我草草浏览着眼前这些CT片子，诊断结果显而易见：肺上布满了数不清的肿瘤，脊柱变形，一整片肺叶被侵蚀。这是癌症，而且已经扩散得很厉害了。我是一名神经外科住院医生，这是我接受培训的最后一年。过去六年来，我已经看过几十套这样的片子，每次都怀着微茫的希望，想帮患者找到某种可能有效的疗法。但眼前这套片子不同：患者是我自己。
I flipped through the CT scan images, the diagnosis obvious: the lungs were matted with innumerable tumors, the spine deformed, a full lobe of the liver obliterated. Cancer, widely disseminated. I was a neurosurgical resident entering my final year of training. Over the last six years, I’d examined scores of such scans, on the off chance that some procedure might benefit the patient. But this scan was different: it was my own.

我身上穿的不是防辐射的工作服，也不是手术服或白大褂。我穿着一身病服，和一根输液管“血脉相连”。护士把电脑留在我病房里了。我和妻子露西一起看着上面的片子。她是一名内科医生，现在就守在我身边。我一个断层一个断层地又看了一遍：肺窗、骨窗、肝窗，从上到下，从左到右，再从前到后，这是培训的“标准动作”，好像我能有什么意外发现，能改变诊断结果。
I wasn’t in the radiology suite, wearing my scrubs and white coat. I was dressed in a patient’s gown, tethered to an IV pole, using the computer the nurse had left in my hospital room, with my wife, Lucy, an internist, at my side. I went through each sequence again: the lung window, the bone window, the liver window, scrolling from top to bottom, then left to right, then front to back, just as I had been trained to do, as if I might find something that would change the diagnosis.

我和露西一起躺在病床上。
We lay together on the hospital bed.

她轻声开了口，像是在念台词：“你觉得有没有可能，是别的病？”
Lucy, quietly, as if reading from a script: “Do you think there’s any possibility that it’s something else?”

“没有。”我说。
“No,” I said.

我们紧紧拥抱着彼此，就像年轻的情侣。过去这一年，我俩都怀疑过我得了癌症，但一直拒绝相信，甚至都没聊过这件事。
We held each other tightly, like young lovers. In the past year we’d both suspected, but refused to believe, or even discuss, that a cancer was growing inside me.