Summary:

Alex is an antisocial shut-in, who works at the hospital handing out food to patients. The only people he really talks to are his mother and a woman named Amy who is a nurse at the hospital. Later on, Alex's mother falls ill and is put in intensive care at the hospital. Alex is scared and paranoid about his mother worrying about her health. Until he decides to take his frustrations out on the strange man. there he finds out the man Is death and Alex is extremely terrified. Alex later finds out His mother is dead and it sends him into a state of depression. Amy tries to comfort Alex. Alex then tries to confront Death and demands to know where his mother had gone. Death replies with the simple answer of I don't know. Alex is baffled by this answer and calls death cruel and a hypocrite. The book ends with Alex playing death in a final chess game where death lets Alex win and death finally dies.