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.All the way home I wondered what the hell I had eaten, figuring that it had to be food poisoning.I'd had it one time in college, and this felt very similar, as far as I could remember.Ev kept glancing at me, worry on her pretty face, while Carlie sat in the back and read Ranger Rick's Nature Magazine.When we got home I felt better, but Ev insisted I call a doctor.I told her there was no point, that it was probably something I ate.But Ev believes in safety first.If you've got a symptom, no matter how small, Ev thinks you should plague your doctor with it, that it's worth a twenty-five dollar fee for the peace of mind that it's just a friendly little lump, and not cancer of the epiglottis.I'm just the opposite.I always figured that if something was wrong with me, I'd know.Stupid.You never know.I told her I'd wait through the weekend and see how I felt, that I was certain the sick feeling would go away.But as I lay awake in bed that night, I thought about the past week, ever since I had come back from New York.I'd felt more tired than usual, and even now I felt as if I couldn't catch my breath, as if something were pressing on my chest far more heavily than the sheet and single light blanket that were there.I didn't feel much better Sunday, and Monday morning I called one of the doctors at LanCo Medical Associates, and was able to get an appointment for that afternoon.He asked me a few questions, which I answered truthfully, then he took a sample of blood from my finger.He left me alone in the examination room for several minutes, and when he came back he told me that it looked as though I might be anemic.Nothing to worry about, he said, but he wanted to get me into the hospital as soon as I could for some tests.At that moment something happened.All the fear of death and disease of which I had never before been aware came rushing to the front of my mind, and I knew, just from the fact that I was going into the hospital for tests, that I was doomed, that I had something they would never cure, and that I was going to die.It was an illogical conclusion to draw—both my parents were alive and healthy as horses, and my grandparents, all of whom were dead, had not succumbed until their mid-seventies or later.My paternal grandmother had in fact lived until she was ninety-two, and I always felt she had died out of boredom, of a wish to be done with living and see what was next.I had seldom been sick, and the only time I had been in a hospital was when I had my tonsils out back in 1956.So to come up with the morbid idea that this was the beginning of the end was totally irrational, even insane.Nonetheless I felt it.Perhaps I was terrified, perhaps I was psychic.I told the doctor that I wouldn't be able to enter the hospital for a week or so, that I had a job that couldn't wait, and would early next week be all right?He pursed his lips and frowned until his eyebrows touched, and said he supposed it would be all right.I remember thinking, Jesus, I am going to die.But I didn't want to go to the hospital.I guess I thought that once I went in, I could never get out again.I did have a job, that much was true.I had to go to Philadelphia to testify in a divorce trial, and then it was off to New York again at the end of the week to do a quick and dirty background check on a young actor for some nervous prospective in-laws.I could have put that one off—the wedding wasn't until June—but I didn't want to.The doctor reluctantly agreed that the following Monday would be sufficient, and gave me the expected benediction as I left: "Now don't worry about this, it's probably nothing."Yeah.Nothing.When Ev got home I told her that the doctor wanted me in for tests next Monday, so there was really no urgency.She's a bright woman, she didn't believe me."You stalled him, didn't you?" she asked me."A little.""Mac, you can't play games with this.""If he'd wanted me in right away he'd have said so.""Bullshit.He probably did."She kept at me for a while, then gave up when I told her I was ready, willing, and eager to go to the hospital the next Monday.That was as good as she was going to get, and she finally accepted it, though she didn't like it.In retrospect, I think that week was when our relationship began to deteriorate, and I frankly have no one but myself to blame.My mind wasn't on Ev or on Carlie.It was on sickness and possible death, and when you're thinking about those things you're not the most sparkling of companions.Although I was wrong, I sensed in Ev, mixed with her angry concern, some sort of pitying solicitude that set my teeth on edge.It seemed to me that she was already rehearsing for the worst, and sensing that attitude on her part only confirmed in me my own worst suspicions [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]