“I might die, and you’re the only one I can tell...”-Sharon Stone

I opened my eyes, and there he was standing over me, just inches from my face. He was stroking my head, my hair; God, he was handsome. I wished he were someone who loved me instead of someone whose next words were, “You’re bleeding into your brain.”

It was late September 2001. I was in the ER at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. I asked Dr Handsome, “Will I lose my ability to speak?” He said it’s possible. I needed to call my mom and my sister. They needed to hear this from me while I could still tell them myself.

I called my sister, Kelly. She was as she always is: the most magnificent person I know. Then I called my mom, a more difficult conversation for me, since I didn’t know if she liked me very much. Here I was, dying and insecure all at the same time. She was gardening outside in her yard on top of a mountain in Pennsylvania. She fell apart.

Despite the distance between us, she and my dad arrived in under 24 hours. She ran into the hospital still in her shorts, covered in gardening mud. Years of miscommunication between us fell away in a look. As I lay there knowing that I could die at any second, she stroked my face with her dusty hand and I suddenly felt that my mother loved me.

I called my best friend of more than 20 years, Mimi, and said, “I might die and you are the only one