"I need you to come down so we can talk about your results," Dr. Faraday had said. There was a marked note of uncertainty in his voice that clutched the pit of Lincoln's stomach. Your doctor is one person from whom you never want to hear doubt, and hearing it that Monday morning from Doc was like a brisk slap in the face: The prevalent mist of grogginess swirling through his skull cleared as if blown by a sharp, sudden wind, and his head, hitherto tilted sleepily to one side, snapped up.

He was sitting at the kitchen table with a steaming cup of coffee at his right and music drifting from the hi-fi in the living room. He was sitting here, swaddled in the deafening silence of total solitude and struggling to keep from nodding off when the phone rang, startling him so badly he jumped. He got shakily to his feet and picked the handset up. His knees quivered and he felt like he was going to fall limply to the floor like a suit of clothes vacated on the Rapture. He sat back down and sighed in a mixture of weariness and frustration. He was getting really goddamn sick and tired of this.

On the bright side, his body-wide exhaustion didn't last all day. Like an old car in the deep freeze of winter, he needed a while to warm up. By ten, he'd have enough gas in his tank to get up, but until then, he would stay right here.

"Is it serious?" he asked numbly.

"We can discuss that in person," Faraday replied. "How soon can you get here?"

An hour later, Lincoln sat in Faraday's office, a wide space with forest green carpets, white walls adorned by framed certificates, and an ornately carved liquor cabinet filled with bottles of bourbon, scotch, vodka, rum, and mixers. They were for display only. When he came home from Vietnam in 1973, Faraday once told him, he started to drink in an effort to dull the memories of war and "almost became an alcoholic." He realized he was losing control when his wife took their three-year-old daughter and left. He got sober by locking himself in a hotel room for a week, smoking cigarettes, pacing, and sweating. "It was the hardest thing I ever did," he said, "but also the most rewarding." His wife came back and they'd been together ever since

The man himself, wearing his trademark lab coat over a blue button up, sat stiffly behind his big oaken desk, putting Lincoln curiously in mind of a Surgeon General. That would make two Bush cabinet members he knew, the first being Clyde McBride. His old friend, married now to the same girl Bobby Jr. used to date (small world, huh?) had been tapped for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The talking heads on CNN expected the Senate to quickly confirm him "Despite allegations of ethical misconduct while he was governor of New York." Lincoln was proud of him and disappointed in him at the same time.

At least he wasn't a Democrat.

"So, your results came back," Faraday said without preamble.

Lincoln's throat went dry and he resisted the urge to squirm in his seat. A chasm opened in his stomach, and he was surprised at what he felt. Deep, churning fear. He had never considered the possibility of death or serious illness...not now. He was only fifty-four, which is still young, no matter what anyone says. His body wasn't what it used to be, but inside, he felt half his age, and the thought of something terrible happening, while there, was always remote, always a worry for another day, the horizon always pulling back as he approached it. He could see it, knew that he would have to reach it eventually, but it was far removed from the present.

Only now it wasn't.

"Is it bad?" he asked around a lump of ice.

Faraday opened his mouth, stopped, then tilted his head to the side as if in concession. "I don't know," he said.

Wait, what?

Slipping a sheet of paper from a folder, Faraday consulted it, then looked up at Lincoln. "Your white blood cell count is...is pretty low, which could mean any number of things." He hitched on is, and Lincoln was sure he meant to add another word but stopped himself at the last minute. Dangerously low; fatally low; shockingly low; so low it's a miracle you're still conscious, frankly, I expect you to die at any minute. "Personally, I'm thinking it's some sort of viral infection, but I can't be sure. It could be an autoimmune disease, lupus, sudden onset anemia, AIDS, cancer."

Lincoln's heart sank. AIDS? Cancer? Admittedly, he didn't know very much about how either one functioned, but he did know they were serious, life-threatening afflictions that ravaged the body like a biblical pestilence, slowly sucking the life from the sufferer until they were reduced to a bag of bones held together by thin, sallow flesh. Cancer, at least, was beatable; AIDS wasn't. He recalled the news reports he saw on TV and read in the paper during the early eighties, when AIDS was first diagnosed: Gay men withering away in a span of weeks, their fate as inescapeable as death itself. In 1985, the actor Rock Hudson, who Lincoln grew up watching in movies like Giant, Pillow Talk, and Come September, appeared on TV noticeably sick. Once the ideal of masculinity with his muscular physique, he was gaunt, frail, and shaky. He was announced to have AIDS, and died a short time later.

