Fear overwhelms me. It’s like brackish water, gradually submerging a deep, stagnant underwater prison cell. I feel the pull of the silence beneath me and try to press myself against the glass, try not to fall asleep, not to let go. I don’t want to sink back down there; I can’t bear the thought. The glass darkens, as if someone’s lowering a blind over the glass barrier. But then I recognize a face and moving lips.

“Mr. Henri Skinner, I’ve said your name so often I’m starting to sound like one of those irritating call-center assistants, but in my case I was testing whether you can hear while unconscious.”

Yes, for hell’s sake, I’m here. Here! Please get me out. Wake me up, damn it, wake me up. Do something, please! I’m here!

“Your name is Henri Malo Skinner, Malo being the name of your Breton grandfather. You were born at the northwestern tip of Brittany, and you grew up on the coast of the Iroise Sea.”

I know where I was born, for God’s sake. But he doesn’t care. He can’t hear me. He keeps saying that I’m living in a coma, and I want to tell him that everything is very different. I’m here. I’m really here!

He talks about a form that appoints Edwina Tomlin to decide on my fate. But where’s Eddie?

I’m supposed to squeeze hands, lift my arm, move my nostrils, blink, and swallow, but I can’t do any of those things. He says that he’s given me a gentle pinch, but I don’t feel anything. Next he claims that he doesn’t like doing this, but it’s necessary. I have no idea what he’s talking about. He apologizes again, saying, “I’m sorry, you’re bleeding a little. Some tests are brutal.”

Maybe I’m paralyzed!

Then it’s over. Dr. Saul mumbles, “I visit you ten times a day and every four hours at night. You’ve been through a scanner three times, revealing no significant streams of consciousness.”

Well, buy a machine that works then, idiot!

“Mr. Skinner, you’re nearer to us than to our strange friend Death. Come toward us. We’re here, and you’re safe with us.”

Death isn’t my friend, I feel like saying. Also, didn’t you know that Death is a woman? Death is a woman!

I can sense that Dr. Saul is contemplating me, as if a message just got through to him. My anger, perhaps. I have to make myself angrier. I perceive his presence like a huge, cragged rock amid the foaming waves, weary from many millennia of erosion by salt and wind, but solid nonetheless. And very, very lonely.

Lonely old Dr. Saul reassures me again: “You’re safe here, Mr. Skinner.”