Why wasn’t Dr. Saul quicker? Was he weighing up whether to lie to us? No. I don’t like him, but he isn’t a liar.

Slowly and deliberately he says, “We don’t know.”

At least there’s some hope. He doesn’t say yes. But he doesn’t say no either.

“But now he’s almost dead?” Sam asks with the shrill voice of a teenage boy whose voice is breaking, pointing to the small, lonely cross on the outer edge of the concentric circles.

Dr. Saul nods. “Yes, Sam. But he is alive, only differently. Do you understand that? In a coma you’re still alive. You’re merely in a particular state. It’s a borderline condition—a crisis, of course, but that doesn’t make that life any less important than the one you or I or Mrs. Tomlin leads. That’s why here we say that someone is living in a coma rather than lying in a coma.”

“But two days. This isn’t the beginning of forever, is it?”

Dr. Saul once again takes too long to answer my question. Far too long. Please say that Henri could potentially wake up tonight or tomorrow or one day. The pain has returned—the pain of never again hearing my father’s voice outside my own body, but only inside me. Only in my memories. Memories like slowly dying stars.

Thinking of Sam tears my heart apart. Losing your father before you’ve even gotten to know him—it’s too soon. Such loss never heals. I’d love to take the boy’s hand, but it’s as if he’s clinging to himself. How like his father.

Once again, I’ve caught my breath, and Dr. Saul interprets my involuntary release of air as a sign of skepticism.

“Comas are a severely under-researched phenomenon, Mrs. Tomlin. We don’t know enough about them and grope our way through the dark using statistics that tell us very little about why and how they occur. The figures suggest that two days is generally the beginning of forever, but not always.”

“Is he scared?” Sam asks. His thumb is now bloody from scratching. He bites his lip.