Perhaps Jake will surrender to his synthetic compulsions and die a death more permanent than the setting of the sun. But if Jake finds even the smallest remnant of who he used to be, if he peels away the pale flesh to reveal the life underneath, then maybe he will change. Maybe he will raise himself up from the dead.

Maybe months or years from now you or I will see him glowing against the evening sun. Maybe then he will be smiling. He will run towards us and shake our hands until we can’t feel our fingers. He will talk endlessly of things that matter to him with an energy that floods his face with color. He will laugh, and it will be the full, loud, happy laugh of so long ago. Then we will marvel to ourselves as to how something so little, something as seemingly insignificant as a pill could have hidden him from us for so long. Maybe on that day we will find Jake again, but only after he has found himself.