His eyes seem to see all around me; he does not see me at all. At most, he sees my eyes, perhaps without seeing them either; he may be only staring into a space that seems, maybe, to be watching him from particular point. A faint movement of his chin ... he begins to speak a language I know in name only. His words are clear, but the tone is dull, as though the sound were being absorbed by the air.

Without any urgency I can detect, a distinct, earnest murmur escapes his lips. He may be speaking to me, but he seems instead to be speaking to space, or to an invisible presence. I’ve heard the language, and I recognize it, but something is wrong with my hearing, because it sounds like gibberish to me.

“A, ab ab ab ab a abab ab, ab aba ab abab ab ab ab ab ab ab aba ab ababab ab.”

Some time passes, and I become aware again of his voice, which had not, I think, paused once.

Suddenly, I can’t swallow. I work my muscles, feeling something like a clot in my throat, but my throat won’t clear, and now I feel my lungs stiffening with the effort to breathe, all the while his calm, meaningless droning is in my hearing—there’s something horrible, disgusting in the sound, in his calm, how wrong it is he should speak like that here, as he bleeds to death! I try pulling on the sides of my neck with my hands to open my throat, I swallow convulsively, feeling like I’m dying. I want to stifle his mouth—he’s dying, let him die faster then—but it’s just not in me, my hands just paw uselessly at my asthma. I stand up in desperation and get away from him.

At my back—“A, ab ab aba ab a, aba ab, a ab ab a ab a ab. Ab ab ab ab, a aba, aba ab a ab abab.”

Through one door after another, I put walls between myself and his voice, his calm, because even my body will not listen to him.

I find some water and try to drink. I get over to the blasted window and draw in long breaths against the belts cinched tight around my ribs. But I can’t I won’t listen I can’t won’t decide between can’t and won’t, thinking thoughts that are part of the suffocation.

When I’m myself again—I recovered quickly ... pretty quickly—his words reappear in my memory, but now I can understand them in snatches, or I seem to. The meaning is elusive, because I can only recall what familiar words his speech sounded like, I can’t remember the words he spoke. I can only imagine what they meant.

I begin to think he did see me, and was asking me to do him some last kindness, like carrying him to a breach in the wall, to die in light and air, with arms, no matter whose, a fellow human being’s, around him.