Girard rubbed his eyes and thought this over. That conclusion didn’t seem right. He thought back to the dog he’d had when he was a boy, a long-legged hound. Once he’d been lost and the dog had tracked him for over ten hours. His parents had sobbed, assuming they would soon be planning a funeral, but the dog did not give up. When at last he tracked Henri into the woods and they saw each other, it was difficult to know who was more overjoyed. So now he asked himself, was the dog merely a beast trained to search for a missing child, or was he doing so out of his own desire, because his soul would not let him rest until he found his beloved master? It was a complicated matter, one he did not feel qualified to answer.

“I’m a doctor,” he said. “I deal with flesh, not spirit.”

“But you do deal with spirit. You speak to the dying. You’re with those who are being born. This is an honor not many humans have.” Ava was very serious. “Have you seen the World to Come?”

He supposed she meant heaven. “Why do you ask?” Perhaps she was more religious than she appeared to be; all of this talk of spirit seemed to point to it.

She wanted to know what she herself was, but she merely shrugged and said, “Isn’t it natural to wish to know such things?”

“Actually, in my experience, it seems most people try their best not to think of such things. They avoid doing so at all costs.”

“But you do.” She seemed very sure of this. “You think about these matters every day.”

In order to continue his work in the best way possible, he did not dwell on such matters. And yet, he had an inkling of what she was speaking about. There was often an illumination around the dead, and those being born seemed touched by a similar light. Sometimes it lasted for no longer than the time it took to blink, but there were other times when the light continued to hover, so that a room might be filled with sparks for an hour or more after someone had passed away. He’d never spoken of this to anyone, it seemed pompous, perhaps mad to suggest that he was in some way doing God’s work. Yet there were times when the doorway into the next world seemed to have been flung open and all he could do was get down on his knees and look with awe upon the gift of life. It was the same with death, how strong an adversary death was, how all encompassing, how its arrival could be a gift or a tragedy.