这到底是胜利，还是落败？
Was this a victory or a defeat?
我开始期盼和艾玛见面。在她的诊室里，能有种找回自我的感觉，至少是某一个自我。走出她的诊室，我就又不知道自己是谁了。我没有工作，过去的那一个自己，那个神经外科医生，那个科学家，那个相对来说眼前有一片光明坦途的年轻人，仿佛迷失在了某个地方。在家里，我虚弱疲惫，也不是露西的好丈夫。如果我的人生是由很多句子组成的，那我已经从每个句子的主语，变成了直接的宾语。十四世纪的哲学专著中，“病人（patient）”这个词的意思就是“一个动作的对象”，这就是我现在的感觉。作为医生的时候，我是动作的发出者，动作的原因，但作为病人，我仅仅是某个事件发生的对象。然而，一进艾玛的诊室，露西和我就能轻松自在地开玩笑，你一言我一语地说着医学术语，敞开聊我们的希望与梦想，试着制订下一步的计划。已经两个月了，对于我生命还剩多久的预言，艾玛仍然语焉不详。而且我无论说起什么相关的数据，她都断然制止，提醒我好好注重自己的价值。尽管我对此略有不满，但至少在她这儿，我感觉自己是个人，活生生的人，不仅仅是一个“热力学第二定律”（一切的热量都是要衰落，减退……之类的）的例子。
I began to look forward to my meetings with Emma. In her office, I felt like myself, like a self. Outside her office, I no longer knew who I was. Because I wasn’t working, I didn’t feel like myself, a neurosurgeon, a scientist—a young man, relatively speaking, with a bright future spread before him. Debilitated, at home, I feared I wasn’t much of a husband for Lucy. I had passed from the subject to the direct object of every sentence of my life. In fourteenthcentury philosophy, the word patient simply meant “the object of an action,” and I felt like one. As a doctor, I was an agent, a cause; as a patient, I was merely something to which things happened. But in Emma’s office, Lucy and I could joke, trade doctor lingo, talk freely about our hopes and dreams, try to assemble a plan to move forward. Two months in, Emma remained vague about any prognostication, and every statistic I cited she rebuffed with a reminder to focus on my values. Though I felt dissatisfied, at least I felt like somebody, a person, rather than a thing exemplifying the second law of thermodynamics (all order tends toward entropy, decay, etc.).
面对死亡，很多决定都显得迫在眉睫，没有退路，容不得一点优柔寡断。对于露西和我来说，所有决定中最紧迫的是：我们该不该要个孩子？就算我的住院医生生涯快结束时我俩的婚姻关系有点紧张，但我们彼此一直是非常相爱的。我们的关系仍然非常深厚，我们分享生命中最重要的东西，也携手成长。如果人与人之间的关联性是人生意义的基石，那么生儿育女就为这个意义增添了新的维度。要孩子是我们一直渴望的事情，而现在我们仍然被这种本能驱使着，想为家中的餐桌再添一把椅子。
Flush in the face of mortality, many decisions became compressed, urgent and unreceding. Foremost among them for us: Should Lucy and I have a child? Even if our marriage had been strained toward the end of my residency, we had always remained very much in love. Our relationship was still deep in meaning, a shared and evolving vocabulary about what mattered. If human relationality formed the bedrock of meaning, it seemed to us that rearing children added another dimension to that meaning. It had been something we’d always wanted, and we were both impelled by the instinct to do it still, to add another chair to our family’s table.
我们俩都渴望为人父母，同时又极力为对方着想。露西当然希望我还能多活几年，但也很理解我预后的情况，觉得应该由我来选择余生是否想当爸爸。
Both of us yearning to be parents, we each thought of the other. Lucy hoped I had years left, but understanding my prognosis, she felt that the choice—whether to spend my remaining time as a father—should be mine.
“你最害怕，或者最伤心的是什么？”一天晚上，我们躺在床上，她问我。
“What are you most afraid or sad about?” she asked me one night as we were lying in bed.
“离开你。”我告诉她。
“Leaving you,” I told her.
我知道，一个孩子能给整个家带来欢声笑语。我根本不忍心去想，等我撒手人寰后，露西既无丈夫又无孩子陪伴的样子。但我坚持，最终的决定必须由她来做：毕竟，她很有可能需要独自抚养这个孩子；随着我病情的恶化，她可能还要同时照顾我们俩。
I knew a child would bring joy to the whole family, and I couldn’t bear to picture Lucy husbandless and childless after I died, but I was adamant that the decision ultimately be hers: she would likely have to raise the child on her own after all, and to care for both of us as my illness progressed.
“生了孩子，会不会影响我们在一起的时光？”她问，“你不觉得，向自己的孩子告别，会死得更痛苦？”
“Will having a newborn distract from the time we have together?” she asked. “Don’t you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?”
“如果真的是这样，那不是很好吗？”我说。露西和我都觉得，生活绝不是要一味地躲避痛苦。
“Wouldn’t it be great if it did?” I said. Lucy and I both felt that life wasn’t about avoiding suffering.
