You can’t walk across a lake just because you change its name to “land.” Labels matter. - Cutting for Stone

All possibilities resided within me, and they required me to be here. If I left, what would be left of me?

The oaks and maples outside the window of his room are wild men with their heads on fire. He shuts his eyes, but the view inside his eyelids is the same nightmare. His nerves are lancinating cables under his skin that send jolts of electricity to his muscles. He is so tremulous that when he brings a glass of water to his lips, he has spilled most of it before he can take a sip. He pukes his insides out, till he imagines the lining of his stomach is smooth and shiny like a copper pot. But the impulse to run is gone. He has put one or perhaps two oceans between him and the place he flees.

And that is how he passed from this life to the next, without fanfare, with characteristic simplicity, fearless, opening his eyes that last time to make sure we were fine before he went on.