This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Trisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Camille Baudas read her story, the presentation

on Egypt from the May 20th, 2019 issue of the magazine.

Bordas has published two novels in France,

Lé Thres Deser and Partie Commune.

Her first novel in English,

How to Behave in a Crowd,

was published in 2017.

Now here's Camille Bordas. The presentation on Egypt.

It wasn't his job to explain it over and over, to sit the families down and say,

The husband, the brother, the son you knew is no more.

It's only machines breathing for him now, and you wouldn't be letting him go because he's already gone.

He was the surgeon, not the organ donation person, not the social worker, not a friend.

His job was to say it once. Once was often enough.

Families would unplug a loved one within a few hours.

But certain people required extra attention. TV shows he'd

heard of, TV shows his own wife watched, had led some to believe that desperate cases were never

that desperate, that all you had to do really was to keep asking the surgeon, and the surgeon,

because you kept him focused and engaged in the case, would suddenly light up,

go to the lab for half a day, find a solution to reverse your loved one's vegetative state,

and hug you warmly at the end of it all.

...