“What are you doing here?” Brenda shouted across the hospital hallway, her face drained of color, her hair messy, and her blouse buttoned incorrectly as though she had dressed in a hurry.

Several people turned toward us. Two nurses stopped walking and glanced our way.

I kept my voice calm.

“Lower your voice. This is a hospital.”

Brenda, my husband’s secretary, normally arrived at the office looking flawless—perfect makeup, expensive heels, polished hair, and the same artificial smile she wore around everyone.

That morning, she looked nothing like herself.

And there was a reason I happened to be standing outside the hospital room of Andrew, her husband.

Everything had begun three days earlier with something almost absurdly small.

Mark, my husband of twenty-eight years, told me he would spend Saturday showing several valuable parcels of land to investors visiting from Chicago.

Instead, he came home before noon looking pale and unusually nervous.