I was hired to sit with a man the doctors said had five days left. One night I laid my teething baby on his chest — and his fingers moved. Then he whispered: don’t tell anyone I’m awake.

Nobody in that hallway had to decide anything. He had done the deciding for them in four words.

I have thought about that a great deal since, because it is the most efficient thing I have ever seen a person do, and it took him about a second and a half and he did not even look at me while he did it.

Ten minutes later, Rendel’s breathing changed and his fingers stopped answering me.

And Halloran said, to the room, in the same even voice: he’s fading. Five days. Maybe six.

Then he put the vials back into his case instead of leaving them in the cabinet with everything else.

The cabinet is on the wall by the window. It has a key and I have one and the other carer has one.

Everything that goes into that man lives in it. That is the entire point of the cabinet and it is the first thing the agency checks.

I have watched him do that nineteen times.

I had watched him do it nineteen times and had thought nothing about it at all — and that is not quite true, and I am going to correct it now rather than at the end.