The first time I spoke to him, it was just to fill the silence.

308 had been quiet for so long it felt like a tomb. Machines did the work of lungs and heartbeats, their rhythms steady, mechanical and inhuman. His name was David O’Hara, forty-six years old, hit by a drunk driver on a rainy Tuesday night five years ago. No visitors that day, no flowers on the windowsill, no signs of the world outside. Just the hum of the ventilator and the faint antiseptic scent of bleach.

I was still new t...