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I’VE BARELY SIGNED MY readmittance papers at Meier when the doctors start poking and prodding and giving me everything except a pregnancy test.

The trip back here happened at the suggestion of my longtime personal physician, Dr. Samantha Wiley, who has been my friend much longer than she’s been my doctor, all the way back to the ninth grade when we had adjacent desks.

“There’re some new clinical trials, like brand new, that I think we should take a shot at,” Sam said.

“You really mean last shot to win the game, don’t you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to, doc.”

“How about you keep playing lawyer, and I play doctor.”

“Not the way you played it with Tommy Morgenthau when we were kids,” I said.

“Have a nice trip,” she said.

They have their own state-of-the-art lab at Meier, which means that new blood work will be back to Dr. Ludwig by tomorrow morning. The Meier Clinic is not much for wasting time, especially not with so many people running out of time.

“I don’t like to brag,” I say to the nurse who speaks the best English. “But I feel like I gave you my top-shelf stuff today.”

She stares at me blankly.

“Ja,” she says.

Same blank stare.

“Easy for you to say,” I tell her, and then head for my room.

I end up with the same one I had on my first visit. Two rooms, actually—like a one-bedroom suite at a five-star hotel—with a lovely view of the grounds and of the mountains in the distance.

After a long plane ride followed by a long car ride and then a morning filled with the poking and prodding, I want to breathe in the incredibly cool, clean mountain air.

And try to feel alive.

It’s a walk I know well by now, looping up toward the mountains, around a lake whose name I can’t recall, down toward a lush green valley, and finally back toward Meier. I would tell myself that I feel close to heaven up here, but that’s a game I don’t like to play.

A major part of the reality of being a cancer patient is the waiting game, going from one test to another, with hours of waiting overnight for good news.

Or at least not more bad news.

Waiting and wishing and hoping that this is the time when the governor calls, before it’s too late, to tell you that your sentence has been commuted.

So I walk into the late afternoon.

I walk and replay the proposal from Dr. Ben inside my head.

And immediately start second-guessing myself all over again, wondering, if I really do only have a handful of months left, why I would be more willing to spend them defending Rob Jacobson than with a man who loves me as unconditionally as Ben Kalinsky does.

Not just having Ben as my boyfriend, even though that word sounds sillier than ever to me, but as my husband.

Until death do us part.

After I have walked what must be a couple of miles from the clinic, I’m hit with my usual late-day fatigue or jet lag or both.

I turn back and walk toward the sunset, my eyes shielded by my ancient, faded blue Mets cap and sunglasses.

I pull the hat down tighter to cut down on the glare and suddenly feel a laugh escape my throat, imagining myself to be in disguise, even this far from civilization.

They’ll never find me up here, I tell myself.

They’ll never take me alive.

Then I’m laughing uncontrollably, not sure why, unable to stop myself, before I feel more coming on, despite all the beauty around me.

I’m heading up the last hill back to Meier when I see the ghost walking toward me.