He knew instantly that it was her—the stunned look, the staring eyes, the way she chewed her cheeks—so he did not even ask if she was Simon Limbres’s mother, simply offered her his hand with a nod: Pierre Révol, I’m the senior doctor here, I admitted your son this morning, please come with me. Instinctively she walks on the linoleum floor with her head lowered, not even glancing sideways in case she sees her child at the back of a dark room. They walk side by side for twenty yards in the lavender-blue corridor, and then there’s an ordinary door with a label the size and shape of a business card stuck to it. She doesn’t notice the name.

Today, Révol forsakes the Family Room, which he has never liked much, and receives Marianne in his office. She stands for a moment, then sits on the edge of the chair, while he walks around the desk and sits opposite her, in his swivel chair, chest thrust forward and elbows to the sides. The more Marianne looks at him, the more she forgets the people she has seen so far in her time at the hospital—the woman with the monobrow at reception, the student nurse in the ER, the doctor in the pink shirt—as if they were merely links in a chain leading her to this face, their features superimposed one upon the other to form a single face—that of the man sitting in front of her now, about to speak.

*   *   *

Would you like a coffee? Surprised, Marianne nods. Révol stands up and, turning the other way, picks up the pot from the coffee machine, which she hadn’t seen, and—silently, with broad, sweeping gestures—pours the coffee into two white plastic cups. Steam rises from them. He is playing for time, searching for the right words; she knows this but does not object, although she feels a paradoxical tension, because time is dripping away, like coffee into the pot, while she is fully aware of the urgency of the situation, its seriousness, its closeness. Now Marianne closes her eyes and drinks, concentrating on the burning liquid in her mouth, dreading the first word of the first sentence—the doctor’s jaw tensing, his lips opening, stretching, teeth appearing, the end of the tongue flickering into sight occasionally—that tragedy-soaked sentence that she knows is about to be spoken. Everything in her withdraws, stiffens, her spine pressing against the back of the (wobbly) chair, her head driven back: she would like to get out of here, run to the door and escape, or disappear through a trapdoor opening suddenly beneath her feet, so she can enter a black hole of forgetfulness, so no one in this building can find her, so she need never know anything other than the fact that Simon’s heart is still beating; she would like to flee this cramped room, this sordid light, and run away from the news. Because no, she is not brave. She is slippery as a snake, would do anything to make him reassure her, say her fears are unfounded, tell her a story—a suspenseful story, sure—but a story with a happy ending. She’s a disgusting coward, but she does not back down from her stance: each second that passes is a hard-won treasure; each second slows her approaching fate, and, observing her writhing hands, her legs knotted under the chair, those closed eyelids, swollen, darkened by the previous night’s makeup—a streak of kohl that she applies with her fingertip, in a single movement—seeing those murky-jade, watery irises, the trembling of those splayed lashes, Révol knows she has understood, that she knows, and so with infinite gentleness he allows the time before his first word to stretch out, picks up the Venetian paperweight and rolls it in the palm of his hand, the glass ball sparkling under the cold fluorescent light, flashing colors over the walls and the ceiling, lines of light like veins, moving across Marianne’s face, teasing her eyes open. And this, for Révol, is the signal that he can begin speaking.

Your son is in critical condition.

*   *   *

Hearing those first words—limpid tone, calm tempo—Marianne’s eyes, which are still dry, rest on Révol’s, which hold her gaze, while he begins his next sentence and she composes herself. His words are crystal clear without being brutal—his semantics correct and precise, largos woven into the silences, pauses that closely fit the deployment of meaning—and spoken slowly enough that Marianne can repeat each syllable she hears internally, engrave them in her memory: Your son suffered a cranial trauma in the accident. The scanner shows a major injury in the frontal lobe—he touches his hand to his skull, to the side of his forehead, to illustrate what he means—and this violent shock provoked a cerebral hemorrhage. Simon was in a coma when he arrived at the hospital.

