working only five floors below me. During the first twenty days of my hospitalization, he participated in a prestigious international organ transplant initiative under strict quarantine.
For three weeks, I defended him to my mother, friends, and nurses.
“He can’t leave the unit,” I had repeated like a script. “He’s saving lives.”
Then came the final ten days.
The isolation restrictions ended.
I saw Marcus smiling beside visiting foreign specialists in photos from a hospital gala. Later, he appeared in a local television interview and then onstage accepting a clinical
