Ruby’s eyes flutter open, revealing big brown irises full of awareness. She seems to see not only us but beyond us. I suppose this is the look of faith.

“Lord Jesus,” she says, as clearly as if she were talking to me across the breakfast table. “Ruby going home today. Home to glory.”

Seconds later her eyes close, and the monitors that were so muted before begin clanging alarms.

“She’s coding,” Dad says.

“Crash cart!” cries one of the other doctors.

A hurricane of activity erupts around us, everyone rushing to his appointed task.

“Cardiac arrest,” Dad says in a calm voice.

“Tom?” says Dr. Carelli, a lean dark man in his late forties. “Clear, Tom.”

Dad holds up his right hand. “Everyone listen to me. This case is DNR.”

The alarms go on ringing with relentless insistence.

“Do you know that for a fact?” asks Carelli, standing anxiously over the cart with a laryngoscope in his hand. “Tom, you know the rules.”

“This woman is eighty years old, she’s got third-degree burns over sixty percent of her body, and a broken hip.”

“Tom, for a DNR we need it on paper.”

“She also has carcinoma of the lung,” Dad says softly. “No one knows that but me. There’s nothing on paper, but she’s discussed it with me on several occasions. No extraordinary measures. Do not resuscitate. Turn off those alarms.”

The whole apparatus of technology stands poised on the edge of action, and my father has ordered it to stand down.

“Tom, are you sure?” asks Carelli.

“I take full responsibility. Turn off those goddamned alarms.”

One by one the alarms go off. Dad looks at me, his eyes weary. “Go on out, Penn. Check on Annie and your mother. You don’t want to see this.”

“Not until she’s gone.”

He nods slowly. “All right.” He turns to the assembled staff. “Thanks for the effort, everybody. We’d like to be alone with her.”

I squeeze Ruby’s good hand, kiss her forehead, and wait for the end. Looking at this ravaged shell of a woman, I find it hard to believe that she was the towering figure who saved me from that German shepherd. But she was. She is. As the last nurse files out, the drumbeat of rotor blades descends over the hospital, announcing the helicopter that will return to Jackson without its scheduled passenger.

Ruby Flowers is leaving Natchez by another route.

Our family has gathered in the small chapel provided by the hospital for patients and their families. It’s a small, dim room, with electric candles, two pews, an altar, and some “new” Bibles full of undistinguished prose. I’m not a believer myself, but in time of death you can do a lot worse than the King James Bible for comfort.