MOZELLE STOPPED PACING AND STOOD BEHIND HIS DESK TO face Montaro Caine. Then he began the story Elsen and Anna Hilburn knew so well but had rarely spoken of in the past two-and-a-half decades. “About twenty-six years ago in the spring—on April seventeenth, to be exact—Elsen was diagnosed as having a quite fatal disease, a type of cancer that is usually unforgiving. To be brief, we explored every option open to us: cancer specialists, the usual institutions, the unusual ones as well. We even made ourselves available for experimental procedures, as long as they held out the slightest glimmer of hope.” Howard Mozelle said that he had already received three pessimistic opinions about his wife’s prognosis when he arrived at the office of famed cancer specialist Dr. Rudolf Kempler. At first, Dr. Kempler’s prognosis was hardly different from the others that Howard and Elsen had heard from the previous physicians; the cancer had spread too far to respond to treatment, and the only option was palliative care.