His face, wasted and wan, came back to Lincoln now.

He couldn't have AIDS! Jesus, the last man he had sex with was in '66 when Sgt. Hellman fucked him in the ass to establish dominance on the first day of boot camp. He hadn't had any blood transfusions or...or...or anything like that.

No, whatever he had, it wasn't AIDS.

Doc Faraday must have seen the worry in his face, for he leaned over the desk and lowered his voice. "I've seen AIDS before, it's not that, and I'm 99 percent sure it isn't cancer either. You remember that infection you had last fall?"

In October, Lincoln caught the flu and spent nearly two weeks battling fever, chills, and weakness. He got over it and went back to feeling like his old self. "Yeah," he said at length, "you don't think it's that, do you? I was fine for two months afterwards, it should have been over."

Faraday nodded. "It should have been, but you're an old cuss now, Linc, things affect you differently. It very well could have affected your bone marrow enough to cause your white count to drop."

"Bone marrow?" Lincoln asked, tasting the word as though it were new and off putting. "How the hell can the flu affect your bone marrow?"

"Several ways," Faraday replied. "Look, it might not be that either. I'm just not sure. I'm a small town family practitioner, I only know so much and I'm only equipped to deal with so much. I'm going to refer you to a specialist - someone who actually knows his ass from a hole in the ground." As he spoke, he opened the top drawer, reached in, and pulled out a card. He held it across the desk, and Lincoln darted his eyes nervously to it. The moment he took it, he thought irrationally, something would be set in motion that he very well might not want set in motion. If he didn't, he could slink away and hide from the possible illness nesting inside of him. He could exist in a state of suspended animation indefinitely...just so long as he didn't touch that goddamn card.

Realizng how stupid he was being, he took it, nodded his thanks, and went home, trying desperately to ignore the disquiet in his stomach. Faraday was probably right; come to think of it, he didn't go back to being himself after the flu, not entirely. He was a little off even back in November, he just didn't think much of it...hell, didn't even register it.

In a way, that was a more heartening eventuality than cancer, but in another, it wasn't. He didn't know much about cancer, but he knew something. With the viral infection theory, he was lost, fumbling like a blind man in the dark. Put next to AIDS and cancer, a viral infection didn't sound all that bad, but maybe it was..maybe it was even deadlier.

At home, he sat in his chair and studied the card. DR. VISHNU PATEL, CENTER OF HEMATOLOGY, ST. MICHAEL'S HOSPITAL. He called and set up an appointment for the 21st, then passed nearly a week in dread suspense.

Not telling Ronnie Anne came not as a conscious decision but as a knee jerk reflex. He didn't want to worry her if he didn't have to. On the surface, they were as different as night and day (okay, maybe night and evening), but they were more alike than they weren't, and she would work herself into knots if she knew, just like he would if she was the one with a mystery diagnosis. It may have been for her own peace of mind, but it made him feel dirty nevertheless. The lie - or lack of forthrightness - weighed heavy on his chest every moment they were together, and though she made no sign that she knew, he couldn't help thinking she could see it in his eyes.

Presently, 10am on the rainy morning of March 21st, 2001, Lincoln sat in the waiting room of Dr. Patel's office with a clipboard on his lap - Patel wanted every facet of his and his family's medical history, and recounting Leni's Renchsler's was harder than he thought it would be. Leni, like Luna and his parents, occupied a permanent place in his heart, but he rarely thought about her disease. When she did cross his mind, she was always happy, healthy, and glowing with life. He never saw her as she was at the end, never saw her sick.

Beads of water sluiced down the window behind him, and manicured trees lining the exterior breezeway shook in the wind. Patel's office was on the grounds of Saint Michael's Hospital in South Detroit, a vast complex of antiquated brick buildings that looked more like an ivy league university than a medical center. Patel's place was more modern than the others, a construct of brick and glass three stories high and with a vaulted overhang above the entrance. The waiting room was decorated with leather upholstered chairs, solid oak furnishings, and pieces of expressionist art on white walls. The one across was Lincoln depicted a can of Campbell's soup. That was it...a can of soup.

