My mind scrambled. I nodded, threw on a coat, and she carried her shoes as we cut down the studio stairs and into the car. I was still buckling my belt as I turned the ignition.

“Is he going to be okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He has pancreatic cancer, he—I have no idea.”

When I pulled up to the Shalom Terrace, I was braced for cops, but an ambulance was idling out front, red-and-green lights spinning in morning sunlight. As we got out of the car, two paramedics rushed Mr. Elkaim by on a stretcher. He was white as the sheet, and for one brief second I thought he was dead, but he jerked his head in discomfort.

Frantic, I angled back to the staff watching on. “What happened?”

Nurse Rosa said, “Mr. Elkaim have a stroke.”

Endi was at the back of the ambulance, speaking with one of the paramedics. “Excuse me, would it be okay if we rode with him?” she said. “I’m a trained geriatric NP.”

I rushed over and added, “I work for this man.”

The paramedic gave us the once-over and looked back to staff—Rabbi Peretz gave him a nod and he motioned for us to get on board. Using my arm, Endi hoisted herself up first, then I followed as she reached for Elkaim’s dark, bony hand and held it in hers. He looked at us with tired, helpless eyes and didn’t speak as the siren went off and we tore through the city.

23

Minutes later we were pulling into Cedars-Sinai—Elkaim’s gurney folded out and hit the ground running like a soapbox racer, right on through the automatic ER doors. Endi and I followed apace but a nurse stopped us. “Are you related to the patient?”

“Please let us through,” I said. “I’m as good as a relation; I’ve known him all my life. She’s a professional caregiver.”

“That’s fine, but you’ll have to fill out some paperwork first.” The nurse sent us to a desk where they started in on who his insurance carrier was. I told them I didn’t know, and they found his records and his primary care physician, then they had us sign about eight digital waivers.

“Can we go see him now?”

The desk clerk was nonplussed. Panic was her bread and butter. “Mr. Elkaim is in the ICU. There’s a waiting room down the hall.”

Endi said, “Are they—will he need surgery or…”

“I don’t have that information here, ma’am.”

The waiting room was empty save for a heavyset woman in a bathrobe playing Candy Crush on her phone. Without uttering a word, she conveyed in no uncertain terms that our presence bugged her. We took our seats anyway. CNN played silently on a TV in the corner, rigged to the wall by a metal arm. The news was like a collage of fire. The world, it seemed, was fighting fire with fire, fire, and more fire. But what did the world care about one little old man crumpled on a gurney in the adjacent room?

As if reading my mind, Endi looked at me and said, “Do you pray?”

I gave her a funny look. “I thought you were a nonbeliever.”

“Well, I’ve got problems with religion. But I do pray; I find it really helps.”

“Yeah maybe,” I said. “I’m just not that good at it. It’s like I believe in a higher power but as soon as I start, I picture Him saying, ‘Oh, not this schmuck again.’ ”

She shook her head and repressed a smile. “I do not believe in a god that wants you to be invisible.” Then: “Actually, you sound a little like how I feel onstage.”

Just then, to my happy surprise, Jensen the entertainment director showed up, guitar case in hand. He still had the faint crease of pancake makeup that hadn’t quite washed off and explained that he just happened to be doing a show for children in the hospital when he heard the news.

I said, “This is my friend Endi.” She and I exchanged an awkward glance. “Jensen’s the entertainer at the nursing home.”

He said, “You guys been waiting long?”

“We just got here,” Endi said.

“How’s Charles doing?”

“We rode over in the ambulance. He was pretty out of it.”

“Wow,” Jensen said. “I’m glad you were with him.” Then, to Endi, he said, “Elkaim’s crazy about Adam.”

I said, “Endi here’s a singer just like you.”

“No kidding?”

She shook her head in protest. “Just for fun.”

“No, no, she did an amateur show over in Venice last week—rocked the house.”

Candy Crush lady raised her head from her cell phone to glare at us.

Jensen said, “You guys wanna go downstairs and grab a coffee?”

“Good idea,” I said. “Looks like it could be a while.”

We rode the elevator down to the windowless café, got coffees, and found a little plastic booth. Looking out over the fluorescent-lit cafeteria, Endi said, “I really hate hospitals. When I was eighteen, I lived through my father’s heart attack.”

“Did he make it through?” Jensen asked.

“Yeah, sorta. I mean, he survived. But we thought it would scare him into relaxing a little. Instead, as soon as he returned to work, he got into this long-standing feud and almost lost his tenure. I mean, you’d think at his age he’d want to avoid stupid petty conflicts but…” She shrugged.

“That’s not how it works,” Jensen said sympathetically. “The older they get, the less they back down.”

“So true,” I said. “My uncle was very stubborn toward the end and…we had a falling out. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been trying to help Elkaim a little.”

“You mean,” Jensen said, “like…you’re trying to get some peace about feuding with your uncle by…helping his friend?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know it sounds crazy.”

“Not crazy at all,” Jensen said. “But it is a trip; it’s almost like…the whole purpose of life is really to just understand our parents or parent-figures or whatever.”

“You think?” Endi said.

“Speaking for myself?” Jensen stopped to consider—he was older than us by more than a few years, and I got the impression something paternal in him wanted to set us on the right path. “Yeah, definitely. Man, I thought my dad was larger-than-life. Only later did I figure out he was really just larger-than-life to me. My dad did Korea—he was convinced some divine force had seen him through battle.”

“What did he do when he came home?” Endi said.

“My dad? He tried to make it as an actor. He had the looks and plenty of charm.”

“Did he get work?”