When you live with a potentially life-threatening condition you get used to the thought of dying. You accept it, you push on. The thing that scared me was the picture of dying slowly and painfully, the loss of independence and identity to illness.

Knowing and believing are two different things.

And I thought maybe I didn't need to worry about my heart anymore because it had stopped beating a couple of seconds earlier, and I was still sitting there living and breathing-though admittedly I wasn't feeling much of anything.

He was breathing, which is always a good sign. As gently as I could I picked him up, placed him on the towel, wrapped it around him, and put him in my car. I drove to the emergency clinic, the cat purring on the seat beside me. “What’s his name?” the young man at the front desk asked as my towel and cat were whisked to a back room. “Uh…John Tomkins,” I said. “That’s different,” the receptionist said, writing it down. “He was a pirate,” I said. “I mean Tomkins. I don’t know about the cat. (...)

You couldn't hurt a fly." Actually I was pretty good at pinging flies right out of the air, but I tried to look appropriately harmless.

He said you were on the scene when that Laurel Canyon homicide went down.” “I’m lucky that way,” I said. “So are you two square again?” I halted, mid-ripping open the cookies, and stared at him. “Well, he’s pretty square,” I said. “I’m just a rectangular guy.” With latent triangular tendencies.

You don't look so hot, Adrien." "Yeah, well I'm having a bad heart day." His upper lip curled in a semblance of a smile. "Tell me about it.