The novelist Hache Carrillo was admitted to a hospital in Washington, D.C., in April, 2020. He was fifty-nine years old, and had spent the previous several months receiving radiation treatment for prostate cancer. The first wave of the pandemic was cresting and a hospital was not a place anyone wanted to be. For two weeks, he and his husband, Dennis vanEngelsdorp, held out at their home, in Berwyn Heights, a Maryland suburb. VanEngelsdorp recalls this as “a sacred time” of chatting intimately and holding hands. They suspected that Carrillo’s medication was causing him to suffer seizures and dehydration, and after he collapsed in the shower the couple headed for the E.R.
