2019

Seven-and-a-half years into cancer treatments and two months before he died, before we knew he would die, my husband insisted on hooking up the new dishwasher in our old kitchen. No plumber would be paid when he could do it himself. The doing it himself wasn’t the hard part; it was the getting back up. I came home from my nursing work to find my beloved lying on his back on the wooden floor in front of the dishwasher.

As usual, I found myself rushing through the labyrinth of hallways at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Hospital, in search of our next tutorial. Every day, as fourth-year medical students, we are expected to present cases to awaiting consultants, in the many wards. This time I was lost. A kind nurse directed me to the place where I was meant to be…the pediatric oncology unit.

When the walls of his failed heart collapse, he suffers a damaging heart attack. He lacks any blood flow, so the EMTs declare him dead. Shocked, he fluctuates between slightly dead and more dead. The ambulance volunteers bring him to Northern Westchester’s cath lab. Unafraid, he sees The Light. He meets Moses carrying tablets down Mt. Sinai, greeting newcomers going up. Relatives weigh his mitzvahs: pro bono work with clients, sick friends, nursing home visits. The judge calls his wife to the witness stand. She says, “He should live.” They await the verdict.