Fat Charlie bit his lip, and prayed to anyone who might be listening that the earth would open and swallow him up or, failing that, that he might suffer a brief, merciful and entirely fatal heart attack. No such luck. He remained among the living, the brass band kept coming, his father kept dancing and shaking hands and smiling.

If there is any justice in the world, thought Fat Charlie, my father will keep going down the corridor, and he’ll go straight past us and into the genito-urinary department; however, there was no justice, and his father reached the door of the oncology ward and stopped.

“Fat Charlie,” he said, loudly enough that everyone in the ward—on that floor—in the hospital—was able to comprehend that this was someone who knew Fat Charlie. “Fat Charlie, get out of the way. Your father is here.”

Fat Charlie got out of the way.

The band, led by Fat Charlie’s father, snaked their way through the ward to Fat Charlie’s mother’s bed. She looked up at them as they approached, and she smiled.

“ ‘Yellow Bird,’ ” she said, weakly. “It’s my favorite song.”

“And what kind of man would I be if I forgot that?” asked Fat Charlie’s father.

She shook her head slowly, and she reached out her hand and squeezed his hand in its lemon yellow glove.

“Excuse me,” said a small white woman with a clipboard, “are these people with you?”

“No,” said Fat Charlie, his cheeks heating up. “They’re not. Not really.”

“But that is your mother, isn’t it?” said the woman, with a basilisk glance. “I must ask you to make these people vacate the ward momentarily, and without incurring any further disturbance.”