Alarmed by his near brush with death, David finally sees a physician, a man named Dr. Trias. After running tests, Dr. Trias informs David that he has an inoperable brain tumor and that he has no more than a year and a half to live. The symptoms, the doctor adds, will only increase. When David asks if he'll still be able to write, Dr. Trias says, "You won't even be able to think about writing" (114).

Faced with this grim prognosis, David decides to bury Ignatius B. Samson once and for all, refusing to write another word of his latest City of the Damned installment and tossing the existing pages into the fire. In an effort to placate David, his publishers Barrido and Escobillas’s offer to give him a nine-month sabbatical during which he will write his own novel under his own name, which they promise to publish.

Over the next nine months, David barely sleeps, writing Pedro's novel by day and his own novel by night. He learns from Pedro's assistant, Pep, that Cristina's father, Manuel, suffered a debilitating aneurysm and that Cristina is with him at a sanatorium north of Barcelona called Villa San Antonio.