“My treat,” he said. “Absolutely my treat.”

They’d finished eating when Tom heard the low tone of his phone and checked his messages. “Dave’s ready,” he said. “I have to go upstairs to pick him up.”

Addie stood when he left the table. He looked down—she was easily six inches shorter—and hugged her.

“You’ll get through this,” he said. “Sybil is fortunate to have you as a friend. And please, Addie, don’t forget that you have other friends, too. Will you be at Cassie’s on Tuesday?”

“I haven’t missed a meeting yet. And won’t, if I can help it.”

“Good.”

“See you then. Depending.”

Tom gave a wave and headed toward the elevators again.

DAVE WAS SITTING on a bench at the end of the hall. He had an ashen look but hailed Tom in his usual spirited way.

“I’ll walk you to the elevator and down to the entrance,” Tom told him. “You can wait there while I bring the car around.”

But when Dave stood, he became dizzy and dropped back to the bench, his head bowed.

He looked at Tom. “Don’t worry,” he said. “This has happened before. Some sort of issue with balance, vertigo. Nothing serious; it won’t last. Thump goes my left foot. But the sole of my foot doesn’t send a message to my brain to say it made contact with the floor. I know the foot is there; I can see it. Just takes a minute, that’s all.” He took a deep breath and prepared to stand again.

Tom told him to stay put, and he went to fetch a wheelchair, just in case. He didn’t want Dave going down in a heap in the middle of the corridor. He didn’t want him breaking a hip. Not on his watch. His job was to get Dave safely back to the Haven. No fainting fits or snapped bones along the way.

Being Present

ADDIE

Addie sat at the table again. When Tom was out of sight, she picked up her scrunched paper napkin and began to fold and refold, until she’d worried it down to the size of a thumbnail.

Am I prepared? she thought. Is Sybil’s family prepared? We have no choice and will do what has to be done. We will be present. That is the most important thing. Sybil is loved. There is nothing more important right now. But Addie felt like wailing. Wailing through the day and night.

She considered the way Sybil had collapsed onto her mattress after being transferred from stretcher to bed. An entire body collapse into instant sleep. And what was today’s hip x-ray about anyway? Was that necessary? Sybil was rarely comfortable, rarely without pain. The only time the lines and creases disappeared from her face was when she was heavily medicated—almost semi-comatose. Addie knew that the x-ray results, whatever they might be, were not going to change the final days of her friend’s life. She felt resentful that Sybil had been put through all the meaningless shifting and moving.