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I TAKE MY RIDE through both machines first thing the next morning, the MRI taking longer than the CT scan, as I knew it would.

Then I go back to my room and shower and dress and do a little bit of makeup work, as much for me as for Ben Kalinsky. And maybe even for the fabulous Sam Wylie.

Then I wait.

There’s always more waiting.

Ben and Jimmy come back into the room after I’m dressed and ready to get out of here and get home and see Rip the dog. And hopefully, by the grace of God Herself, get on with the rest of my very long life.

We all wait for two more hours, during which I feel, truly, as if time has stopped, and the waiting just might kill me before cancer ever does.

“This can’t possibly be good,” I say. “How can it possibly be good if it’s taking this long?”

“Still a bad patient,” Jimmy says, doing everything he possibly can to lighten the mood.

“Might be the worst I’ve ever encountered,” Dr. Ben Kalinsky says, “at least among humans.”

“This isn’t funny,” I say.

“We know,” Ben says quietly.

By now I know my vitals are back to normal. My blood pressure is all the way normal again. My anemia has been addressed; otherwise, the nurse tells me, they wouldn’t even be thinking about releasing me.

And yet with all that, I feel as if I might pass out all over again. If hypotension was a contributing factor to my fainting spell and going down for the count at Jimmy’s bar, as Sam told me it was, this now feels like tension on steroids.

At last, a little before one o’clock, there is a knock on the door and Sam Wylie and Dr. Mike Gellis come walking into my room.

As they enter, I realize I have backed myself into a corner of the room without even realizing I’ve done that.

“Gee,” I say, just to say something to alleviate the tension, at least for me, “that didn’t take long.”

“We wanted to be sure before we talked to you,” Sam Wylie says.

“Sure,” I say. “You guys are doctors. You’re not like lawyers.” I laugh nervously. “You can’t make things up.”

She smiles. “Let somebody else talk for a change.”

“I’ll shut it now,” I say.

Ben comes over and stands next to me and takes my hand. Jimmy is on the other side of me.

“When we looked at the CT scan, we thought there had to be some kind of mistake,” Mike Gellis says. “But then the MRI confirmed it.”

I look across the room and see Sam Wylie start to cry.

“Tell me, Sam,” I say.

She takes a deep breath and keeps crying.

“The tumor is gone,” she says.

I feel all the air go out of my body.

The best I can do in the moment is this: “Gone where?”

And the esteemed Dr. Michael Gellis, whom I have never heard ever utter anything resembling a bad word, smiles and says, “Beats the shit out of me.”

Then I am crying, and starting to slide down the wall, until Jimmy and Dr. Ben Kalinsky each grab an arm to catch me.

“We got you,” Jimmy Cunniff says, and then I can see that he’s crying, too.