I CANNOT REMEMBER what we said to the two men, how we left them, or how we came to our room. I remember his face, skin drawn tightly over his cheeks, the dulled pallor of his brow. His shoulders, usually so straight and fine, seemed fallen. Grief swelled inside me, choking me. His death. I felt as if I was dying just to think of it, plummeting through a blind, black sky.
You must not go. I almost said it,