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to ten, with ten being unbearable pain, where would you place this pain?”
    â€œEight and a half.”
    â€œHave you been letting the staff change your position?”
    â€œUnfortunately I can’t lie any other way but this way,” he says. “Because of my neck.”
    She flips pensively through the papers on her clipboard and says, “I’m going to be open with you. There are some notes in your file that make me concerned you might be a drug seeker.”
    â€œI’m a seeker, all right, but I never took a recreational drug in my life!”
    â€œWhat I’m hearing now is a drug seeker’s request for opiates.”
    â€œWhere’d you get that? I don’t even believe in opiates.”
    â€œThere has been concern on the staff, I don’t know how to say this”—she shakes her head, as though doubting the notes on her clipboard in her own handwriting—“about a Satanic drug cult of some kind that you were involved with in Brazil?”
    â€œWhat did they do, Google me? I thought this was a hospice, not the NSA!”
    â€œPalliative care means treating the whole person,” she parries smoothly. “With all his quirks.”
    â€œSo give me some palliative care! I don’t know what’s wrong with my neck, but that massage your volunteer gave me sure didn’t help. I remember some of my clients used to be on something called Dilaudid. Supposed to have euphoria as a side effect. You guys have that?”
    She shakes her head. “We rely exclusively on modern therapies to keep our patients comfortable.”
    â€œWell, I’m not ‘comfortable.’ I’m in hell. Of course I feel right at home, as the founder of a Satanic drug cult.”
    â€œMr. Baker, if you would prefer not to receive care in a Christian institution—”
    He rolls his eyes. “Can’t you tell I’m joking?”
    The doctor folds her arms. “Being comfortable means not being in agony. It means not dying the way people used to die. Screaming. It means being able to function mentally.”
    â€œWell, thanks so much for the timely definition, now that I’m stuck here on my ass until I die.”
    â€œMr. Baker, I would ask you to remain civil.”
    â€œAll right. Civilize me. You’re the renowned specialist in palliative medicine. Do something about my fucking neck.”
    For a moment, the director twirls her pen. She wriggles pensively, as though thinking with her intestines. Finally she says, “It could be muscle cramping. Some patients respond to a muscle relaxant.”
    â€œThen why doesn’t somebody try it already?” Norm begs.
    PENNY SPENDS AN UNPRODUCTIVE DAY with Norm, not working on his memoirs.
    That evening, she returns to Morristown in a state of agitation and restlessness. The gate opens when it senses the car’s transponder.
    The house is H-shaped, very large; the exterior, white stucco with high, black-shuttered windows. The black perimeter fence encompasses one and three-quarter acres.
    When she comes into the kitchen through the side door, Amalia is drinking beer and soliloquizing to Norm on the phone. She says, eyes on Penny, “Got to go, cariño . Your baby’s home. Love you. Bye.” She hugs her daughter and says, “I know, honey.”
    â€œYou should come see him,” Penny says. “He’s not getting the right painkillers.”
    Amalia shakes her head. “On Sunday I will definitely come,” she says. “Work is so crazy. We’re up to our necks in a merger. It would be so much easier. I could see him every day, if he would be here at home.”
    â€œBut what about the bleed-out? And taking care of him? I don’t know, Mom.”
    â€œIf he says he will do it, I will find a way. I will help you. Can you talk to him? Make him come home?”
    THE NEXT MORNING, NORM HAS a new symptom. “Ih er eenh,” he tells Penny. “Ah