Please keep the reviews coming! I enjoy them so much.

The priest came. Everyone gathered around the bedside. Father Robert put on his stole, and began administering the sacrament.

Halfway through the first prayer, Paul Drake could bear it no more. Without a word, he silently stepped away and disappeared through the door of the bedroom, heading for the empty staircase of the apartment building, to grieve alone.

Della, for her part, stayed in the room, but she felt as if a great part of herself was dying. Perry, her Perry, was slipping away fast. How was she to go on without him? How was it possible that his confident voice, his laugh, their working dinners, all belonged to the realm of memory?

Father Robert reached out to anoint Perry with the holy oil. The moment he touched his forehead, to everyone's surprise, the defense attorney suddenly opened his eyes for the first time in days.

Slightly startled, the priest pulled his hand back and paused. Della gasped. Dr. Hawley, noticing the change in his patient's condition, hastily came around to the other side of the bed, lifted the plastic flap of the oxygen tent and bent over Perry. The lawyer's eyes shifted to him.

Perry felt his head pounding, and a thousand stabbing pains in his chest which worsened exponentially with every breath he drew. Despite the torment, he studied the faces of the two men leaning over him, noticed the plastic of the oxygen tent beyond them and the bottle of holy oil which the priest was holding, put all the facts together, and, characteristically, made an intelligent deduction.

In a shaky, weak voice, he asked his doctor and pastor,

"I'm dying, aren't I?"

"Yes, Perry," Dr. Hawley replied gently. He glanced at Father Robert, waiting for him to continue.

The priest placed a hand on Perry shoulder and asked,

"Would you like to go to confession?"

Perry nodded. Dr. Hawley stepped away from the bed, and taking Della's arm, walked the stunned girl out of the room in order to give Father Robert and Perry the privacy they needed for the confession. Della, her mind busy with a thousand hopeful thoughts, did not resist his maneuvering. It was only when she and the doctor and nurse were standing in the living room with the bedroom door shut behind them that she came back to her senses and suddenly turned upon the doctor angrily.

"Why did you tell him that he was dying when he is clearly getting better? How could you let him think that?" she demanded vehemently.

"Because he is," Dr. Hawley rebutted softly. "I, too, had hopes when he opened his eyes, but my examination revealed his fever to be as fiery as ever. As a result, I must conclude that his lucidity is part of a well-known medical phenomenon – dying people often have a dramatic improvement shortly before they expire. I realize that it must be extraordinarily difficult for a man in his mid-thirties, especially one with as much passion for life as our friend, to be told that he is going to leave this world within the next few hours. But you know as well as I do that Perry always prefers hearing the most horrible truth to being told the prettiest of lies. And it would be unethical for me to withhold the facts from him merely to sooth his feelings, and thus rob him of this last chance to set his affairs in order."

Della trembled, but she knew the physician was right. Perry would not wish to be lied to. And she had seen for herself that his blue eyes had been glazed,his breathing labored, and that he was far from well.

The trio fell silent. For several minutes, Della stood wringing her hands and wishing that somehow she could wake up from the nightmare she now found herself in.

Then, the bedroom door opened. Father Robert came out.

"I'm finished with him," he said. Then he looked directly at Della. "Ms. Street, Perry is still conscious, and is asking for you."

Della needed no other invitation to run into the sickroom.