I went to bed early, too, more drained emotionally than physically. David had made some heroic efforts at normalcy that day, but there were signs that his declining health was starting to hurt his spirit. That, for me, was the hardest change of all. My next trip South was more hastily arranged. It was July, and David's mother called to tell me that he was in the hospital, in pretty bad shape, arguing with invisible rivals.
All visitors report to nurses' station before entering.
In the back of my mind was my volunteer training of years before, when we were told to forget about Hallmark endings, about all the death scenes we'd ever seen in movies or on TV, because it's never that sweet, never that pat. I opened David's door, and that lesson became instantly, eminently clear. The bedside TV speaker was squawking from the floor, where it had fallen who knows how many hours before. I walked around the bed to see his face, which didn't look much different. He was muttering unintelligibly.