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...”