You Are a Blessing

It's been 3 years since we knew its name: “non–small-cell lung cancer with mets to the bone and pleura.” But nothing at all had changed during this time, and we were barely aware that “it” was there. After all, you were still at every clinic every day, for your patients needed you, and chemotherapy could just be scheduled around your clinics.

I don't know why I finished early that day; after all, I was a Veterans Affairs medicine attending, it was July, and I rarely, if ever, got back to the university during the day. But that day I did, and that's when I found you—passed out over your charts. “No cells,” they said. You said that they could just change the chemotherapy … …