Dr. Foss pushes me aside. Backs close ranks in front of me to form a wall. Beyond them I can sense my father, as if he were breaking through the zones, racing through the disc world and the rings of life—coma, unconsciousness, sleep/dreaming, numbness—and heading straight for the center—waking—and at the same time it’s as if the darkness were pursuing him, so dense and close that it’s already embracing him and pulling him back. I can feel my father’s presence more distinctly than ever.

“Dad!”

“EEG. Ventricular tachycardia. No pulse,” someone says.

Hands pass each other syringes, needles, probes, and tubes.

“Defib, three sixty.”

A red eye joins the blue electrodes on my father’s chest.

“Dr. Saul? Ventricular fibrillation?”

“Stay calm, kids. Keep calm. Glucose level?”

“Three, two, one.” A buzz and then a bang like two car bumpers colliding. The darkness dissolves like black smoke. Now my father is with us. He’s fully here!

Lighthouse, bombs, milk churn: those are the images that race through my mind. I have no idea where they come from. No, that isn’t true. I do know, but I don’t understand. I see shadows on my father, and bravery and despair. And the images inside him.

“Cardiac massage thirty, two.” Fist on fist, pressing down on my father’s chest. A sound like spaghetti shattering.

“Cardiac arrest.”

There, a gap between the smocks. My father’s eyes are open. He can see me. He’s looking at me!

“Dad!” I whisper.

It must cost him an immense effort. My father’s gaze steadies. Yes, it seems as if he’s waking up. He’s coming back. He stares at me, his face a question mark.

“Keep calm. Gently does it. Mild hypothermia. Time, please.”

“Five seconds, Dr. Saul.”

An ear-splitting noise, high and shrill.

“Adrenaline.”

“Seven.”

“Get the boy out of here!”

“Eight, nine . . .”

It’s quiet. So quiet, apart from the screaming. Dad gazes at me, but his presence is fading, dissolving, and he’s so sad, so infinitely sad and . . .

“Prepare antiarrhythmic amiodarone, and be quick. We’re at eleven. Critical now. I don’t want him to die after bringing him back, you hear me? And please get the boy out of here. He won’t stop screaming!”

“Outcome!”

A hand reaching for mine and a voice that sounds calm, deep, and safe like a dark-green eight says, “He isn’t dying, Sam. He can’t. He forgot how to many years ago. Sam? Come on. Come with me!”

The shrill noise condenses into my own screaming and fragments into words. “No! No! No!” It turns into rage—rage at my father and hatred for all doctors because they do everything wrong. Then the sensation of falling and falling and falling.

And suddenly this stranger is there, this woman with incredible gray-green eyes like a wolf. She’s there and she catches me before I come apart.

Henri