The Grief of Strangers

The private wing of Mercy General Hospital was a monument to sterile, purchased silence, but the Vance family had turned it into a war room. The air in the hallway outside the Intensive Care Unit was thick with the scent of expensive perfume undercut by the sharp, clinical odor of antiseptic. Inside the glass-walled room, Elara Vance lay motionless, a pale doll against white sheets, her body a network of tubes and wires leading to silent, blinking machines.

Her mother, ...