Many years ago my older sister was diagnosed with a virulent strain of cancer. Astonishingly, she survived that wicked malady almost twenty years before it eventually caught up to her. The final days of her life were spent in a Mayo Clinic hospital bed, and though we had never been close we shared many childhood memories, and so I spent many of those last days in a bumbling attempt to comfort her. During that deathwatch I must have absorbed some of the oppressive ambience of the hospital, its acrid odors, perpetual noisy bustle, occasional poignant sights, for many years after that, after my sister was long gone, when I sat down to write what would become Treasure Coast, those sensory... more