Thought-provoking.

Low, ambient lamp light engendered a warm, cozy atmosphere that put Lincoln in mind of grandma's house, even though he'd never been there; both of his grandmothers died before he was born.

A mounted television played CNN and the low drone of voices drifted from the speakers. Several other people sat in the waiting room, many of them, Lincoln noted, in their sixties and seventies. In fact, looking around, he surmised that he was the youngest person here, though that black guy over there looked like he could have been a year or two younger.

He went over the forms again - all seven pages - then, satisfied, got up and walked to the reception window. A pretty secretary took the clipboard and Lincoln returned to his seat. On TV, President Bush walked across the South Lawn to Marine One. Two military men flanked the chopper's doors, and Bush saluted them, then scurried up the steps. During Vietnam, Bush served a cushy stint in the National Guard thanks to his Senator daddy. McCain's father was a Navy admiral, and in a bid to look good for the cameras and communists in America, the NVA offered to let McCain go. He turned them down unless they freed every man taken prisoner before him.

Bush, on the other hand, would have jumped at the chance like the coward he was. Lincoln might not agree with a lot of McCain's jive, but he was a real man and would have been a far better president. Why in the name of hell did Republicans choose Bush over him? Bunch of brain dead idiots. Bush Sr. probably rigged the whole thing. That Florida crap? Maybe Gore was onto something. He didn't deserve the presidency either, mind you, but he probably was robbed.

A nurse in scrubs came out of a door next to the reception window and called his name, and Lincoln's stomach clutched.

Here we go, he thought.

He got up and followed her into the back. Patel's suite looked much like any other doctor's office. The carpets were a drab industrial gray, the walls were lightly colored, and landscape paintings hung like windows on the plaster. At a scale, the nurse had Lincoln remove his shoes, then took his height and weight: He was 152, down two pounds from last week's visit to Faraday. He hadn't been very hungry lately so that was no surprise. The most he'd eaten recently was at Blake's birthday. He could only handle half a burger, but he wound up having two slices of cake and three scoops of ice cream. He was so sick afterwards, hahaha. That would have concerned him if it was unprecedented. Every time he wound up at an event with sweets - birthday, wedding, church bake sale - he gorged himself and regretted it later. Once upon a time he could cram his face with sweets all day long, but once he hit fifty, too much sugar made him nauseous.

Done, the nurse lead him into a room where he sat next to a desk. She sat down before it, and for the next half hour, she asked him a battery of questions pertaining to his health and medical history, then gave him a full work up: She checked his heart rate, his blood pressure, his ears, nose, and throat, she tested his reflexes, shone a light in his eyes, took his temperature, she even gave him a hearing test, which he passed but just barely.

"How am I?" he asked anxiously. Despite the impending appointment, he slept fairly well the night before and only felt moderately meh, but even so, he was sure his vitals would be erratic, alarming...or simply non-existent, as though he were already dead.

The nurse took the buds of her stethoscope from her ears. "Your blood pressure's a little low and your heart rate is slightly elevated, but overall, you're healthy as a horse."

Obviously I'm not if my blood pressure's low and my heart rate's high.

When they were finally finished, she took him to an exam room and left him alone with his thoughts. Laminate charts were plastered to the wall, one depicting the human nervous, another the blood vessels, and another still a cross section of the skeleton. Unlike most exam rooms, Patel's was stocked with a wealth of magazines and newspapers, from Entertainment to The New Yorker. The latter, only a month old, boasted NEW FICTION BY STEPHEN KING. That was the weirdo Alex and Lori liked. When Alex was still at home, there was always a Stephen King book lying around, usually as big as a goddamn house. She read other losers, too. Dean Koontz, John Saul, Robin Cook, Anne Rice, and Richard Laymon, but King was the big one. Lincoln, when he committed to a novel (which happened only rarely) enjoyed Tom Clancy and Vince Flynn.

For a while, he sat in silence, arms and legs crossed and foot jittering restlessly. Quiet trepidation sloshed through his middle, and suspense tightened around him like a noose. After a while, he got up and started to pace, a condemned man awaiting midnight, when he would be lead from his cell, strapped into a chair, and sent on a lightning ride all the way to the gates of hell. He wanted this over and done with as quickly as possible so he'd know what was wrong with him. Hell, as long as it wasn't indicative of something major, he didn't care if he felt this way for the rest of his life, he could manage.

