The In-Between: Unforgettable Encounters During Life's Final Moments

Babette is Chris’s mother; her journey as a terminally ill patient constitutes a minor arc spanning the otherwise episodic chapters. Babette is smart, stubborn, and quick-witted even as her body deteriorates. She chooses the song “Good Riddance” by Green Day for the mother/son dance at Chris and Vlahos’s wedding. This song, which stresses gratitude even for things that seem painful or wrong, gives insight into Babette’s philosophy on life.

When first dating Chris, Vlahos soon grew close to Babette, grateful for the ready acceptance she offered. Vlahos therefore struggles when Babette is diagnosed with brain cancer. Though she lives years longer than expected, her sickness looms over the family because they know she will eventually die but have no way of predicting when. Furthermore, where Vlahos usually meets patients in their final weeks or months, she has long known Babette as the capable nurse she was rather than the frail person cancer has made her into.

Babette is likewise the only patient whom the reader knows throughout much of the book. For both Vlahos and the reader, Babette’s death therefore flips the script; for the first time, Vlahos is the loved one rather than the nurse. The experience challenges Vlahos to come to terms with the fact that she cannot control things. Ultimately, Babette’s role in Vlahos’s life communicates the same lesson as her song choice at the wedding: that everything happens for a reason.

Steve is the hospice’s chaplain, so his role is to offer spiritual and emotional guidance to patients and their loved ones. He is an older man and has been in the role for more than 40 years but manages to care deeply about every person he encounters without burning out. Though the work rarely shows Steve working with patients, he is present as a figure who blurs the lines between personal and professional in Vlahos’s life, offering her the same kind of wisdom and advice he might give to patients and their families. Vlahos reveals nothing about Steve’s personal life except that he loves fishing, but somehow every interaction with Steve seems personal. He is a beacon of what really matters as Vlahos struggles to navigate morality and her own emotions, and he officiates Vlahos and Chris’s wedding, ushering them into their marriage with this thoughtful, caring perspective.

Steve is thoughtful but pushes when he deems necessary. He approaches Vlahos about Babette’s care, mentions and then nudges her toward therapy, and ensures someone covers her shift the day after Lisa’s suicide so that he can talk deeply with Vlahos, reminding her of all the good work she has done. When he senses that he is needed, he rises to the occasion.