He wakes at a quarter past three every night. Once awake he cannot get back off, and lies there until five and then dozes.
He looked it up. The hour of the tiger, which belongs to the lung; waking then is supposed to mean something is wrong with the lungs.
He had a scan done. His lungs are clean. The doctor said better than most men his age.
So he started recording it. A note on his phone when he woke, the hour and the minute.
Two years and seven months. Never more than a minute out.
One night he woke at ten past four and found two missed calls.
His mother had died at a quarter past three.
He scrolled back to the first entry. The nineteenth of March, two years and seven months earlier. He dug out her hospital file. The nineteenth of March was the day she was first admitted.
The clock on the bedside table came from her room. It is the old sort and has to be wound.
He stopped winding it. It ran down over two days.
On the third morning he woke and looked at it out of habit.
A quarter past three.
He picked it up and held it to his ear. It is going. He opened the back. The spring is slack, wound all the way down.