I did not weep sitting by the cardiology fellow that day, but did on scores of other occasions at work over the next months. I wept nearly any time I was by myself for even a few moments, and occasionally when I was with a patient or colleague I was personally close to, and who I knew would not only understand but want to share my grief. A surge of emotion would surface the dozens of times a day I thought of Zach, or when something reminded me of him. I took care, for example, not to glance toward the large westerly window of our tenth-floor hospital conference room, with its unimpeded view of the Rocky Mountains, which Zach, a professional pilot, saw every day as he took off in the morning and banked west, and saw again upon returning in the evening accompanied by a majestic sunset or a star-filled sky with a full or partial moon. On one occasion, sitting in the echo reading room and waiting an extraordinarily long time for a study to load on the computer, with a young colleague in the seat next to me-she pregnant with her first child-I thought out loud, "If this thing doesn't come up soon, I'm going to cry."
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