First lines of the novel that today's barrage of tragic news left me too grief-stricken to write today:

”He arose from his seat in the waiting room — a place near the window which, after all these months, he'd actually come to think of as his own. The sliding doors whooshed open quickly, silently, and his eyes struggled against the blinding noonlight.

The young doctor's words — and the uncomfortable, bad-news grimace he hadn't yet perfected — still echoed, or rippled, like shockwaves, like... like...

He had always believed that he would look back on the chapter called 'Ronnie's Osteosarcoma' and regard it as the toughest chapter of his life. Now, standing at the edge of a parking lot while a nearby Buick loudly pulsed its false alarm, he realized it was merely the prologue."

— Damien Willis
October 2, 2017