I’m in no position to grant forgiveness, I want to say, but I remain silent. I’ve only ever told one person that I was to blame for my father’s death. Only Malo knows what happened off the coast of Brittany when I was thirteen years old and why I came home alone without my father, Grandpa Malo’s only son. The look Malo gave me—a mixture of loathing and compassion, grief and horror. I don’t know how Grandpa got over that and consoled me. Me, of all people. That’s why I detest the sea, Brittany, and myself.

DAY THIRTY-ONE

Eddie

The fourteenth day since I was asked to sign to say, “Yes, I will.”

I’ve got into the habit of going to the small hospital chapel before my dates with Henri. Not because I have accidentally found religion. No, because the basement chapel, three corridors from the pathology department and the freezers, is one of the least visited places in the labyrinthine Wellington Hospital.

I sit on the floor and don my courage like a mask. I dissect my competing, struggling, mutually obstructive instincts until only three essential ones remain. I focus entirely on keeping them in my mind and preventing any other emotions from approaching them. Self-pity? Doubt? Resignation? Away with you! Out! I think of Henri with all the tenderness I can muster and weed out my feelings of guilt toward Wilder, who isn’t aware of what I’m really doing when I claim to be meeting new authors.

I breathe in and out and think: Affection.

I take a deeper breath and pray: Courage.

I breathe in and beg: Be like Sam.

Sam responds intuitively to Henri. He talks to him—and he listens to him too. I, on the other hand, struggle to cast off the self-censorship imposed by my unwaveringly rational mind. Unlike Sam, I don’t see Henri. I can’t hear him. It’s like attempting to communicate with a deserted corpse, but I mustn’t show my desperation, ever, because there’s nothing more toxic than a relative’s resignation.

I close my eyes and gather my thoughts. Courage. Affection. Be like Sam.

Listen. See. Sense. No doubts, damn it!

It’s hard not to doubt. Thirty-one days unconscious. Fifteen days under heavy anesthetic, then clinically dead. Eight minutes of eternity, then sixteen days in a coma.

The passing time takes Henri further and further away from hope, and closer and closer to being one of the statistics I’ve come to hate. The longer a person lies in a coma, the lower their chances of ever again resembling the person they used to be.