Part Six: The Last Patient

Entry 108. 2950–3000. The wait. The diagnosis. The fear.

Fifty years, the wait lasted, and the record will not apologize for a single one of them: you cannot rush a parley, and this was the parley of my whole existence, and both parties knew it, and both parties, the record can now certify, spent the half-century the same way, which is the first thing that was ever true about Pilgrim and me: we studied each other, at a distance, patiently, the way family does when family has been surprised by family.