Yes. Exactly.
This is one I'd be just as happy to be wrong about.
Another round hit and we bent over the dying boy. Gu’s face was only a few centimeters from mine. There was sweat pouring down his forehead. Even in the dim light of one paraffin lantern, I could see that he was shaking and pale. He looked at the patient, then at the doorway, then at me, and suddenly he said, “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right.” Now, this is a man who has never said a positive thing in his life. Gu was a worrier, a neurotic curmudgeon. If he had a headache, it was a brain tumor; if it looked like rain, this year’s harvest was ruined. This was his way of controlling the situation, his lifelong strategy for always coming out ahead. Now, when reality looked more dire than any of his fatalistic predictions, he had no choice but to turn tail and charge in the opposite direction. “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right.” For the first time everything turned out as he predicted. The Russians never crossed the river and we even managed to save our patient.For years afterward I would tease him about what it took to pry out a little ray of sunshine, and he would always respond that it would take a hell of a lot worse to get him to do it again. Now we were old men, and something worse was about to happen. It was right after he asked me if I was armed. “No,” I said, “why should I be?” There was a brief silence, I’m sure other ears were listening. “Don’t worry,” he said, “everything’s going to be all right.” That was when I realized that this was not an isolated outbreak.
I ended the call and quickly placed another to my daughter in Guangzhou. Her husband worked for China Telecom and spent at least one week of every month abroad. I told her it would be a good idea to accompany him the next time he left and that she should take my granddaughter and stay for as long as they could. I didn’t have time to explain; my signal was jammed just as the first helicopter appeared. The last thing I managed to say to her was “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right.”
I'd rather be wrong about mine than wrong about yours. I was thinking brain tumor. Yours is very operable as long as you move quickly enough.
My dad never even seemed to mind the teflon they put in behind his stomach. He was pretty spunky (well, spunky for an overweight senior) for a while before his brain finally exploded. The doctor said something about a massive stroke, but I think it was from all the stuff he knew.