I died,” he said to a new doctor. “Briefly,” she said dismissively, as if you had to be dead a lot longer to impress her. Dr. Foster, a woman, who didn’t seem to want to be on first-name terms. “But technically . . . ,” he said, too weak to pursue the argument. She sighed as if patients were always bickering about their dead or alive status. “Yes. Technically dead,” she conceded. “Very briefly.”
