In the room, Vickie is lying on her bed, a private nurse holding a clear plastic tube attached to a ventilator up her nose. Since a trip to Italy, Vickie has grown weaker. Mark told me that she was taken home in an ambulance from a private hospital after she landed.

“Why don't you take her to the hospital?” I asked in a low voice.

“She's determined to go home,” Mark said. “No one can change her mind, and you know it.”

“The patient needs to rest. Please leave the room,” the middle-aged brown-haired nurse said politely.

Mark and I left the room just as Frade and Vickie's doctor came...