Révol takes a sip of his now-lukewarm coffee. Across from him, Marianne has turned to stone. The telephone rings—one, two, three times—but Révol does not pick it up. Marianne stares into his face, absorbing it whole: silky-white complexion, mauve rings under transparent gray eye bags, heavy lids wrinkled like walnut shells, a long and mobile face—and the silence swells, until Révol speaks again: I’m worried—the sudden, inexplicable loudness of his voice surprises her, as if someone has nudged the volume control—we are carrying out examinations at the moment, and the first results are not good. Even though his voice makes an unknown sound in Marianne’s ears, and instantly accelerates her breathing, it is not enveloping, it does not sound like those horrific voices that purport to comfort while leading you to a mass grave; on the contrary, his voice designates a place for Marianne, a place and a line.

He is in a deep coma.

*   *   *

The seconds that follow open up a space between them, a naked and silent space. They wait on the edge of this space for what seems a long time. Marianne Limbres begins to turn the word “coma” slowly in her head while Révol once again approaches the darkest part of his profession. Still rolling the paperweight in the palm of his hand—a veiled and solitary sun—he thinks that there is nothing as violent, as complex as this: placing himself next to this woman so that they can, together, penetrate that fragile zone of language where death is declared, so that they can move forward, in synchrony. He says: Simon is not reacting to painful stimuli anymore. His eyes are nonreactive and he is in a vegetative state; with regard to his breathing, we are beginning to see fluid accumulating in his lungs, and the first scans are not good. He speaks slowly, his phrases punctuated by intakes of breath: a way of making his body, himself, present in his words, a way of adding empathy to this clinical sentence. He speaks as if carving the words into stone, and now the two of them are face-to-face, confronting the truth—this is it, the ultimate face-to-face—and it has been accomplished unswervingly, as if speaking and looking were two sides of the same coin, as if they had to face each other as much as they will have to face up to what awaits in one of the rooms of this hospital.

*   *   *

I want to see Simon—voice distraught, eyes and hands wandering. I want to see Simon—that is all she had said, when her cell phone rang for the umpteenth time from the depths of her coat pocket: the neighbor who’s looking after Lou, Chris’s parents, Johan’s parents, but still no word from Sean. Where is he? She sends a text: Call me.

*   *   *

Révol looked up. Now? You want to see him now? He glances at his watch—12:30—and replies, calmly, I’m afraid it’s impossible at the moment. You’ll have to wait a while: he’s in treatment right now, but as soon as we’ve finished, you will of course be able to see your son. And, placing a yellowish sheet of paper between them, he continues: If it’s all right with you, we need to talk about Simon. Talk about Simon. Marianne tenses. What does he mean, “talk about Simon”? Are they going to fill out one of those forms like they often do in hospitals? List the operations he’s had?—adenoids, appendix, nothing else—the bones he’s broken?—a radius fractured in a bicycle accident the summer he turned ten, that’s all—any allergies?—no, none—diseases he’s contracted in the past?—that staph infection the summer he turned five, which he told everyone about because that fabulous name (Staphylococcus aureus) made it seem so rare; the mononucleosis he suffered at sixteen, the kissing disease, the lovers’ disease, and his lopsided smile when teased about it, the strange pajamas he wore then, like a pair of Hawaiian bermudas matched with a quilted sweatshirt. Are they going to list his childhood illnesses? Talk about Simon. The images speed through her mind and Marianne panics: a baby with roseola lying on a garter-stitch baby blanket; a three-year-old boy with measles, brown scabs on his scalp, behind his ears, and that fever that dehydrated him, turning the whites of his eyes yellow and his hair sticky for ten long days. Marianne speaks tersely while Révol takes notes—date and place of birth, weight, height—and seems in fact not really to care about those childhood illnesses once he has written on his form that Simon has no particular background of serious diseases, rare allergies, or malformations of which his mother is aware. At these words, Marianne becomes flustered, a memory flash, ten-year-old Simon on a school ski trip, afflicted with violent stomach pains, and the doctor who examined him palpating his left side and, assuming it was appendicitis, diagnosing an “inverted anatomy,” the heart on the right side, not the left, etc., a statement that no one questioned, and that fantastical anomaly had turned him into a special person for the rest of that ski trip.

