I sat down carefully on the edge of his bed. Still nothing. I was relieved. If I didn’t feel anything, then I wouldn’t be obliged to miss my father all the time, keep thinking about him. I could stop searching everywhere for him. I didn’t need to come here again. My mother could make peace with herself at last.

Then I saw the scoobie. That scoobie changed everything. My father was wearing a plastic bracelet on his otherwise bare right wrist. It was dark blue, light blue, and orange. I’d woven it two years earlier and sent it to him by post. My mother had claimed that he wouldn’t wear it. He’d throw it in the bin.

I believed her, as always, even if I kept hoping that she was wrong. But she managed to convince me that my father was the man she had always described him to be: hard-hearted, self-centered, inconsiderate.

But he was wearing it. He was wearing my stupid, childish plastic bracelet in my three favorite colors—midnight blue, sea blue, and the orange of a summer sunrise.

I’ve no idea how long I sat there, staring at the plaited plastic—a cheap charm that changed everything. All I know is that after a while the head of intensive care, Dr. Foss—“Call me Fozzie, lad!”—came over to me, laid his hand gently on my shoulder, and told me in a nasal voice that my father had been very lucky. His skull was fractured, but the swelling was no longer putting pressure on his brain and the cerebral cortex had barely been affected.

Luckily, God walked past and barked, “Samuel, don’t believe a word Fozzie says. We’ll have to operate on your father a few more times and only then will we be able to see where we went wrong.”

God’s real name is Dr. John Saul. With his blond hair, his broad shoulders like a rower’s, and his big sideburns, the director of the London Brain Centre resembles a Viking. Whenever he enters the intensive care ward where the “zombies” live, wearing that aura of silvery coolness about him like an invisible cloak, the nurses and doctors catch their breath. They all pray that he’ll be able to perform a miracle. Behind his back they call him God, because he knows everything—including the fact that they call him God. And Dr. Foss, in his green cord trousers, his curry-colored socks, his finely checked purple shirts, and his suspenders, is his Holy Ghost. He models his hairstyle on John Cleese and takes tea for half an hour every afternoon while playing Quiz Battle on his smartphone in its tartan case.