双语·当呼吸化为空气 到朋友家已经要临近黄昏了

到朋友家已经要临近黄昏了。这里在曼哈顿以北八十多公里，是哈得孙河附近的冷泉小镇。多年来交往的十几个最亲密的朋友全都出来迎接我，他们热情的欢呼中夹杂着快乐的小孩子们吵吵嚷嚷的声音。我跟他们一个接一个地拥抱，不过很快就聊到让我脸色阴沉的事了。
It was late afternoon when I reached the house in Cold Spring, fifty miles north of Manhattan on the Hudson River, and was greeted by a dozen of my closest friends from years past, their cheers of welcome mixed with the cacophony of young, happy children. Hugs ensued, and an icecold dark and stormy made its way to my hand.

“露西没来？”
“No Lucy?”

“工作上突然有急事，”我说，“快出发了才通知的。”
“Sudden work thing,” I said. “Very last-minute.”

“哎呀，真扫兴！”
“Oh, what a bummer!”

“话说，能不能让我把行李放下休息一下？”
“Say, do you mind if I put my bags down and rest a bit?”

我本来希望能远离手术室几天，睡眠充足，好好休息，多多放松，简单地说，就是过过正常的生活，能让我的症状得到缓解，背痛和疲累都能控制在可以忍受的范围内。但一两天之后，很显然没有任何缓解。
I had hoped a few days out of the OR, with adequate sleep, rest, and relaxation—in short, a taste of a normal life—would bring my symptoms back into the normal spectrum for back pain and fatigue. But after a day or two, it was clear there would be no reprieve.

早饭时间我通常都在呼呼大睡，午饭时才摇摇晃晃地走到餐桌前，盯着盘子里满满的豆焖肉和蟹腿，却完全没有胃口。到吃晚饭的时候，我已经筋疲力尽，准备继续睡觉了。有时候我会给孩子们读点故事，但他们一般都在我身上和周围玩耍，一边跳，一边大叫。（“孩子们，我觉得保罗叔叔需要休息。你们到那边去玩好吗？”）我想起十五年前，请了一天假去做夏令营辅导员，坐在北加州的湖岸边，开心的孩子们在玩复杂的夺旗游戏，把我当作障碍物。而我读着一本名为《死亡与哲学》的书。过去，每每想起这很不搭的一幕，都会发笑：一个二十岁的小伙子，在湖光山色、鸟鸣绿树、四岁孩子嬉闹的一片祥和之中，却埋头于一本关于死亡的黑暗之书。而此时此刻，我才感到命运冥冥中的交会：只是太浩湖换成哈得孙河；陌生的孩子变成朋友的小孩；那本让我和周围一派生机勃勃分离开来的死亡之书，变成我自己行将就木的身体。
I slept through breakfasts and shambled to the lunch table to stare at ample plates of cassoulet and crab legs that I couldn’t bring myself to eat. By dinner, I was exhausted, ready for bed again. Sometimes I read to the kids, but mostly they played on and around me, leaping and yelling. (“Kids, I think Uncle Paul needs a rest. Why don’t you play over there?”) I remembered a day off as a summer camp counselor, fifteen years prior, sitting on the shore of a lake in Northern California, with a bunch of joyous kids using me as an obstacle in a convoluted game of Capture the Flag, while I read a book called Death and Philosophy. I used to laugh at the incongruities of that moment: a twenty-year-old amid the splendor of trees, lake, mountains, the chirping of birds mixed with the squeal of happy fouryear-olds, his nose buried in a small black book about death. Only now, in this moment, I felt the parallels: instead of Lake Tahoe, it was the Hudson River; the children were not strangers’, but my friends’; instead of a book on death separating me from the life around me, it was my own body, dying.