Visitors arrived on a daily basis. They wanted to look at me, poke at me a little. “How you doing, champ?” they’d ask, sometimes grabbing my foot like it was a phone they were about to answer. “You feeling better? You doing OK now? We were worried sick about you. You look great! Really, you do. You gave us quite a scare there, pal. Don’t do that again, got it?” Then they’d present an offering of some kind which, nine out of 10 times, consisted of reading material. Paperbacks, hardcovers, magazines, newspapers—if you could read it, the visitors brought it to me. An ex-girlfriend brought…