It's now time for just the terror with Nick Guerra.

Dennis. We'd all known Dennis had less than a week. And we'd all braced ourselves. For all the good that would do.

This is going to tear us apart and leave a ragged gaping hole in all our lives.

But that would be it. It would fit within our understanding of theory. in all

in all our lives. It would fit within our understanding of things and we could all assume he went wherever we thought people go.

That would have been so much easier, so much less troubling than what actually happened.

Dennis had been diagnosed with cancer a couple of days after his 10th birthday and

was all downhill from there.

There is never an upswing, never an opportunity for surgery.

All the scans showed the same thing, the oily black webs having grown larger and denser.

The fact that we were twins and had looked identical right up to when he started

chemo just made it worse. There I was right beside him, a perfect image of what he used to be before his hair fell out and his color drained and his cheeks sunk down into his skull

an emaciated ghost constantly contrasted with what he should be.

And then finally, the doctor shut the case,

snuffed out the last wisps of hope.

Dennis will most likely not last more than four days, a week at the most.

So we'd all set up camp in his musty room at the hospital.

The walls were fricled and pea green.

The only lights slanted in from between the shutters, glaring bar stretching out across the floor to end just short of Dennis's bed.

The staff managed to bring in another simpler bed for me, and my parents slept in old wicker chairs.

Dennis looked really bad at this stage.

You could as good as see his skull.

...