The detainees on Manus Island began to fear the worst when Border Force officials made inquiries if anyone had contact details for the family of a young Sudanese refugee named Faysal Ishak Ahmed.
Their first thought was that similar requests for family contacts had been issued before the deaths of two other detainees, Reza Barati and Hamid Khazaei, were confirmed back in 2014.
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Mr Barati was murdered and scores of detainees were injured when chaos descended on the centre in February that year. Mr Khazaei died several months later, 13 days after presenting at the centre's medical clinic with an infected foot.
"It meant he is in a dangerous situation," was how Behrouz Boohani interpreted the call for contact details for the family of Mr Ahmed, who had been held at the centre for more than three years.
The previous day, Friday, Mr Ahmed, 27, had been air-lifted to Brisbane after what Australian Government officials describe as "a fall and a seizure" at the detention centre.
The statement of less than 100 words released by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection on Christmas Eve to confirm Mr Ahmed's death makes no reference to any pleas for medical attention for Mr Ahmed well before he apparently fainted in the Foxtrot compound and hit his head.
It notes that the department is not aware of any suspicious circumstances surrounding the death and expresses its sympathies to his family and friends.
But, according to Mr Boochani and other sources, more than 60 Sudanese refugees wrote to Border Force some days ago, saying that Mr Ahmed's condition was critical and pleading for him to receive urgent medical care.
"He was sick for more than six month and collapsed several times but IHMS (the medical provider)Â did not care about him," Mr Boochani says.
"Every day Faysal went to medical asking for help. They did not help him. A few days ago a nurse in IHMS told Faysal that he was fine and didn't need medical treatment. Now we know he has died."
The veracity of these assertions will be tested when the death is investigated in due course by the Queensland coroner, but three questions are raised by another death on Manus.
The first is whether he received adequate medical care in the months leading up to his death, and whether requests were made earlier by health professionals for him to be treated in Australia.
The second is whether Australian officials responded with appropriate speed in approving Mr Ahmed's transfer to Australia. These are the questions that dominated the coroner's inquiry into the death of Mr Khazaei.
The third transcends the details of the level of care afforded to Mr Ahmed: why, some nine months after Papua New Guinea's highest court ruled that the centre was unconstitutional, are almost 900 asylum seekers and refugees still there?
The hope is that the misery of those on Manus, like those on Nauru, will end soon, with those found to be refugees included in the resettlement deal with the United States. The sooner they have certainty that they will be able to rebuild their lives in a safe environment, the better.
But the deal came too late for Mr Ahmed, whose tragic passing is to be marked by another solemn gathering at the centre, this one on Christmas Day.