Palo Alto, California – Whitney Dafoe’s day begins at 2:30pm. His father, Ron Davis, peeks through the keyhole into the 37-year-old’s room. Is he awake?
ABSOLUTELY NO ENTRY is scrawled in red on a handmade sign pinned to the door below a picture of the Dalai Lama. Davis has rushed home from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, to take the afternoon shift. When Whitney raises his left hand, fingers clenched to a fist, that’s Davis’s cue. Whitney is ready for his dad to change his urinal, put ice on his aching belly, and refill the IV-drip.