I got the call at about 3:30 in the afternoon. My dear friend Carl said, 'Please stay calm. I have to tell you something,' and I knew it was bad. He told me, 'Ian has been in a bad accident.' Where? I said. He said the hospital and I ran out of my little brownstone on Beacon Hill all the way down the hill and rushed through the doors of the General, and rushed through the pistachio and white corridors until I found his room. He looked so fragile, so broken. All I wanted was to take his pain away. God, I pleaded, why couldn't it be me, and this was not just something I thought, it is something I meant and still mean. I excused myself to his little bathroom and sobbed. But I did not cry in front of him. I stayed with him. I fell asleep over the vent on the big hospital windowsill. A sympathetic nurse brought me a blanket. I kept vigil. But it was too much to handle, so all these years later, now that I am the one - now that I am the patient, I am sorry for the pain it causes them, but selfishly, I am glad it was I who got ill. Because I am so selfish that I know I cannot handle their illness. That I have lived and I have learned and know that I cannot suffer a loss such as this. That I want to be the one to die first, just so I don't have to grieve and be left alone. Don't abandon me, I want to scream, Don't you dare. Let me go first.

My last surgery, just a few months ago, I spent several days in the hospital with a Demerol drip hooked up to my vein. My husband visited every day and stayed for long hours but all I could do was start fights. Maybe I pushed him away because I was afraid he was losing me anyway. Maybe I pushed him away because last time, he went away and turned to another woman. That if he turns away this time, at least it would be me, not cancer or him, that made the decision.

David came by very late the night of my surgery. He was still wearing his scrubs and a patterned head wrap. I guess these patterned wraps are all the rage with surgeons. I've seen them on TV, on ER. I didn't know real doctors wore them, but they do. He came in just after I had received another injection of some or other opiate. He sat on my bed and pulled back the sheet to look at my leg. It went well, he said. We won't know if it was successful for a while, but it went well. He said, I cleaned it out (whatever that means). It did hurt. Even with all of the drugs, it hurt like hell, like a slow and steady burn that comes up on you and you can't take your hand out of the fire. By that night, we had known each other for four years. He had treated me for every melanoma, large and small. He placed his hand on my knee-cap and gently stroked it. And although the leg hurt, the contrast of his soft touch as he was checking the wound felt so good that it was almost sexual. It was definitely sensual. And then Eureka! It was at that late date that I truly realized the very critical role he had played in my life.