露西到机场接我。但一直等回了家，我才把坏消息告诉她。我们坐在沙发上。我开口对她一说，她就知道了。她把头靠在我肩上，我们之间的距离都消失了。
Lucy picked me up from the airport, but I waited until we were home to tell her. We sat on the couch, and when I told her, she knew. She leaned her head on my shoulder, and the distance between us vanished.

“我需要你。”我轻声低语。
“I need you,” I whispered.

“我永远不会离开你。”她说。
“I will never leave you,” she said.

我们给一个好朋友打了电话，请他收治我。他是医院的神经外科主治医生。我拿到了所有病人都必须戴的塑料手环，穿上熟悉的浅蓝色病号服，走过那些我都叫得出名字的护士，住进了一间病房——多年来，我在这里见过成百上千个病人。正是在这间病房里，我坐在病人身边，解释我最终的诊断和复杂的手术；正是在这间病房里，我祝贺病人痊愈，见证他们回归正常生活的幸福；正是在这间病房里，我宣布病人死亡。我曾在椅子上坐过，我曾在水槽里洗过手，我曾在通知板上写下过潦草的说明，我曾把日历翻到新的一页。甚至，在完全筋疲力尽时，我还曾经渴望过，可以躺在这床上好好睡一觉。
We called a close friend, one of the attending neurosurgeons at the hospital, and asked him to admit me.I received the plastic arm bracelet all patients wear, put on the familiar light blue hospital gown, walked past the nurses I knew by name, and was checked in to a room—the same room where I had seen hundreds of patients over the years. In this room, I had sat with patients and explained terminal diagnoses and complex operations; in this room, I had congratulated patients on being cured of a disease and seen their happiness at being returned to their lives; in this room, I had pronounced patients dead. I had sat in the chairs, washed my hands in the sink, scrawled instructions on the marker board, changed the calendar. I had even, in moments of utter exhaustion, longed to lie down in this bed and sleep.

现在，我就躺在这床上，很清醒。
Now I lay there, wide awake.

一个我不认识的年轻护士在门口探进头来。
A young nurse, one I hadn’t met, poked her head in.

“医生马上就到。”
“The doctor will be in soon.”

于是乎，我想象中的未来，就要实现的未来，那么多年奋斗即将迎来的人生巅峰，都随着这句话消失了。
And with that, the future I had imagined, the one just about to be realized, the culmination of decades of striving, evaporated.