“All psychogenic noncompliance of the kind Madelyn is exhibiting is a form of protest. It’s all about finding the sensory channel they are trying to transmit on and the one on which they wish to receive. It’s easier if someone loves them. Along with fear and hatred, loving and being loved are the strongest stimuli.” God stares at the woman and then turns round, as if he has sensed my presence. I think God’s synesthetic too.

“Samuel,” he says. “Allow me to introduce Angela. She’s an . . . empathy therapist.” She actually seems very nice, although I guess God would still dearly love to kick her out.

Every week brings a new group of pilgrims to Madelyn’s bedside. Doctors from all over the country and even from as far afield as America and France. She’s been described as a “fascinating case,” because her brain damage isn’t necessarily the reason for her vegetative state or, as some people call it, “minimal consciousness.” God used his disc diagram once more to explain this to me. Around “Awake” there are places just below the surface of life, as if a disc or an impenetrable film lies between the person and the outside world. They can hear everything and occasionally feel things, but they don’t understand the information and cannot express themselves.

He then cut out the circles and laid them on top of one another. Maddie is simultaneously numb and in a coma, although that isn’t actually possible. She rises and falls between the discs without touching “Asleep” or “Unconscious.” Her open eyes prove that part of her is “here,” but a more significant part is elsewhere, and between us lies not a pane of glass or a film, but a layer of ice and solitude.

Nurse Marion said she’d definitely prefer to see me than the “luminosities”—she means the luminaries—who take turns to inspect this “extraordinary case” and release her from her “condition.”

Marion is convinced that the experts who call Maddie a “condition” are of no use anyway. “Sam, darling, whenever doctors think nobody’s listening, they talk about people as if they’re cars. But what Maddie needs aren’t some hotshot luminosities publishing self-important articles with her photo in the Journal of High-Brain Medicine.” She shows me the scrapbook she’s keeping. “What Maddie needs are things that make her happy. It’s always the little things, those precious little things that keep people in a coma closer to ‘Awake.’ ”

Unfortunately, there’s no one left to tell us what Maddie likes. Does she like Gilmore Girls? Diary of a Wimpy Kid, perhaps? Does she like Taylor Swift or Bartók? Does she prefer literature or painting, the sea or the mountains? Cats or dogs? Spaghetti or sushi? If someone talks a lot or a little?