Thank you, Mme Limbres. Then, after smoothing the sheet down with the flat of his hand, he returns it to Simon’s dossier, a pale-green folder. He looks back up at Marianne: You can see your son as soon as we have completed the examinations. What examinations? Marianne’s voice sounding suddenly alert in the office, and the vague idea that if they are conducting examinations, then all is not lost. The glimmer in her eyes warns Révol, who makes an effort to bring the situation under control, stemming the tide of hope: Simon’s situation is developing, but not in the way we would want it to. Marianne’s face registers the pain of this blow. Ah, she says, so how is Simon’s condition developing exactly? In speaking like this, she knows she is leaving herself open to another blow, that she is taking a risk. Révol inhales deeply before replying.

Simon’s injuries are irreversible.

*   *   *

He has the unpleasant sensation of having kicked this woman when she was down, of having delivered a death blow. He stands up. We’ll call you as soon as we can. Then, in a louder voice, Does Simon’s father know? Marianne stares at him and answers he’ll be here this afternoon—but Sean still hasn’t called or texted, and suddenly she is seized with panic, begins wondering if maybe he isn’t in the warehouse today, or at home, if maybe he’s gone to Villequier or Duclair or Caudebec-en-Caux to deliver a skiff, or if he’s at the rowing club on the Seine, in fact maybe at this very moment he’s trying out the boat with the buyer, and they’re rowing, sitting on the sliding seat, Sean watching and quietly making remarks, impressing with his expert terminology, and little by little Marianne sees the river narrowing between high, mossy rock walls covered with plants growing out horizontally, giant ferns and fleshy vines, peat moss and acid-green grass all tangled up along the vertical cliffs or bowing toward the river in leafy cascades, then the light dims, the geography leaving only a narrow corridor of milk-white sky above the boat, the water becoming heavy, flat, slow, the surface aswarm with insects—iridescent-turquoise dragonflies, transparent mosquitoes—the river turning bronze, scattered with silver reflections, and suddenly, in horror, Marianne imagines that Sean has returned to New Zealand, that he is rowing up the Whanganui River, from the Cook Strait, leaving from another estuary and another city, and heading inland, alone in his canoe, fully at peace, the way she had known him, gazing straight ahead; he rowed steadily, passing Maori villages along the riverbank, climbing down the waterfalls, carrying the light boat on his back, advancing ever northward, toward the central plateau and the Tongariro volcano, where the sacred river drew its source, retracing the path of migration to the new lands. She can see Sean precisely, she can even hear his breath echoing in the canyon. Everything is calm there, suffocatingly calm. Révol watches her, concerned by the panic he can see in her eyes, but when he says I’ll see you with him, then, when he arrives, Marianne nods, okay.

The scraping of chair legs on the floor, the creak of the door, now they are walking toward the other end of the corridor, and once they are on the landing, without adding a word to their meager dialogue, Marianne turns on her heel and slowly walks away, with no idea where she is going. She passes the waiting room with its straight-backed chairs and its coffee table strewn with old magazines, where mature women with healthy teeth and shining hair and firm perinea smile at her, and soon she is back in the vast glass-and-concrete lobby, on the skating-rink floor. She walks past the cafeteria—multicolored packs of chips, candy, and chewing gum fill the display racks, brightly printed posters of burgers and pizzas are stuck to the wall, bottles of water and soda stand in glass-fronted refrigerators—then suddenly stops, staggering on her feet: Simon is lying helpless somewhere back there, how can she leave him behind like this? She wants to turn around, go back to him, but she continues on her way. She has to find Sean. She has to.

