During his 40-year career as a bioethicist, Zaner has emphasized listening as the first duty of the ethicist and health care provider. He has written several books in which he tells poignant stories of patients and families he has encountered; there is no question that this is his finest work to date. Among Zaner's numerous memorable characters are Tom, a dialysis patient who finally reveals that his inability to work--encouraged by his overprotective mother--is the source of his hostility to treatment; Jim and Sue, young parents who must face the nightmare of turning off the ventilator for their dying baby; Mrs. Oland, whose family refuses to recognize her calm acceptance of her own death; and, in the final chapter, the author's mother, whose slow demise continues to haunt Zaner's professional and personal life. But this is no paean to bathos. These stories are filled with both pain and joy, of loneliness and hope. They are about real life, about what happens in hospital rooms--and beyond--when clay-footed people confront their mortality. It is the rarest of glimpses into the world of patients, their families, healers, and those who struggle, like Zaner, to understand.