The doctors make a great effort to measure Henri’s consciousness, letting down soul echo-sounders inside him to listen out in the remote darkness for what might separate him from us. They use scanners and measuring devices. They tap on his knees and elbows, shine a flashlight in his eyes, carry out smell and hearing tests, and change the lighting, the temperature, and the angle of his torso. They don’t leave him in peace for even an hour. And still the waters do not stir.

My father used to say that when you’re sitting in a lighthouse, the fear doesn’t hit you during the storm but the moment a strange silence settles over the sea.

The next plateau of hope comes after three months. If by that time an estranged soul still hasn’t given any sign of life, Dr. Saul explained to me, the struggle is only just beginning. He spares me no bad news.

“Your arguments with the health insurance company will intensify, Mrs. Tomlin, and you’ll get a bewildering glimpse of the empathy-free zone that exists in their administration. After two years, the insurer will refuse to pay and try to persuade you to pawn everything you own. After you’ve taken a battering, various reports by well-meaning experts will advise you in soothing tones to let your friend pass away peacefully—that is, allow him to starve or die of thirst or turn off his air supply. If you show the remotest interest in shortening his life, people will push an organ-donor contract under your nose, naturally only for the most heartbreaking cases who are dependent on Mr. Skinner dying as soon as possible. And you, of course, because you can’t sleep at night from all these worries, will look up all you can find about coma patients online.”

I was already doing that, every night and every day.

He went on. “You’ll criticize us, stand accusingly in our way, and rightfully and angrily point to the disastrous care and staff shortages here. Yes, rightfully! Finally, you’ll cast about with grim determination for answers and outside help. Incidentally, I’ll respect your right to turn up here every week with a different specialist—one of the new brain whisperers. Just please don’t light an open fire beside his bed.”

Here too, he’s right, and I hate him for it. I’m planning, for example, to meet a “body reader”—a neurologist who specializes in pain therapy and alternative medicine. For if coma is the symptom, what is the cause? I imagine that I might be able to save Henri if I can find out the cause of his reclusion. I’ve read somewhere that it’s normal to drift from hope to hope, from remote treatment to empathy therapy, constantly searching for a way out and suppressing the thought that it might not exist. I still know far too little.