He was probably getting all worked up over nothing. Just because Faraday didnt know what he was looking at didn't mean the end of the world. As he said himself, he was a small town GP. He went back to Mom's bout with Alzhimer's ten years ago. The same thing happened - Faraday 'wasn't sure' and referred her to a specialist.

Only in that case...three years later, and she was dead.

That didn't mean the same thing was going to happen to him, but foreboding still flooded his chest, still pulled him down, as if to the grave. He took a deep, shivery breath and forced himself to calm down. He was getting carried away and deep down he knew it. Returning to his seat, he crossed his legs and picked up one of the magazines at random. STEPHEN KING. Alright, then, let's see what you got, STEPHEN KING.

He flipped through the pages until he found it, tight columns of text and a blurry, drunk's eye view picture of a house with a red door. The title above proclaimed: ALL THAT YOU LOVE WILL BE CARRIED AWAY.

Oh.

Comforting.

Suddenly, Lincoln no longer cared what STEPHEN KING had.

He dropped the magazine back onto the table and crossed his arms. You're too much of a pessimist, Linc. You're the kind of guy who stubs his toe, then convinces himself he's going contract some rare infection because boo hoo hoo, I have such bad luck, everything happens to me.

That may have been a slight exaggeration, but it was also fundamentally true. He was something of a pessimist; he almost always assumed the worst, even though he really had no reason to. Aside from an extremely brief detour to a bamboo cage, the road had always been smooth and even. Yes, Luna killed herself with a cocaine addiction, Luan blew someone to Kingdom Come and did fifteen years in prison, and Leni's mind decayed until she was little more than a vegetable, but his life had been as charmed as any. His business dried up and he had to close, but shit happens. He was married to a wonderful woman, owned his own home, had two daughters and a couple grandkids...he was never seriously ill, he never got struck by lightning, he had absolutely no reason to be as cynical as he was.

It wasn't healthy and if he kept up, he'd end up having a heart attack before he was sixty. Maybe perpetual dourness was okay when he was in his thirties or even forties, but not now; he needed to take care of himself. For Ronnie Anne. And Jessy, and Alex, and the kids.

They needed him.

And he needed them.

Ten more minutes passed before the doctor came in. A tall, lanky Indian man with dark skin, pearly white teeth, and short, curly hair, Patel looked far too young to be a doctor, much less a specialist. His boyish face, twinkling eyes, and quick smile lent him the air of a dog who had never been kicked or even shunned in his entire life, and who was a friend to everyone.

Lincoln expected him to be dressed in slacks and a lab coat, instead he wore blue surgical scrubs and white Nike tennis shoes. "Mr. Loud," he greeted in perfect though toneless English, the accent of a man from Anyplace, USA, "I'm Dr. Patel. It's a pleasure to meet you." He thrust out his hand before Lincoln could get to his feet, and after a hesitation, Lincoln took it.

"You too," he said, and the surreality of his comment made his head spin. No, actually, it wasn't a pleasure to meet him. Lincoln found himself instantly liking the man, but a medical specialist is one of the last people you one to meet, right after Nazi and before undertaker. You only met a man like Patel when there was something wrong.

Leaning heavily against the exam table, Patel crossed his arms over his scrawny chest. Thick hair covered his forearms, and a silver watch around his wrist glinted coldly in the light like a knowing eye. "So, what don't you tell me what's been going on?"

Taking a deep breath, Lincoln related the whole story from start to finish, just as he had with Faraday: The fatigue, the shortness of breath, then finally the rash, coughing, and swollen lymph nodes. Patel pursed his lips and listened with a thoughtful expression. "The swelling comes and goes?" he asked and made a circle with his hand.

"Yeah," Lincoln said. "It usually starts in the morning and goes down throughout the day."

Patel nodded. "The coughing. Is it persistent?"

"Yeah," Lincoln, "it's not all the time, but it's there."

"Alright," Patel said, "headache? Fever? Chest pains? Chills?"

