Bruce Wilkinson went from dead asleep to full awake with such suddenness that he felt overwhelmed with a sense of fear, like a child awakening from a nightmare. He had no idea what had awakened him but guessed it was some noise or movement. He wondered if something had touched him. He stayed still, holding his breath, and stared straight ahead, listening. At first he was disoriented, but as his mind took in his limited field of vision, he remembered he was in the Boston Memorial Hospital: in room 1832 to be exact. At about the same instant that he realized where he was, Bruce perceived that it was the middle of the night. The hospital was clothed in a heavy stillness.

On his current admission for cardiac bypass surgery, Bruce had been in the hospital for over a week. But a month or so before he’d spent three weeks several floors down, recovering from his unexpected heart attack. As a consequence Bruce had become accustomed to the hospital routine. Such things as the squeak of the nurse’s medication cart as it was pushed up the hall, or the distant sounds of an arriving ambulance, or even the hospital page calling a doctor’s name had become reassuring phenomena. In fact, Bruce could often tell merely by listening to these familiar sounds what time of day it was without looking at his watch. They all signified that help for any medical emergency was close at hand.

Bruce had never worried much about his health even though he was a victim of multiple sclerosis. The problem with his vision that had brought him to the doctor five years ago had cleared, and Bruce had made a conscious effort to forget the diagnosis because hospitals and doctors tended to frighten him. Then, out of the blue, came the heart attack with its attendant hospitalization and the current major surgery. His doctors assured him that the heart problem was not related to the multiple sclerosis, but that disclaimer had done little to buoy his sagging courage.