His eyes no longer struck me merely as expressionless, but as utterly void, beyond the call of the most basic forms of sympathy and understanding, beyond even the capacity to ape such emotions. As he stood before me at that instant, my son, perhaps for the first time in his adult life, presented himself to me as he really was, destitute of feeling, his emotions shaved down to a bare minimum, a young man who was deeply, deeply ill, and for whom, in all likelihood, there was no way out.
