So I say, “No. The brain is an excellent self-deluder. We console ourselves by fancying that we can hear and feel and smell our loved ones. Self-healing is the best medicine. In truth, though, Henri hasn’t given even the slightest response when I’ve been here. Nothing, do you hear? After death? Dreams? Spare me!” My voice thunders in my ears. Even Dr. Saul looks over from his Plexiglas cubicle.

After-death experiences. Dreams. Too esoteric, too few guarantees, too much wondrous wound-healing.

I stand up, walk out of the MRI room, and wander along the corridor toward the drinks machine. I feel like beating the walls with my fists or ramming my forehead into them. I want Henri back. I want my dad back. I want my life back.

“Dear little Eddie,” I hear my father say softly, but only inside my head.

By the time I reach the drinks machine, I don’t feel like a coffee. Instead I tiptoe back and lean against the wall beside the open glass door where neither Marion nor Sam can see me.

“. . . and Maddie didn’t want to go out onstage. She was longing to, but she was scared. Of life. I told her I was there, but I don’t know if that’s enough. Maybe I offer too little for a whole life.”

Nurse Marion says in a kindly voice, “Sam, you’re the best reason she has for recovering.”

Sam’s voice cracks as he asks, “Can my father dream?”

Marion sighs. “I’ve worked for many years here at the brain center, you know. I’ve often heard neurologists say that there’s no chance of coma patients having dreams because they take place at a level of consciousness that isn’t accessible from a coma. You see? The dream machine is almost at a standstill, but . . .”

I prick up my ears.

“. . . but when coma patients return—and more of them do than you’d think—then they relate their experiences. Some of those experiences are hallucinations, as we know. The noise of the machines, the lights, the injections, and the doctors’ conversations are all recast in the limbic system—the emotional part of the brain—and translated into new images. A ventilator becomes a submarine engine. The beeping of the EEG turns into a truck or a slot machine.”

Silence, apart from the humming of the monster.

Dr. Saul announces through the loudspeaker, “We’ll conduct one last series of tests with glucose.”

Nurse Marion resumes her explanation at a slightly lower volume. “And then there are some patients who display no REM phases in their sleep cycle, meaning that at no stage do their eyes move under their lids.”

“The dream phase,” notes Sam.

“No, that’s old hat,” Marion contradicts him. “We now know that dreams occur during any phase of sleep. But . . .”

“But?” I ask, reentering the room.