I was inaccessible at work all day today. When I finally checked my voicemail, I had 4 messages from my friend A., 1 e-mail and 2 calls logged on my cell.

A., as you know, is my best friend. For the 10 years that I've known him, all he's talked about is dying before 30.

He's changed his will no less than 10 times and each time he calls to me to confirm that I will inherit most of his estate and to go over his burial plans which I am to execute.

A. has always been in perfect health.

It's a ritual for us to talk about it, mainly because I know it won't happen until we are old and gray, so I take this talk with a grain of salt.

A week ago he called me to tell me that he was wearing a heart monitor because he was unconscious for 3 hours one day a week before and the hospitals didn't know what caused it. They had mentioned arythmia to him, but I told him that's a very common heart condition that people live with all the time.

Sure enough, the monitor came off with no reported threatening conditions. His doctor suggested an exploratory MRI.

The results of the MRI arrived today around 2PM, and over the phone they told him the doctor would want to see him in the morning to discuss the results. Panicked, he asked them to fax the results. Wading through the medical terminology, he learned he has a cyst on the interior membrane of his brain, about 1 inch large, which seems small, but is large enough to have created the vision problems he's been complaining about for a year, the dizziness and now the nausea.

The doctor spoke to him on the phone, and somewhere along the line, brain surgery was mentioned.

I guess it wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't watched a friend die of brain surgery in high school.

I learned all of this when I returned his call with two people standing behind me waiting for my sign off on some paperwork.

I fired off a number of questions, which he wasn't prepared to answer, and quickly shifted gears explaining that this is undoubtably simply treated.

I told him I would meet him for drinks and hung up the phone. I tried to complete some work that I was on deadline to complete, and as if a sign from above, my computer crashed.

"GOD Dammit!" I screamed and looked at my screen in disbelief as my unsaved work disappeared into the great cyber beyond.

Fuck it, I said. I stood up, grabbed my bag, and walked out to meet my best friend at a bar.

I made a joke of the whole thing, offering to webcam the operation and secure corporate sponsors to make it a money making venture. I promised to make T-shirts that say "Save A." and offered to let them drill a hole into my skull too, so we could both go through the process.

We laughed and laughed so hard, I almost feel off my stool. An insane kind of laughter. We haven't laughed like that in a long time.

Exhausted, I said my goodnights and left. Tomorrow he'll find out the severity of the situation and I know he won't sleep a wink until then.

I, in turn, am wiped out with this knowledge but am resolute in my promise to myself to be the voice of reason, the calming influence, the strength.

I am sure this will all work out, if not for him, than out of the sheer factor that I cannot face losing my best friend within 10 months of losing 6 others.

He jokingly said to me shortly after 9/11, if I go, I'm taking you with me. The truth is, I'm afraid he might be right, because I don't think I can live through this again.

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