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.

Before I could ask anything we heard footsteps.

Christo came in without knocking, which he has never done once in six weeks.

Grey suit. A watch worth more than my car. Irritated before he had looked at anybody.

He said: how’s our patient?

I said: no change.

He did not look at his uncle. Not once, in the entire ninety seconds he was in that room, and I watched for it deliberately.

He said: good. The doctor’s here at four.

There is one detail about that sentence that took me eleven days to notice.

He said it to me. Not to his uncle, and not about his uncle.

In six weeks I never once heard that man say a sentence in that room with the word he in it where he meant the person in the bed.

It was always our patient, or the doctor’s here, or how’s it looking.

You can go two months without using a pronoun about a living relative, if you are careful, and Christo was careful, and I think it was the only careful thing he did.

Then he said: and one more thing, Calla. If that child cries all night again, you and he can find somewhere else to stay.