Lincoln thought for a long time. He hadn't been feverish, but a few times, as he lay awake in bed, mind racing and covered in sweat, he did suffer the occasional chill.

Doc Faraday asked after some of those same symptoms. That told Lincoln he and Patel were driving at something...looking for a specific cause.

Did Faraday know more than he let on? Did he suspect Lincoln had a certain disease? When he called Patel, did he say, Yeah, Pat, I suspect bone-marrow-AIDS. Guy'll probably die before you get him out the door.

"K-Kind of," Lincoln said, surprised at the stammer in his voice, "sometimes. Not frequently, though."

Patel stood up straight. "Alright, well, here's what we're going to do. It's a bone marrow biopsy. I'm going to extract a little bit marrow from your bone and we're going to test it to see if there's anything the matter. I also want to take some blood and we'll test that too just to have our ducks in a row."

Lincoln's heart dropped. Biopsy? That was for cancer, wasn't it? Did Patel think he had cancer?

"How do you get bone marrow?" Lincoln asked, perplexed. "How long does it take? Do I have to be admitted?"

Patel waved his hand. "No, it only takes a couple of minutes. It works a lot like taking blood."

Oh, well, that was good. The sooner this happened, the sooner he'd know what the hell was wrong with him.

Patel left the room, then came back with a nurse in tow. He carried a segmented plastic tub filled with instruments, and Lincoln's eyes flicked nervously to it. Pulling up a chair, Patel sat the tub on the floor, reached down, and retrieved a pair of blue latex gloves, which he then pulled on. "Roll your sleeve up," he said.

Lincoln rolled his sleeve up and presented his arm.

The procedure required two stages: First, bone marrow aspiration, then the bone marrow biopsy. Patel tied a rubber band around Lincoln's arm then administered a local anesthetic that numbed him, but did not put him under. Using a scalpel, he made a small incision in Lincoln's arm, then sank a hollow needle into the opening. Even under the pleasant tingle of intoxication, Lincoln felt it in the form of a quick, sharp sting, then alien pressure. Patel pulled back the plunger, and amber liquid filled the chamber. Lincoln watched in a mixture of fascination and revulsion. "Is that the marrow?" he asked. He was always under the impression that marrow was firm.

"The liquid portion," Patel muttered from deep in his concentration. Done, he removed the vial and handed it to the nurse, who held it up to the light and turned in a slow circle. She pronounced it suitable and sat it in the basket.

Next, Patel inserted a larger needle into Lincoln's arm and withdrew a solid chunk. A flash of hot pain ripped through Lincoln's medicated fog, and he whistled through his teeth. Patel plucked the needle out and applied a Band-Aid to the incision site. "And that should do it," the doctor said at length as he jotted something down on a clipboard.

Lincoln rolled down his sleeve. "So...a biopsy. That's for cancer, right?"

"Not always," Patel said, and Lincoln relaxed, "it's just the process of removing cells or tissue for examination."

Well, that was a relief.

Inside half an hour, Lincoln was on the interstate heading north toward Royal Woods. Cold rain fell steadily from the churning sky and the cars ahead of him kicked up mists of water like cemetery fog. Patel said he should have the results in less than a week...which meant more waiting.

Something Lincoln was not looking forward to.

On Friday morning, just as he sat down with his coffee, the phone rang. His first instinct was to complain (you couldn't have called two seconds ago when I was still standing?), but it was probably Patel, so instead, he got stiffly to his feet. His knees ached, and the bones grated with every step. The rash was back, too, a deep scarlet splotch on his left forearm that spread all the way to his shoulder. The lymph nodes in his neck were swollen when he woke two hours ago, but had already gone down.

He picked the handset up and held it to his ear. 'Hello?"

"Mr. Loud."

Lincoln instantly recognized Patel's voice.

"Your test results came back and I was wondering if you could come down to discuss them."

He wouldn't give him the results over the phone even if they were negative, Lincoln knew that, but his heart clutched anyway. "I can be there in an hour and a half," Lincoln said.

"Alright, I'll make time to fit you in."

Driving along the southbound lane of I-12, hunched anxiously over the wheel, Lincoln turned the conversation over and over again, interrogating every single word Patel used and inflating them with dark meaning. I'll make time to fit you in. Why? Why not set an appointment for later? He took him on the spot, almost like he wanted him in as soon as possible.

