—Thomas Hardy, “During Wind and Rain” 1 I spent five days at the George Washington University Hospital, down in Foggy Bottom. It was only a semi-private room, but somehow I got lucky—no other patient was brought in to occupy the empty bed across from mine. More luck: I learned that my health insurance as a teacher in the D.C. Public Schools would cover most of the expenses. That was where my luck ran out, though. My physician, Dr. Nguyen—a tiny woman of Vietnamese descent with big round glasses—informed me on my first morning that I had what was known as unstable angina—“what you might call a mild heart attack. You’ll be all right,” she said seriously, pointing at me, “if you do exactly what I tell you to do.” I’d already been given an electrocardiogram, blood test, ultrasound, X-rays. I didn’t feel too bad, everything considered—just worn out, as if I’d collapsed in the last leg of a marathon.
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