In the home, residents who decline cognitively or physically are moved from the ground floor to the top floor, where they sit silent and unattended as 'assisted' cases. The fear of being sent upstairs organizes daily life among the still-lucid residents, and Emile's friend Miguel schemes to keep Emile functional enough to avoid it.
Miguel runs minor scams on other residents, like charging a confused woman who believes she is at a train station for an imaginary train ticket, yet frames these as kindnesses that let people inhabit their delusions painlessly. The deception sustains the deceived person's internal world rather than correcting it.
As Emile loses short-term memory, repeated daily structure and the physical presence of companions hold his sense of self together where recollection cannot. Identity is shown to persist through habituated relationship and environment even after autobiographical continuity breaks down.