原来，医生们也是需要希望的。
Doctors, it turns out, need hope, too.

见完艾玛回家的路上，露西的妈妈打电话说，他们已经往医院去了。露西要生了。（“一定要早点上腰麻。”我对她说。露西受的痛苦已经够多了。）爸爸用轮椅推我去了医院，我又回到了熟悉的地方。产房里支了一张简易床，我在上面躺下，盖了保暖袋和毯子，这样我骨瘦如柴的身体才不至于冷得发抖。接下来的两个小时，我目睹了露西和护士一起经历生产的过程。随着宫缩渐渐加剧，护士一直在报数让露西使劲：“一二三四五，六七八九十！”
On the way home from the appointment with Emma, Lucy’s mom called to say they were headed to the hospital. Lucy was in labor.(“Make sure you ask about the epidural early,” I told her. She had suffered enough.) I returned to the hospital, pushed by my father in a wheel-chair. I lay down on a cot in the delivery room, heat packs and blankets keeping my skeletal body from shivering. For the next two hours, I watched Lucy and the nurse go through the ritual of labor. As a contraction built up, the nurse counted off the pushing: “And a one two three four five six seven eight nine and a ten!”

露西转身，微笑着看我。“还以为我在打比赛呢！”她说。
Lucy turned to me, smiling. “It feels like I’m playing a sport!” she said.

我躺在小床上，用微笑回应她，看着她起伏的孕肚。露西和女儿的生活中，将会有很多缺失。如果我只能陪伴到现在这个份儿上，那就尽量陪伴吧。
I lay on the cot and smiled back, watching her belly rise. There would be so many absences in Lucy’s and my daughter’s life—if this was as present as I could be, then so be it.

午夜之后，护士把我叫醒。“快了。”她低语道。她抱起毯子，扶着我坐在露西身边的一张椅子上。产科医生已经来了，和我年纪差不多。宝宝的头露出来了。她看着我：“有件事可以肯定地告诉你：你女儿的头发和你一模一样，”她说，“而且很浓密呢。”我点点头，握住露西的手，和她一起经历这生产的最后时刻。接着，她最后使了把劲，七月四日凌晨两点十一分，她呱呱坠地，伊丽莎白·阿卡迪亚，昵称卡迪，我们几个月前就把名字想好了。
Sometime after midnight, the nurse nudged me awake. “It’s almost time,” she whispered. She gathered the blankets and helped me to a chair, next to Lucy. The obstetrician was already in the room, no older than I. She looked up at me as the baby was crowning. “I can tell you one thing: your daughter has hair exactly like yours,” she said. “And a lot of it.” I nodded, holding Lucy’s hand during the last moments of her labor. And then, with one final push, on July 4, at 2:11 a. m., there she was. Elizabeth Acadia—Cady; we had picked the name months before.

“能让她贴贴你的皮肤吗，爸爸？”护士问我。
“Can we put her on your skin, Papa?” the nurse asked me.

“不，我太——太凉了，”我上牙和下牙直打架，“但我很想抱抱她。”
“No, I’m too c-c-cold,” I said, my teeth chattering. “But I would love to hold her.”

她们用毯子把她裹好，递给我。我一只手臂感受着这新生命的重量，另一只手与露西十指紧扣，生命的无限可能在我们面前铺展开来。我体内的癌细胞在慢慢消亡，但也有可能重新生长。展望无限广阔的未来，我看到的不是寂静无人的空荡荒原，而是更简单纯粹的东西：一页我将继续书写的白纸。
They wrapped her in blankets and handed her to me. Feeling her weight in one arm, and gripping Lucy’s hand with the other, the possibilities of life emanated before us. The cancer cells in my body would still be dying, or they’d start growing again. Looking out over the expanse ahead I saw not an empty wasteland but something simpler: a blank page on which I would go on.

然而，家中却充满了色彩与活力。
Yet there is dynamism in our house.

日子一天天过去，卡迪像朵小花般慢慢绽放：第一次抓握，第一个微笑，第一声大笑。她的儿科医生定期用图表记录她的成长，在那些表明她逐渐长大的指标前画勾。她周身散发着一种崭新的光明。她坐在我膝上微笑，沉浸在我不成调的哼唱中，整个家似乎都被炽热的光照亮了。
Day to day, week to week, Cady blossoms: a first grasp, a first smile, a first laugh. Her pediatrician regularly records her growth on charts, tick marks indicating her progress over time. A brightening newness surrounds her. As she sits in my lap smiling, enthralled by my tuneless singing, an incandescence lights the room.

时间对于如今的我，就像一把“双刃剑”：每天，我都从上次复发中恢复一些，但又距离下次复发更近一些，当然，也离死亡更近一些。也许那一天比我估计的要晚，但肯定比我希望的早。我想，意识到这一点，大概会做出两种反应。最明显直接的反应应该是立即行动的冲动，“最充分地享受生活”，去旅行，去大快朵颐，去把握那些曾经忽略的梦想。然而，癌症的一个残酷之处，就是这种病不仅限制了你的时间，还限制了你的精力，极大地减少了你一天里能做的事情，就像一只疲惫的兔子在赛跑。不过，即便我有这个精力，我也更希望像一只乌龟，深思熟虑，稳步踏实地向前。有些时候，我只是单纯地在坚持而已。
Time for me is now double-edged: every day brings me further from the low of my last relapse but closer to the next recurrence—and, eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire. There are, I imagine, two responses to that realization. The most obvious might be an impulse to frantic activity: to “live life to its fullest,” to travel, to dine, to achieve a host of neglected ambitions. Part of the cruelty of cancer, though, is not only that it limits your time; it also limits your energy, vastly reducing the amount you can squeeze into a day. It is a tired hare who now races. And even if I had the energy, I prefer a more tortoise-like approach. I plod, I ponder. Some days, I simply persist.

