When the day finally came to vacate the bookshop, Martin had had insomnia for three nights in a row. Arash, the softly-spoken commerce student who’d helped him sell the last of the stock, did most of the work disassembling the removable fixtures. The new occupants had agreed to deal with the remaining shelving when they remodelled; they’d get to sell the wood as scrap as compensation for the inconvenience of having to smash the joints apart with sledgehammers.

Just before noon, the buyer for the print-on-demand machine dropped in and took it away. There was nothing left now but empty shelves and a pile of mystifying, Ikea-like components that might have been the parts for anything from a bedroom suite to a set of kitchen benches. Arash had a friend with a small truck coming by in the afternoon to take them to a recycling centre.

The office computer sat on the floor. Martin turned to Arash. ‘Do you want that? It’s only two years old. I don’t have time to sell it myself.’ His voice sounded hollow in the carpetless space. He kept seeing Mahnoosh standing beside him in the same empty room twelve years before.

Arash did ta’arof and refused three times, but finally agreed. Martin shook his hand.

‘Thanks for all your help. Especially these last two weeks.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘I’d better call a taxi.’ Martin wanted to grab an hour or two of sleep before he picked up Javeed. As he pulled his notepad out of his pocket, his hand started shaking and the thing ended up on the floor. ‘Jesus!’

Arash bent down and picked up the notepad. He said, ‘Do you want me to get a taxi?’

Martin’s right hand was still flapping uncontrollably. He grabbed hold of it, feeling like Dr Strangelove, but then the left hand joined in too.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘can you do that for me?’

‘I can get one on the street,’ Arash suggested, moving towards the door.

‘I’d prefer a real one, if it’s not too much trouble.’

Arash made the call. Martin’s hands finally stopped moving of their own accord, but his legs felt unsteady; he walked over to the wall and sat down on the floor. Dr Jobrani had given him a list of warning symptoms for declining liver function. Wrist tremors were near the top of the list.

Arash returned the notepad and hovered anxiously. Martin said, ‘It’s okay, I’m not having a heart attack.’

His hands were steady now. He made a call himself. ‘Omar jan, I’m sorry, but is there any way you can pick up Javeed from school?’

‘Of course. I’ll send Farshid.’ Omar paused. ‘What’s happening?’

Martin said, ‘I need to go to the hospital. Can you tell Javeed there’s nothing to worry about?’

‘I’ll tell him. Do you want me to bring him there later?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ll give you a call when I’ve seen a doctor.’

‘Okay.’

There was an awkward silence. ‘That’s my taxi now,’ Martin lied. ‘Khoda hafez.’

‘Khoda hafez.’

Arash was looking worried. ‘Should I call an ambulance?’

‘No.’ Martin made a brief call to Dr Jobrani’s message service, describing his symptoms and saying he was coming in straight away.

He was beginning to feel lightheaded. The taxi arrived, and Arash helped him in. The driver played something loud and ugly on his music system, but Martin didn’t have the energy to complain, and after a while his attention was wandering so much that he didn’t really care.

He found himself sitting in a chair in the emergency waiting room, with no memory of having entered the building. When he turned and looked around, the woman behind him frowned disapprovingly, as if she suspected he was in some kind of self-inflicted drug haze. He drifted off again, then realised someone was examining him in a different room.

‘Hey! Hey!’ The doctor, a young man Martin had never seen before, was patting his cheek gently. ‘Can you try to focus, Mr Seymour? Have you been taking any drugs not recorded on your file? Tranquillisers? Sleeping pills?’

‘No.’ Martin looked around the room. ‘I don’t know how I got here.’

‘I think you have some swelling,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m going to get you scanned as soon as possible.’

‘Swelling in my liver?’

‘In your brain. Ammonia in your blood can cause some types of brain cells to enlarge.’

‘I didn’t drink ammonia,’ Martin protested. Ammonia in the blood? It sounded like something only an alien could have. ‘Am I dying?’ He was too spaced out to feel much fear at the prospect, but how could he say good-bye to Javeed in this state?

The doctor squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. ‘You’re not dying, you’re just disoriented. We’ll have you fixed up in no time.’

A nurse wearing an olive headscarf held a paper cup of water to his lips. Afternoon sunlight reflected into his eyes from something glinting on the far side of the room.

‘Huh?’ he said.

‘Wait a second.’ The nurse rearranged his pillows and tried again. This time water entered his mouth. He could feel the sunlight on his cheek now. He had a line in his arm. It was nice of her to give him fluids by mouth when he had a line in his arm.

Martin slept fitfully. When he woke, he could see the ward reflected in a window, hiding the darkness outside. He felt terrible, but he felt whole again. Everything since the bookshop seemed unreal; he knew the gist of what had happened, but he wasn’t sure he’d actually been present for any of it.

A nurse strode past his bed. ‘Excuse me? Can I make a phone call, please?’ he asked her. As he spoke, the taste in his mouth and the smell of his breath made him nauseous. His belongings were probably in the drawer beside the bed, but he didn’t trust himself to get to them unaided.

‘It’s two in the morning,’ she said, approaching.

Martin covered his mouth with one hand, trying to spare her from his nuclear halitosis. ‘I have to tell people where I am.’

The nurse waved her notepad at his bracelet to access his records. ‘Your designated contact, Mr Omar Rezaee, was informed of your admission earlier this evening.’

‘Oh. Thank you.’

When she’d left, Martin thought this over for a while and decided it wasn’t enough. He swung his legs out of the bed and managed to open the drawer without pulling the intravenous line from his arm.

‘I’m fine, Omar jan,’ he whispered into his notepad. ‘Tell Javeed I’m fine. I’ll call soon.’ He had the machine send his words as a text message. Then he climbed back into bed and sank into a dreamless sleep.

In the morning, Dr Jobrani came to see him. Martin had to bite his tongue during the examination; he was tired of strangers touching his body, however respectfully, however necessary it was.

‘So do you want the transplant now?’ Jobrani inquired tartly. ‘Or have you decided to be the first human being who tries to live without the urea cycle?’

‘I want three more days,’ Martin said.

Jobrani snorted. ‘You’ll be waiting more than three days for a theatre. Probably ten.’

‘I want three days out of the hospital.’

Jobrani collapsed his stethoscope into an oversized pen with a Pfizer logo and slipped it into his pocket. ‘I want world peace and a holiday in Tahiti.’

‘I’ll buy you a ticket for the replica in Dubai. Two days. Please, it’s important.’

Jobrani was unmoved. ‘What do you want to do? Finish writing your memoirs?’

‘Something like that.’ More like checking the proofs. ‘What are my chances of surviving the transplant?’

‘Now?’ Jobrani thought about it. ‘Fifty-fifty.’

Martin said, ‘And there’s nothing you can do to give me a few days out of here that won’t involve the same level of risk?’

‘Nothing I can justify medically.’

‘I’ll pay the full cost,’ Martin said. ‘You won’t have to lie to my insurance company.’

‘There’s an implant we could put in with keyhole surgery,’ Jobrani conceded reluctantly. ‘No general anaesthetic. We might still nick a vein and kill you, but probably not.’