"Look, a little radioactive is like a little pregnant or a little dead, in my opinion. And if you ain't worried about it how come you sold your Benz?"

"That's not why I sold it."

"I don't want to be rayed, if it's all the same to you," he irritably said.

"You're not going to be rayed."

But he railed on, "I can't believe you'd expose me and my car to uranium."

"Marino," I tried again, "a lot of my patients come into the morgue with very grim diseases like tuberculosis, hepatitis, meningitis, AIDS. And you've been present for their autopsies, and you've always been safe with me."

He drove fast along the interstate, cutting in and out of traffic.

"I should think that you would know by now that I would never deliberately place you in harm's way," I added.

"Deliberately is right. Maybe you're into something you don't know about," he said. "When was the last time you had a radioactive case?"

"in the first place," I explained, "the case itself is not radioactive, only some microscopic debris associated with it is. And secondly, I do know about radioactivity. I know about X-rays, MRIs and isotopes like cobalt, iodine and technetium that are used to treat cancer. Physicians learn about a lot of things, including radiation sickness. Would you please slow down and choose a lane?"

I stared at him with growing alarm as he eased up on the accelerator. Sweat was beaded on top of his head and rolling down his temples, his face dark red. With jaw muscles clenched, he gripped the steering wheel hard, his breathing labored.

"Pull over," I demanded.

He did not respond.

"Marino, pull over. Now," I repeated in a tone he knew not to resist.

The shoulder was wide and paved on this stretch of 64, and without a word I got out and walked around to his side of the car. I motioned with my thumb for him to get out, and he did. The back of his uniform was soaking wet and I could see the outline of his undershirt through it.

"I think I must be getting the flu," he said.

I adjusted the seat and mirrors.

., I don't know what's wrong with me." He mopped his face with a handkerchief.

"You're having a panic attack," I said. "Take deep breaths and try to calm down. Bend over and touch your toes. Go limp, relax."

"Anybody sees you driving a city car, my ass is on report," he said, pulling the shoulder harness across his chest.

"Right now the city should be grateful that you're not driving anything," I said. "You shouldn't be operating any machinery at this moment. In fact, you should probably be sitting in a psychiatrist's office." I looked over at him and sensed his shame.

"I don't know what's wrong," he mumbled, staring out his window.

"Are you still upset about Doris?"

"I don't know if I ever told you about one of the last big fights she and I had before she left." He mopped his face again. "It was about these damn dishes she got at a yard sale. I mean, she'd been thinking about getting new dishes for a long firne, right? And I come home from work one night and here's this big set of blaze orange dishes spread out on the dining-room table." He looked at me.

"You ever heard of Fiesta Ware?"

"Vaguely."

"Well, there was something in the glaze of this particular line that I come to find out will set a Geiger counter off."

" It doesn't take much radioactivity to set a Geiger counter off." I made that point again.

"Well, there'd been stories written about the stuff, which had been taken off the market," he went on. "Doris wouldn't listen. She thought I was overreacting."

"And you probably were."

"Look, people are phobic of all kinds of things. Me, it's radiation. You know how much I hate even being in the X-ray room with you, and when I turn on the microwave, I leave the kitchen. So I packed up all the dishes and dumped them without telling her where."

He got quiet and wiped his face again. He cleared his throat several times.

Then he said, "A month later she left."

"Listen," I softened my voice, "I wouldn't want to eat off those dishes, either. Even though I know better. I understand fear, and fear isn't always rationales'

"Yeah, Doc, well maybe in my case it is." He opened his window a crack. "I'm afraid of dying. Every morning I get up and think about it, if you want to know. Every day I think I'm going to stroke out or be told I got cancer. I dread going to bed because I'm afraid I'll die in my sleep."

He paused, and it was with great difficulty that he added, "That's the real reason Molly stopped seeing me, if you want to know."

"That wasn't a very kind reason." What he just said hurt me.

"Well-he got more uncomfortable-she's a lot younger than me. And part of the way I feel these days is I don't want to do anything that might exert myself."

"Then you're afraid of having sex."

"Shit," he said, "why don't you just wave it like a flag."

"Marino, I'm a doctor. All I want to do is help, if I can."

"Molly said I made her feel rejected," he went on.

"And you probably did. How long have you had this problem?"

"I don't know, Thanksgiving."

"Did something happen?"

He hesitated again. "Well, you know I've been off my medicine."

"Which medication? Your adrenergic blocker or the finasteride? And no, I didn't know."

"Both."

"Now why would you do anything that foolish?"

"Because when I'm on it nothing works right," he blurted out. "I quit taking it when I started dating Molly.

Then I started again around Thanksgiving after I had a checkup and my blood pressure was really up there and my prostate was getting bad again. It scared me."

"No woman is worth dying for," I said. "And what this is all about is depression, which you're a perfect candidate for, by the way."

"Yeah, it's depressing when you can't do it. You don't understand."

"Of course, I understand. It's depressing when your body fails you, when you get older and have other stressors in your life like change. And you've had a lot of change in the past few years."

"No, what's depressing,' I he said, and his voice was getting louder, "is when you can't get it up. And then sometimes you get it up and it won't go down. And you can't pee when you feel like you got to go, and other times you go when you don't feel like it. And then there's the whole problem of not being in the mood when you got a girlfriend almost young enough to be your daughter." He was glaring at me, veins standing out in his neck. "Yeah, I'm depressed. You're fucking right I am!"

"Please don't be angry with me."

He looked away, breathing hard. -1 want you to make appointments with your cardiologist and your urologist," I said.

"Uh-uh. No way." He shook his head. "This damn new health-care plan I'm on has me assigned to a woman urologist. I can't go in there and tell a woman all this shit."

"Why not? You just told me."

He fell silent, staring out the window. He looked in the side mirror and said, "By the way, some drone in a gold Lexus has been behind us since Richmond."

I looked in the rearview mirror. The car was a newer model and the person driving was talking on the phone.

"Do you think we're being followed?" I asked.

"Hell if I know, but I wouldn't want to pay his damn phone bill."

We were close to Charlottesville, and the gentle landscape we had left had rounded into western hills that were winter-gray between evergreens. The air was colder and there was more snow, although the interstate was dry. I asked Marino if we could turn the scanner off because I was tired of hearing police chatter, and I took 29 North toward the University of Virginia.

For a while, the scenery was sheer rocky faces interspersed with trees spreading from woods to roadsides. Then we reached the outer limits of the campus, and blocks were crowded with places for pizzas and subs, convenience stores and filling stations. The university was still on Christmas break, but my niece was not the only person in the world to ignore that fact. At Scott Stadium, I turned on Maury Avenue, where students perched on benches and rode by on bikes, wearing backpacks or holding satchels that seemed full of work. There were plenty of cars.