The Laying On of Hands

Excerpt

I had been dreading the call all day. I was in the library when my pager sounded and, as I walked to the wall phone, I had an ominous premonition. It was my brother. "They found abnormal lymph tissue on the chest x-ray," he said. "What does it mean?" Struck with an upwelling of nausea, I sagged against the wall. Healthy, active, he had gone for the x-ray at my urging, after complaining of fevers and strange chest pains for over a month. "Well, it could be lots of different things . . . ," I began, reassuring him; but