Chapter 1 Pages 1-18 Summary

George Washington Crosby is lying in a hospital bed inside of his own house dying. He is hallucinating as he is surrounded by his family. He built and fixed his house all his life, so when he sits up in bed requesting plaster, his family just agrees to get it for him.

While his family is in the kitchen preparing their lunch, George thinks about what it would like if the house were to collapse. He talks about the wires of the house looking like veins. In George's mind, because his illness is causing hallucinations, he is sitting in the wreckage of the collapsed house. As he sits among the ruins that include family photos, old forgotten board games and the insulation that one of his grandsons had tacked up at one time, George thinks about the different stages...