Stuart: When the team found a donor for his lung transplant, Stuart understood that they would first telephone him at home. If they could not reach him, they would call the pager that he carried with him always. Stuart looked forward to getting the transplant over. But of course, he was also a little apprehensive.
Stuart startled whenever his telephone would ring. He wondered if it was his call for surgery. Sometimes the pager beeped accidentally. His fingers would shake when he dialed a telephone to call the transplant coordinator. "Does this mean that I am not ready for the surgery? Am I afraid?" he asked himself. One night, the team called Stuart to the hospital for transplant. But once there, the team told him that they were not able to use the donor lungs. Stuart was terribly disappointed. And he worried about how nervous he had been in the taxi on the way to the hospital.
After this false alarm, Stuart found that he wondered constantly when the telephone or bellboy would ring. Sometimes he couldn't sleep at night, imagining that the telephone was about to ring. Another candidate noticed that he looked run down. "Are you okay?" she asked. Stuart decided then that he must have some diversion to take his mind off the upcoming transplant. "It is going to happen when it happens, he thought. Meanwhile, I am going to find something to keep myself occupied."