I knew, of course, as soon as my brain woke up enough to realize a phone was ringing and my eyes simultaneously took in the bedside clock display of 4:55 am: it could have been a wrong number, of course, but I knew.

Still, it wasn’t supposed to happen this time. Yes, Dad was very, very sick, but every single doctor, every single nurse kept reassuring us that he would recover; Guillain-Barr