TWO DAYS AFTER the diagnosis Mike had surgery at Mass. General in Boston. The operation was performed by Dr. Raj Soorgan, “a very big man” in neurosurgery whom Bart vouched for. Mike and Lizzie found some comfort in knowing he was a very big man, but they were smart enough to know that patients were always being operated on by very big men. And what difference did it make when there were so many very dead patients?

Mike spent nine hours that morning and afternoon on the table, under the knife.

When Dr. Soorgan came out to the family waiting room to speak to Lizzie and Gaby—and Emily, who had taken two days off from work to be there with her sister—he spoke carefully, as if his words were being recorded, which they were.

“He came through it fine. He’s in ICU. He’s responding well. And I think I got it all.”

Emily clicked on her mini-recorder to capture every word the very big man said. Gaby nodded seriously throughout the brief update. But Lizzie…well, Lizzie was thinking of another time. A month or so earlier—in another world, before the dizzy spells and the MRIs and the seizures—she had been standing in the kitchen making toast. She had dropped a small jar of orange marmalade. The jar had shattered into pieces on the floor.

“Stand still,” Mike had shouted. “You don’t have shoes on. I do. I’ll get it.”

It was a vigorous cleanup—broom and dustpan and dish towels and Fantastik spray to finish up.

“Can I move yet?” Lizzie had asked.

Now standing in the hospital, Lizzie remembered Mike’s answer.

“Absolutely,” he said. “It’s perfect. I think I got it all.”