如果一个人高速行动时，时间会膨胀，那要是几乎一动不动，时间会收缩吗？一定会的吧：现在，每一天似乎都缩短了很多。一天天过得千篇一律，时间似乎也静止了。英语中，“time”这个词的意思多种多样：“现在的时间是两点四十五”，“我这段时间过得不太好”。对于现在的我，与其说时间是时钟的嘀嗒作响，不如说是一种生存的状态。疲惫成为稳定的常态，反而有种豁然开朗的感觉。做医生的时候，在手术室全神贯注地治疗病人，对指针的走动也许的确没有感觉和概念，但从没觉得时间是毫无意义的。而现在，每天的一分一秒都变得毫无意义，每一天整体来看也好不到哪儿去。医学院的培训非常残酷无情，完全是着眼于未来的，一直都给人未知的满足。你会一直思考，五年后的自己在做什么。然而，现在的我，完全看不到五年后的自己在做什么。也许已经去世，也许没有。也许恢复了健康。也许在从事文学创作。我真的不知道。所以，花时间去思考未来似乎没什么用处，只要想想午饭吃什么就好了。
If time dilates when one moves at high speeds, does it contract when one moves barely at all? It must: the days have shortened considerably. With little to distinguish one day from the next, time has begun to feel static. In English, we use the word time in different ways: “The time is two forty-five” versus “I’m going through a tough time.” These days, time feels less like the ticking clock and more like a state of being. Languor settles in. There’s a feeling of openness. As a surgeon, focused on a patient in the OR, I might have found the position of the clock’s hands arbitrary, but I never thought them meaningless. Now the time of day means nothing, the day of the week scarcely more. Medical training is relentlessly futureoriented, all about delayed gratification; you’re always thinking about what you’ll be doing five years down the line. But now I don’t know what I’ll be doing five years down the line. I may be dead. I may not be. I may be healthy. I may be writing. I don’t know. And so it’s not all that useful to spend time thinking about the future—that is, beyond lunch.

说话时的措辞也变得混乱起来。怎么说才对呢？“我是一个外科医生”？“我曾经是一个外科医生”？格雷厄姆·格林曾经说过，人真正的生命是在头二十年，剩下的不过是对过去日子的反射。那我现在究竟生活在什么时态之中？我是不是已经过完了现在时态，进入了过去完成时？将来时态似乎一片空白，用别人的话来说，就是“说不准”。几个月前，我在斯坦福参加了第十五次大学同学会，站在场地边，喝着一杯威士忌，看着一轮粉红的夕阳一点一点沉到地平线下面。老朋友们依依惜别，向我承诺：“第二十五次同学会还是会见到你的！”——如果我回一个“呃……可能见不到了”，那就显得太不礼貌了。
Verb conjugation has become muddled, as well. Which is correct:“I am a neurosurgeon,” “I was a neurosurgeon,” or “I had been a neurosurgeon before and will be again”? Graham Greene once said that life was lived in the first twenty years and the remainder was just reflection. So what tense am I living in now? Have I proceeded beyond the present tense and into the past perfect? The future tense seems vacant and, on others’ lips, jarring. A few months ago, I celebrated my fifteenth college reunion at Stanford and stood out on the quad, drinking a whiskey as a pink sun dipped below the hori-zon; when old friends called out parting promises— “We’ll see you at the twenty-fifth!”—it seemed rude to respond with “Well. . . probably not.”

面对生命的界限，人人都会屈服。我想，进入这种过去完成时的人，应该不止我一个。大多数的梦想和抱负，要么被实现，要么被抛弃，无论如何，都属于过去。而我的未来已经不是一架天梯，通往逐步升高的人生目标，而是一路平坦，铺陈为永恒的现在。金钱、地位，这一切的虚荣浮华，都像《传道书》里对其毫无兴趣的传道者所说的：不过是捕风而已。
Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed.

然而，有个小东西是有笃定未来的：我们的女儿，卡迪。但愿我能活到她记事，能给她留下点回忆。语言文字的寿命是我无法企及的，所以我想过给她写一些信。但是信里又能说些什么呢？我都不知道这孩子十五岁时是什么样子的，我都不知道她会不会接受我们给她的昵称。这个小婴儿完全代表着未来，而我的生命呢，除了特别微小的可能，很快将成为过去。她与我，只有短暂的交集。也许，我只有一件事想告诉她。
Yet one thing cannot be robbed of her futurity: our daughter, Cady. I hope I’ll live long enough that she has some memory of me. Words have a longevity I do not. I had thought I could leave her a series of letters—but what would they say? I don’t know what this girl will be like when she is fifteen; I don’t even know if she’ll take to the nickname we’ve given her. There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past.