Solomon knew the plexiglass was important, but it pained him. His music bounced back to him, clawed its way desperately up and over the wall, falling flat over the sides of his enclosure. Between the upright’s muddy tone and its suffocated soundwaves, even the delicate Für Elise sounded like funhouse music.

Worse yet, he felt solitary behind the plastic. While he had few friends, he was not a loner, and the disconnection from his audience made him lightheaded with anxiety. Doctors and nurses rolled stretchers past him on their way to the trucks, banging into the plexiglass and shaking the little fishbowl of an enclosure, their eyes sometimes brimming with tears, sometimes bleary or blank above their masks. When their gaze met his, he felt a kinship: they were all caught in a type of cage, they were alive together, yet each was profoundly alone.

Around that time, the other two pianists went the way of Mack, so Solomon was the only musician left on the payroll of Special Events. Sometimes Linda came by to listen to him play. She brought a folding chair down in the elevator with her, and she sat with her elbows on her thighs and her chin in her palms. Some days she removed her glasses and wept openly, others she acted like nothing was happening, like she was at Lincoln Center and the banging of the stretchers was nothing but a bunch of loudmouths taking their seats after intermission. Sometimes she brought a boy with her—her grandson, she said—and they both unfolded chairs and sat listening, two birds on a branch.

Despite the fog of grief and fear that had seized the hospital, or perhaps because of it, Solomon was at his most musical during that time. He had often wondered whether he felt too much, as when the sight of the moon (the MOON!) moved him to tears. The great hunk of rock and metal glowed with such outrageous beauty, it made him tremble from head to toe. But the enormous emotions that possessed him ad nauseum—inchoate and disallowed as they were—seemed to be acceptable when channeled into music. Not everywhere, because of the complete abandon with which he played, but certainly here at Mercy. The hospital existed as he did, with great crescendos and decrescendos of sorrow, hope and devastation. So while his head thrummed with fear and loneliness, he did not look away. He did not even know how. His music grew richer, more nuanced.