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Eleanor’s hand closes around my arm.

The doctor continues, but I barely hear the next few words. There is something about cardiac arrest, about the damage being too extensive, about prolonged resuscitation. His mouth keeps moving while my mind refuses to follow him.

Then he says it plainly.

“I’m very sorry. We did everything we could. Charles died a few minutes ago.”

My mother makes a sound I have never heard from another human being. It tears out of her before she can stop it.

“No!”

Her knees give way.

I catch her beneath the arms, but she is already folding toward the floor, screaming my father’s name as she reaches for something that isn’t there. Katherine rushes forward to help me, but my mother fights against both of us, grief making her body wild and uncoordinated.

“No, no, no, no,” Eleanor sobs.

“Charles. Oh, God. Charles.”

I lower her carefully to the floor because she cannot hold herself upright. She clutches at the front of my shirt, her face pressed against my chest, and her cries fill the room.

Across from us, Sebastian hasn’t moved. He is staring at the doctor. His face has gone completely blank.

“Sebastian,” I say.

He does not answer. The doctor says something to him, but Sebastian turns away suddenly and stumbles toward the wastebasket near the wall. He barely reaches it before he bends over and vomits.

One of the nurses moves toward him, but he lifts a hand without looking up. I stare at my brother, then at my mother in my arms, and something inside me refuses to connect what I am seeing to what the doctor has just said.

My father is dead.

The words make no sense.

I saw him three days ago.

He complained about a report. He asked me about Brussels. He told Sebastian he was driving too fast again. He kissed my mother goodbye before leaving the room.

That man cannot simply be gone.

I look back at the doctor.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

The question sounds absurd the moment it leaves my mouth, but I need him to answer it.

The doctor’s expression softens.

“Yes. I’m very sorry.”

I shake my head once.

There has to be something else.

Another intervention. Another specialist. Another procedure they haven’t tried yet.

“What happened?” I ask.

“You said you were still working on him.”