Words on a patient's sticky note that Dr. Sibley Crane turned into a dinner-party punchline—"Impending doom is a symptom now. We live in magnificent times."

Crane touched his sternum while telling the story. Several people saw. One asked

if he was all right. He said, "Don't start diagnosing me while I'm working."

He was not working. What he lost, slowly, was the knowledge that the terror

remained inside the joke.