors open and swallow them, and then the numbers light up one after the other down to 2. Intensive care.

Nurse Marion appears by my side. “Go home, Samuel,” she says softly. “Your girl’s in good hands.”

That’s right; she’s my girl.

“What happens now?” I whisper.

“They’re going to try to identify the cause of the blood poisoning. Bacteria, fungi, a foreign object, a virus, meningitis . . . There are many possible causes.” Her eyes dart anxiously to the large clock in the hallway. Too anxiously.

“What’s wrong? Why do they have to hurry?” I ask, seized with red panic.