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there, but my life was slipping off the rails.
    Spencer and I had not been together since Friday afternoon. There was the quick hug and kiss before I rushed Howard to the hospital, and he was asleep when I was briefly home that night. Our time together over the past week had been fractured as well, which was unusual, because I had taken a business trip without the family. I hadn’t wanted to make the trip to New York, but I had made a personal New Year’s resolution to do more for
Larry King Live
on my own. Typically, when I had CNN business in New York, we all went, including Spencer, the babysitter, and the dog. We would check into the Carlyle hotel, where we always had the same rooms that felt as comfortable and familiar as home. I would work during the day, Howard and Spencer would enjoy the city, and in the evening Howard and I would try a favorite old restaurant or a hot new one.
    We’d been there only a week ago for New Year’s. It was a continuation of the good times we shared in the Caribbean. Except Howard had a cough. Not a bad cough but a nagging cough. “I feel like shit,” he’d say.
    “Have the hotel call a doctor,” I advised. But no, too much fuss.
    “I’ll see Goldstein when we get home,” he promised. Kenneth Goldstein was his hematologist. Howard had been diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia several years earlier. There was no cure for CLL, though many people live long normal lives with the disease. Howard’s was stage zero. Though I had a meltdown when he was first diagnosed, he was stoic, and we both learned it was just something that had to be minded.
    Howard’s cough persisted and was not better when I had to turn around and head back to New York with Larry King immediately afterthe holiday. Howard assured me he would see his doctor. I phoned Dr. Goldstein from Washington’s Union Station and left a message for him to call Howard. The rest of the week I called home often. The conversation that haunts me still was from one of the wooden phone booths at the 21 Club, where Larry, the executive producer Wendy, and I had lunch with the publisher of John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s magazine,
George
. We were in the center of the front room at the A-est of A-list tables with every boldface name in the place doing a drop-by to greet Larry. But my mind was on Howard. I slipped away to the phone.
    The anger in his voice was shocking and confusing. “I feel horrible. I can’t believe you’re there and not here taking care of me.”
    “C’mon, Howard, we discussed this trip. You said I should do it, that you would go to the doctor. I asked Dr. Goldstein to call you. Can’t you get yourself to the doctor?”
    “That’s not the point. You don’t care about me. You just want to be in New York.”
    “Howard, seriously. I’ll come home right now if that’s what it takes, but please go to the doctor.”
    He didn’t back down. “I can’t believe you are doing this to me,” he said. “You should be here taking care of me.” When we hung up I was gutted.
    That evening I called from the hotel. His spirits were much brighter. “I went to see Goldstein,” he said. “He put me on antibiotics, an IV in my arm just like when I had Lyme disease.”
    “Thank God. Do you want me to come back in the morning?”
    “No, no. Stay up there. Do your work. I’ll be fine. Much better already. The drugs are working. I can feel it.”
    After a pretape of the show, Larry and I were on familiar ground, the back of a town car on our way to a movie premiere, this one a new Woody Allen movie. “How ya doin’?” he asked. “We’ve had quite a week. Dinner with Al Pacino, now a party with Woody Allen. Are you having fun?” I loved my work, but I was not having fun. I was guilt-ridden about not being with my husband.
    Friday morning my work was done and I was on an early train back to Washington. I would pick up some groceries on the way home and take care of my husband all weekend.
    Dismay
is not a strong