The hood in my bare hands feels slightly slick. So, this one, the one I’m holding, has been used to end someone’s life? I ask. Egbert tells me it has surely been used at least once, and maybe several times, and the same could be said for most of the other 17 hoods in the garbage bag.

“Do you wash them?” I ask.

Egbert laughs.

“Nobody’s ever asked me that,” he says.

He considers this for a moment.

“If a person is going to die, what do they care?” he says. “They’re not going to get infected.”

He says patients lose consciousness within 30 to 60 seconds of pulling the hoods over their faces and are usually dead within five to 10 minutes. “They turn blue or bluish — we can say gray,” Egbert says. “After they’re unconscious, their muscles start twitching. That’s very upsetting to relatives. Some think they’re trying to wrench the bag off.”