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enough word to describe how I felt when Iwalked into our bedroom. Howard was flat on his back, gasping for air, and very pale. I called Dr. Goldstein’s office and lit into the receptionist. “How could you let Howard leave your office like this?”
    “What do you mean?” she said.
    “He’s sick as a dog. The antibiotics obviously aren’t working.”
    “What antibiotics?”
    “The ones Dr. Goldstein gave him. The IV.”
    “You better talk to the doctor,” she said.
    “I haven’t seen your husband since November,” Dr. Goldstein said. “I got your message and called him but he never called back.”
    So there it was. No doctor. No IV. No antibiotics. At that point, I was more angry than anything else.
    I looked across the bed at Howard. “Howard! You didn’t go to the doctor. Why did you tell me that?” He looked back in resignation.
    Goldstein said, “Please put him on the phone.” I held the receiver to Howard’s ear. He said only a few words and gestured for me to get back on.
    “His breathing sounds terrible,” Dr. Goldstein said. “Get him to the Sibley emergency room immediately. I’ll call them.”
    So now the wee hours of Saturday morning had turned from afternoon to evening, Howard had been in Sibley’s intensive care unit for more than twenty-five hours, and his condition was “grave.” The ICU doctors had run out of tricks. They’d shopped him around to a few hospitals and the only one that would take him was the Washington Hospital Center. “It’s your best hope,” a doctor said. “They have a breathing device there that can feed oxygen to both lungs, giving him what he needs. We don’t have one here.”
    “Let’s do it. What’s the holdup?” I asked.
    “They can take him, but it’s Saturday night and no one is on duty who can authorize a medevac helicopter and we don’t want to send him by ambulance.”
    I played the only power card I had and called Larry King. Earlier he’d said, “If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.” Now there was something he could do. “Will you please call the Washington Hospital Center and get us a helicopter for Howard?”
    Ten minutes later he called back. “I reached the head of the hospital. A helicopter should be on its way.” Sure enough, in fifteen minuteswe could hear the
whup whup whup
of the chopper blades outside the ICU windows.
    A team of faceless people in helmets and jumpsuits rushed in with a gurney. They lifted Howard’s seemingly lifeless body onto it, hooked up the life-support system, the IVs, and the myriad other tubes and bags, and—sweetly—covered him with a blanket and tucked him in. He was under there somewhere but I couldn’t see him apart from a little tuft of his hair. He’d hate that. He’d want me to smooth it down. They rolled him out with military precision. My brother Robert, Martha, and I stood side by side, our backs against the wall. In the time it takes to stop, take a breath, and move on, one of the crew, a woman, lifted the visor of her helmet, looked me square in the eyes, and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of him.” And they were gone.
    Now it was midnight on Saturday. I’d been awake since four o’clock that morning. Martha hadn’t slept at all. It didn’t matter. The hours were a blur. All of us were functioning on adrenaline. Robert and I headed to his car, stepping carefully over the small piles of freshly plowed snow and ice in the mostly empty parking lot. The air was frigid; we could see our breath. The night sky was clear and sharp, with little stars twinkling above. We shivered inside the car and silently looked through the windshield across the lot to the brightly lit MedSTAR helicopter preparing to lift off, its blades a blur. Up, up it went, its beacon lights flashing in the dark clear night, then heeling a little, speeding up, and heading across the city.
    This will work out, I told myself. It will get better now. My brother nodded, turned the