I had lurched through the past week like a drunk, all my senses curiously muffled, but now I could not have been more sharply aware of everything: the hot light pouring through the bedroom windows, the smell and taste of the coffee, the cloud-like pillows against the bed’s sky-blue duvet, the grain of the blond-wood floor where a brilliantly colored kilim rug lay vibrating like a piece of op art. The closet and the bureau drawers smelled of lavender. (Downstairs I’d noticed a different scent: a fruity astringent tang, like a citrus cocktail.)

Under other circumstances, this would have been a fine place to work. But I doubted whether I’d have the concentration even to browse the news. What I’d imagined myself doing instead was streaming movies and binge-watching episodes of all the great TV series I’d missed in recent years and thought I’d never catch up on. I also took it for granted that I’d be responsible for whatever cooking or cleaning or errands needed doing, and which I knew I’d be more than happy to do, concerned only that there wouldn’t be enough such work to keep me busy.

Best try not to anticipate too much was the advice I’d given myself. Though my friend seemed utterly sure of her decision—not once so far had I seen her waver—at the back of my mind was the suspicion that things were not going to happen as planned. Just because we were here now didn’t mean she’d definitely take the drug. She’d come here to think, after all, and thinking might lead to changing her mind. Maybe she’d decide to put off taking it for a while longer. (Most dying patients in possession of a lethal dose of medication, I happened to know, never did take it.) In any case, it was far easier for me to imagine that, after a week or so, we’d be leaving this house together than that I’d be leaving it alone.

I was fully aware, and troubled by my awareness, that a big part of me, while agreeing to help my friend, had not truly accepted—was in fact apparently powerfully resisting—the reason we were here. Why I was here.

A dozen times since agreeing to be with her till the end I had quailed, had told myself I’d made a serious mistake, it was impossible, in fact I couldn’t do it. Then I would think how equally impossible it was for me to back out. I thought that I should at least tell her about these qualms, to which she had responded that she was going to do it anyway.

You want me to do it alone? Because I’ll tell you, I don’t have the time or energy to go down the list of everyone I know. I want peace.