*   *   *

She heads to the main exit, the doors slowly opening in the distance, and four figures enter the building, move toward her. Soon the figures emerge from the blur of her myopia: it’s the parents of the other two caballeros, Christophe and Johan, walking in a line, wearing the same winter coats that weigh heavy on their shoulders, the same scarfs wrapped around their necks like braces to hold up their sagging heads, the same gloves. They recognize her, slow down, then one of the two men breaks step and comes toward Marianne, takes her in his arms. The other three wait in line to embrace her. How is he? Chris’s father is speaking. All four of them are looking at her. She is paralyzed. Whispers: He’s in a coma, no news yet. Shrugging, her mouth twisted: And you? How are the boys? Johan’s mother speaks: Chris has fractures in his left hip and fibula; Johan, fractures of both wrists and his clavicle, his rib cage was crushed but no organs were punctured—she speaks plainly, with an outrageous lack of emotion designed to show Marianne that all four of them are aware how lucky they are, how monstrously lucky, because their children are only a little broken, their children were wearing seat belts, they were protected from the collision, and if this woman is downplaying her anxiety to this degree, abstaining from all commentary, it is also to let Marianne know that they know, about Simon, they know it’s serious, very serious—a rumor that’s spread from the ICU to the Department of Orthopedic and Trauma Surgery, where their sons are—and that she would never be so indecent as to rub it in. And then there is the awkwardness she feels, the guilt that holds her back, because it was fifty-fifty between their two sons as to who got the seat belt, with Chris having one automatically as the driver—Johan might well have sat in the middle of the bench, in which case she would be standing in Marianne’s shoes at this very moment, in exactly the same situation, staring down into the same chasm of misery, her mouth twisted with the same pain, and at the mere thought of this she is suddenly dizzy, her legs weakening and her eyes rolling back in their sockets. Her husband, sensing that she is about to keel over, puts his arm under hers to steady her, and Marianne, seeing this woman on the verge of collapse, also becomes aware of the chasm between them, between the four of them and her, the abyss that separates them now, thank you, I have to go, let’s talk later.

*   *   *

It hits her that she doesn’t want to go home. She is not ready yet to see Lou again, to call her mother, to tell Simon’s grandparents, her friends; she is not ready to hear them panic and suffer. Some of them will scream into the phone—no, my God, I can’t believe it, no no no—some of them will sob inconsolably while others bombard her with questions, mentioning the names of medical examinations that she knows nothing about, telling her about a case involving someone they know who came out of a coma after the doctors thought it was all over, talking about all the spectacular remissions they’ve heard about, questioning the hospital, the diagnosis, the treatment, even asking for the name of the doctor in charge of Simon, ah, really, no, I don’t know him, oh but I’m sure he’s very good, insisting that she writes down the number of this famous surgeon who has a two-year waiting list, suggesting that they could call him on her behalf, because they know him or have a friend who, and maybe she’ll even get someone stupid enough, crazy enough to inform her that, hang on, it’s possible, you know, to confuse a coma dépassé with other states that resemble it, an ethylic coma, for example, or an overdose of sedatives or hypoglycemia, even hypothermia, and then, remembering that Simon surfed in cold water that morning, she will feel like throwing up, then pull herself together to remind the person who’s tormenting her that he was in a major road accident, and even if she resisted, repeating to everyone that Simon was in good hands and all they could do was wait, she knew they would want to show their love by covering her with words. No, she is not ready for that yet. What she wants is somewhere to wait, somewhere to kill time, a shelter from the storm. She reaches the parking garage, sees her car, and abruptly breaks into a run, diving inside it, and then her fists are pounding the steering wheel and her hair is lashing against the dashboard, her hands shaking so much that she can hardly fit the key into the ignition, and when the engine does finally start, Marianne has trouble controlling her speed, her tires squealing as she pulls out of the parking garage. After that, she drives straight ahead, toward the west, where the sky is brighter, while in his office, Révol does not sit down but does what the law obligates him to do when declaring brain death in the ICU: he picks up the phone and calls the Coordinating Committee for Organ and Tissue Removal. Thomas Rémige is the one who answers.