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of dried mucus flakes off his throat like a loose poker chip. She hauls it out with the swab. Nothing disgusts her. She is gentle and caring. He moans his word “Wah.” The inside of his mouth is almost clean. It is red, gray, and gold. His golden molars shine. She feels a sense of achievement.
    She wets a swab and inserts it in his mouth. His teeth clamp down on it and he sucks the water.
    â€œIt’s a reflex,” the orderly says.
    After three more wet swabs, Penny marches down to the nurses’ station.
    â€œI’m taking my dad home,” she says to the random doctor who is sitting behind the desk, doing paperwork. “I don’t care if it’s against medical advice.”
    â€œIt’s normal for patients to say they want to go home,” she says. “It’s a universal metaphor for being at peace in God’s love.”
    â€œDo you even believe in God? You sound like the hospice manual.”
    â€œI believe there’s a higher power.”
    A room door opens and a very old man with thick, strong limbs lurches into the hallway, wearing a hospital gown made of paper. He elbows the nurse who pursues him. Penny follows them as far as the glass double doors to the garden. The old man stands next to the birdbath, scanning the parking lot for his car, while the nurse remonstrates with him. He has no keys or clothes. The weather ischilly. A security guard brings a wheelchair, and three staff members accompany him back to his room.
    Penny returns to the nurses’ station and says to the doctor, “If there is a higher power, how come it lets people get as weak as my dad and leaves their capacity to feel pain?”
    â€œIf he had pain, we’d know it.”
    â€œThat’s not true,” Penny says. “He’s a stoic.”
    â€œWe don’t know what he’s feeling,” the doctor says. “When people are very sick, their cognition is altered. We don’t hasten the end of life. Every human being has a right to self-awareness, especially at the end, when we’re making our peace with God. You might want to talk with our chaplain.”
    She turns away, defeated.
    She goes out the front door and follows the concrete walk past the handicapped parking spots until she is off hospice property. She smokes a cigarette by the road. Butts line the gutter. A passing driver slows and raises his eyebrows. She turns back to face the hospice.
    PENNY’S DISTRESS AND AGITATION ARE profound.
    Norm built the world she once lived in, calling its entities into being word by word. But his word, which once was law, has surrendered to higher laws. He is so weak that a fly, landing on his nose, would be a higher law. He couldn’t swat it away. He and Penny share a world not their own.
    When his eyes seek hers, bright with the need to die and hopeful that she will help, she feels love, like a serrated knife, carving out her heart and giving it to her father.
    FOUR DAYS LATER, AMALIA COMES to visit, bringing Norm’s pet cat in a travel carrier.
    The cat, a neutered male named Schubert, is small and blackwith orange eyes, very pretty. He presses his body against the back wall of the carrier. “Look who I brought!” Amalia says, swinging the carrier up onto the bed and knocking it against Norm’s hip. “He’s sleeping,” she whispers to Penny.
    â€œHe could be awake. His eyes are stuck shut.”
    Amalia leans closer and sees that Norm’s upper and lower lashes are gummed together with dried mucus. “Oh my god! I should have come earlier! I was just so busy.” She places the cat carrier on the floor at her feet and asks, “Did you talk to Patrick?”
    â€œNo. Was I supposed to?”
    â€œHe said he called you. He can’t make it, but he knows Norm will understand. He’s hanging a major show of photographs in Jakarta.”
    Norm says, “Wah.”
    Amalia seizes both his hands in hers.