The doc unhooks her from the machine, keeping her heartbeat monitored loudly, and I hold my breath, inhaling sharply as the beep, beep stops so suddenly the air becomes unbearably silent. I don’t get why he would take that off, but when he yanks another box from under the bed and plugs her into that instead, I exhale, slightly confused. That familiar beep, beep, starts up again in a subtler tone from a different machine and he moves to the next, and the next, replacing everything he can with smaller mobile devices as my brain pulls together amid my frantic fear and gives me a shake.

He’s not trying to...