The Inquisitor

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Wednesday, April 2, 5:30 a.m. Palliative Care Unit, St. Paul 's Hospital, Buffalo, New York

The air on the ward hung thick with the smell of flatulence, body odor, and sweat-soaked sheets. What little light could be seen curdled in pools of shadow. The cries that rose and fell against the outside of her door might as well have been a wail of wind, because here no one would heed them. The nurses paid attention only when the moaning stopped.

Somewhere someone retched with a force that must have stripped the stomach bare. The sound echoed along the hallway.

That might bring them.

Soon the squeak of crepe soles on linoleum would announce their approach.

None came.

"Store up all the tiny details. Let me smell, taste, hear, see, and touch through your telling of them." The command, issued to me so long ago, resurfaced, resonating in memory with the freshness of an order spoken on the spot and not to be disobeyed. As always before a mission, it marshaled a frame of mind fine-tuned to observe, the ideal state to be in for keeping myself and the records sharp.

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