"Phil," he said, "we better get a biopsy right away."
"It's in a bad spot."
His instruments gagged me for a minute or two, brought tears in my eyes, probed at revolted mucosae. "Yes, Phil. And there's a lot of it. You didn't notice—anything—?"
"Earlier? Nope. This morning. I was flying down anyhow. I have a serial to correct."
"Of course," Tom said, "I'm not sure. It could be one of those rank lymphoid things. Radium blots them out. X-ray. Radioactive cobalt, these days, perhaps. But—"
But.
We looked at each other for a while. He said a kind thing: "We're both—forty-six."
He meant that we shared the hazards of time together. He also intended to start me thinking of all I had been and done, seen and known, felt and expressed, in four and a half decades of life.
His clock ticked.
His phone rang.