Dr. Saul scrutinizes me. I stare back at him. I want Henri to come back as I know him. As the man who morning, night, or in the middle of the day would appear in my kitchen, upstairs from my publishing house, and softly say, “Hi, Eddie. I’m tired. Do you mind if I lay down?” At my place he was able to sleep. Sometimes for three days in a row. Even asleep, he was the pivot and fulcrum around which my weeks and days and emotions revolved, powered by his presence alone.

I’m crazy to still love Henri, even if now the flame is low, as low as it goes, just big enough to hurt but not burn me.

The beeping of the heart-rate monitor accelerates.

“What’s wrong?” I ask Dr. Foss, who frowns. “Is that normal?”

No answer.

His heart is racing, it’s speeding . . . no, those aren’t the tripping steps of Henri’s treacherous heart, they’re . . .

The blue curtain parts to reveal a boy’s face with a sprinkling of freckles and wide-open eyes, followed by a lanky body in a navy-blue school blazer, matching trousers, and a light-blue polo shirt under a turquoise visitor’s smock.

The boy rushes over to the bed. I feel my heart tighten at the sight of his eyes above the mask and the way his face ages from one heartbeat to the next. A despairing moan escapes his lips. “Dad?”

Wait a second. Dad? Henri Skinner has a son?

Sam

There are about a thousand people clustered around my father. He looks as if he’s sleeping so deeply that his heart beats only once per hour. They’ve removed the thin blue sheet from his body. My father seems to be wearing a vest of skin the color of baking powder; only his arms are tanned. He has electrodes stuck to his chest—strange eyes with long blue lashes that connect him to machines.

I think of Scott and Michael Schumacher and the fact that someone can simply go missing in the middle of his life without dying.

“Dad?” My voice sounds like a yellow four, feeble and small, and I hate it.

“Sam. There you are. Your father’ll be glad,” says Dr. Foss.

I reach instinctively for my father’s hand, as I’ve done every day for the past two weeks. But his arm shoots up before I can touch him, and I shrink back, bumping into Fozzie Bear. My father groans and his arm thrashes the air, then drops to one side. His body twists and rears up. It reminds me of a garden hose.