“My life is like the space shuttle exploding,” my friend Harriet says into the phone and takes a deep breath. “While it’s in mid-orbit, and a chunk falls off and lands in someone’s back yard and catches fire and the whole block burns down.”

Harriet and I have been friends since we were twelve. She recently gave up her dream of becoming a brilliant biologist, dropped out of graduate school, and moved into a shaggily-carpeted apartment overlooking the town’s recycling plant. Last week she called in hysterics because she discovered that one of her arms was several quarters of an inch longer than the other. She thinks her life is an unmitigated failure. I am glad to hear her voice.

“Your life is not a -”

“I’m pregnant!” Harriet blurts out, and then it sounds like the phone falls off a truck and tumbles into a stream. There is a soft gurgling sound that goes on for a little while and I start to picture fish swimming up and nibbling at the microphone to which my ear is connected.

Then Harriet comes back. “Sorry, I’ve been not peeing all day so I would have enough pee for these tests. I’ve done seven of them. I thought my bladder would explode.”

It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m on my couch, using my non-phone hand to flip through a brochure filled with pictures of people in wheelchairs, smiling. Three weeks ago my doctor told me that I have MS. I’ve told Harriet, my parents, and the pimply kid at the supermarket who found me crying in the bakery section. Having MS is the kind of thing one never expects to actually happen in real life.

“Wow,” I say. “Ok.”

“Seven tests,” Harriet says, like she’s finally gotten the answer to a really tough math problem. Then she starts sobbing.

For a second it’s like my brain kicks into a gear for the first time in weeks. I start piloting responses in my head. Things come to me like: ‘Do you think it’s the cop’s? From the night in the cab?’ or ‘At least your mom will stop nagging you about a grandkid, right?’ or ‘Remember when I called godmother on your first-born?’ I am usually pretty good at times like this. But now I am nervous.

Neither of us says anything, so I abandon my responses and toss the smiling cripples brochure into my bag. “I’m driving down. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

—

I buzz Harriet’s door 5 minutes early – it’s like I’m an overachiever, even just at showing up – but Harriet answers almost immediately. Her apartment has that weird system where you have to press the talk button before you press the door button even when you know exactly who it is, and when you press the talk button it’s weird if you don’t say anything, so I hear Harriet’s static-y voice singing “I Will Survive” for a few seconds before the door clicks and the singing recedes back into the wall. A climb two flights and when I turn the corner on the last flight of stairs, I see Harriet outside her open door in her rocketship pajamas, looking like death.

“You’re pregnant, not dying,” I say too loudly. Harriet gives me a look, like: great, now everybody knows. I give her a look back, like: oh, give me a break, like you talk to your neighbors anyway and walk into the apartment. It is messier than normal. The one houseplant has wilted in its faux-basket on the coffee-table. Harriet closes the door and throws herself onto the couch, limbs flailing. I sit down next to her. The cushions are too soft and I sink about a foot towards the floor. We don’t say anything for a bit.

“So, what are you going to do?” I ask.

“Don’t know,” Harriet says.

“You’re not dying.” I am all about the basic and irrefutable truths. I can see one of the smiling cripples popping his head out of my bag. He looks happy. “We’ll figure this out,” I say to Harriet.

After another 30 seconds I extract myself from the couch and walk over to the computer room, which is also a kind of walk-in closet that Harriet’s filled with old books and clothes that don’t fit and all of the graduate school stuff she was too depressed to throw away. Boxes and boxes of stuff. The computer isn’t on, so I hit the button. It whines and sputters, like it might have a steam engine or an elaborate wrench and pulley system that powers it. Harriet walks in and I swivel to look at her, trying hard to project my best “everything is under control” pheromones in her direction. It is a new approach I’m trying. I think it might be called denial, but I’m trying not to think about it.

“If we’re going to go see a doctor,” I say, “you’re going to have to change.” I’m not sure when i decided that this is what we were going to do, but it sounds like the kind of thing I would decide. I generally like to get all the facts. I know how a refrigerator works. I can tell you the distinguishing characteristics of the world’s deadliest mushrooms.

“How, exactly, are we going to find a doctor on a Saturday?” Harriet is the pessimist – every relationship has one.

“I don’t know. But I know you’re going to need some clothes.”