By the time he reached Patel's office at quarter 'til ten, he was a seething mass of nerves. In the waiting room, a Hispanic woman sat behind the counter and flashed a professional smile when he walked up. He gave her his name, signed in, and sat in one of the chairs. An elderly couple sat slightly down from him, the woman in a floral top and tan slacks and the man wearing a blue cap with gold writing across the front. USS WARRENTON, it said, CV-68. The woman's hands trembled in her lap and the man rubbed a slow, comforting circle in her back, that simple act so pregnant with a devotion that it threatened to affect Lincoln, so he turned away.

Less than ten minutes after he arrived, the door to the back opened and Patel came out. Today he wore a white long sleeve button up accented by a red tie and tucked into coal gray pants. He saw Lincoln and nodded amicably. Was it Lincoln's imagination, or was there something like pity in his eyes?

Stupid, he told himself, he was being stupid.

He got up and crossed to the doctor, feeling strangely self-conscious. "Mr. Loud," Patel greeted with a smile, "I'm glad you could make it." He stuck out his hand and they shook.

"I just wanna get this over with," Lincoln said. He searched the Indian's face for some tick that might betray him, but he offered none.

They went into the back, Patel leading the way, and into a tastefully appointed office off the main hall. The floors were heavily carpeted and the walls laden with the familiar degrees and certificates of a man who knew what he was doing and did it better than anyone. Patel sat behind a large, tidy desk, and Lincoln sat across from him. His heart palpitated in his chest and his body thrummed with nervous energy. Patel laid his forearms on the desk and laced his fingers. "How are you feeling today?"

Like I want my goddamn test results. "About the same," Lincoln said after a minute's thought. He told Patel about the reoccurring rash and the swelling in his lymph nodes, and the doctor listened intently, an inscrutable expression tattooed to his face.

When he was done, Patel took a deep breath and sat back in his chair. "So it's not bothering you too much? Just the fatigue?"

"Yeah, that's the worst part."

"You're still coughing?"

Lincoln nodded. "Every once in a while."

"Have you produced anything from these coughs? Blood? Mucus?"

"No," Lincoln said. He was starting to get impatient, and if Patel didn't cut to the chase, he was going to burst. "What do the results say?"

Patel glanced at a sheet of paper, picked it up, and studied it. Finished, he laid it on the desk and spun it around so that Lincoln could see. Lincoln leaned over a little, but it was covered in a zigzagging graph that he could not understand. "Well, we gave your blood a full work-up," he explained, "and one of the things we found was an elevated presence of calcium along with cell degradation."

Lincoln swallowed. That didn't sound good.

Leaning forward, Patel tapped the sheet with a pen. "Your white blood count is low...not dangerous as of yet, but far lower than we like, and your red blood cells are weaker then they should be. The marrow sample we took contains Myelogenous cell structures which are often present in leukemia."

Lincoln's heart dropped.

"But looking at your blood, it's clear that you don't have leukemia. See this?" He tapped the sheet and Lincoln bent to see. The graph before him was Greek, and he said as much. "These denote your cells and platelets," Patel said. "Some of them look...misshapen. Those are the unhealthy cells in your body. These are similar to leukemia but distinct in their make-up. What you have is called hemoteliosis and it is a fairly rare type of blood cancer -"

At that dreaded word, cancer, Lincoln's blood froze.

" - that works by attacking both the white and red blood cells while also weakening the bone structure. It produces an excess of Vitamin A, which impedes the action of Vitamin D. Vitamin D acts by increasing intestinal absorption of calcium, meaning it increases calcium levels in the blood through more uptake in food. Too much Vitamin A blocks this process and your body begins to break down the nearest source of calcium to support itself. Your bones. We'll have to do more tests to understand the full scope and effect it is having on your body, but that's where we are right now."

Lincoln's head spun.

"I'll level with you, Mr. Loud," Patel said, his tone suddenly grave, "this is a very serious disease, and while it is treatable to an extent, it is incurable."

A steel band gripped Lincoln's chest and all at once, he could barely breathe. "S-So I'll have this the rest of my life?" he asked.

Patel hesitated, as though reluctant to speak.

"To be blunt," he said, "you're dying."