Fear Nothing

dimly lighted - operating room. Yet protracted exposure to the bright lights of the surgery was certain to result in a severe burn to any skin not protected from the glare, risking melanoma but also inhibiting the healing of the incision. Covering everything below the point of incision - from my groin to my toes - was easy: a triple layer of cotton sheeting pinned to prevent it from slipping aside. Additional sheeting was used to improvise complex tenting over my head and upper body, designed to protect me from the light but also to allow the anesthesiologist to slip under from time to time, with a penlight, to take my blood pressure and my temperature, to adjust the gas mask, and to ensure that the electrodes from the electrocardiograph remained securely in place on my chest and wrists to permit continued monitoring of my heart. Their standard procedure required that my abdomen be draped except for a window of exposed skin at the site of the surgery, but in my case this rectangular window had to be reduced to the narrowest possible slit. With self-retaining refractors to keep the incision open and judicial use of tape to shield the skin to the very lip of the cut, they dared to slice me. My guts could take all the light that my doctors wanted to pour into them-but by the time they got that far, my appendix had burst. In spite of a meticulous cleanup, peritonitis ensued; an abscess developed and was swiftly followed by septic shock, requiring a second surgical procedure two days later.
        After I recovered from septic shock and was no longer in danger of imminent death, I lived for months with the expectation that what I had endured might trigger one of the neurological problems related to XP. Generally these conditions develop after a burn or following long-term cumulative exposure to light-or for reasons not understood-but sometimes they apparently can be engendered by severe physical trauma or shock. Tremors of the head or the hands. Hearing loss. Slurred speech. Even mental impairment. I waited for the first signs of a progressive, irreversible neurological disorder-but they never came.
        William Dean Howells, the great poet, wrote that death is at the bottom of everyone's cup. But there is still some sweet tea in mine.
        And apricot brandy.
        After taking another thick sip from her cordial glass, Angela said, “All I ever wanted was to be a nurse, but look at me now.”
        She wanted me to ask, and so I did: “What do you mean?”
        Gazing at captive flames through a curve of ruby glass, she said, “Nursing is about life. I'm about death now.”
        I didn't know what she meant, but I waited.
        “I've done terrible things,” she said.
        “I'm sure you haven't.”
        “I've seen others do terrible things, and I haven't tried to stop them. The guilt's the same.”
        “Could you have stopped them if you'd tried?”
        She thought about that awhile. “No,” she said, but she looked no less troubled.
        “No one can carry the whole world on her shoulders.”
        “Some of us better try,” she said.
        I gave her time. The brandy was fine.
        She said, “If I'm going to tell you, it has to be now. I don't have much time. I'm becoming.”
        “Becoming?”
        “I feel it. I don't know who I'll be a month from now, or six months. Someone I won't like to be. Someone who terrifies me.”
        “I don't understand.”
        “I know.”
        “How can I help?” I asked.
        “No one can help. Not you. Not me. Not God.” Having shifted her gaze from the votive candles to the golden liquid in her glass, she spoke quietly but fiercely: “We're screwing it up, Chris, like we always do, but this is bigger than we've ever screwed up before. Because of pride, arrogance, envy… we're losing it, all of it. Oh, God, we're losing it, and already there's no way to turn back, to undo what's been done.”
        Although her voice was not slurred, I suspected that she had drunk more than one previous glass of apricot brandy. I tried to take comfort in the thought that drink had led her to exaggerate, that whatever looming catastrophe she perceived was not a hurricane but only a squall magnified by mild inebriation.
        Nevertheless, she had succeeded in countering the warmth of the kitchen and the cordial. I no longer considered removing my jacket.
        “I can't stop them,” she said. “But I can stop keeping