I cannot bear to watch their attempts to wake him or, rather, to get him to a state they think resembles “waking.” He’s come a long way, from the outer edge of life to here, a hair’s breadth from waking. He gives the impression of being trapped in amber, voiceless and motionless, but I know he’s there. He radiates warmth, but that warmth is only perceptible on the underside of one’s skin.

I wish I’d kept quiet. They’re pestering him now. They want him to breathe independently and so they are frequently turning off his air supply for a few seconds. They wave objects before his eyes. They knead his calves so hard that their red fingerprints mark the skin where they’ve rolled and pinched a bunch of muscles.

Standing at the head of the bed, Dr. Foss is trying to startle him. Out of the blue he claps his hands, making everyone jump apart from my father and Maddie. They push things into his hands—soft massage balls and toothbrushes—but he doesn’t grasp them. They ask him to blink, look to the left, say his name, or calculate the sum of one and zero.

“I wouldn’t answer that kind of question even if Claudia Cardinale were putting it to me,” I hear Scott whisper inside my head.

My father doesn’t move. No fluttering of the eyelids, no quickening of the pulse, no twitches anywhere.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” I murmur.

Dr. Foss changes position and takes a mechanical pencil from his top pocket. I know what he’s going to do because I’ve watched him carry out similar tests on other patients in the intensive care unit. He’s going to insert the lead under the nail of my father’s big toe and then under his thumbnail.

I sense my father’s presence and the black pain that’s threatening to engulf him because he cannot do what they’re demanding of him, and because there’s another greater pain. And thirst. And anger. Bright-red, foaming anger at what they’re putting him through.

Now they’re pulling his tongue. It hurts me, and I hear a sharp intake of breath from Eddie.

Dad’s despair is a strange blue inky color that seems to smudge, as if he were weeping tears that mingle with the ink. But I realize that the cause is not the tests but rather that Eddie cannot feel him.

She’s standing by the wall with one hand cupped over her mouth and the other resting on her stomach. Her eyes are glued to my father.

I’ve moved over to kneel down beside Maddie’s bed and stroke her hand. Both of us are wearing antiseptic gloves. She’s receiving artificial respiration, and her left kidney failed this morning.