“You’re a very smart lady,” said a voice only slightly muffled by a surgical mask. “You know that?”

“Really, I am?” I slurred. “Why?”

“Because you followed your instincts,” said the doctor. “Because you paid attention to the voice in your head.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. So what did you find out?”

Sriram S. Iyer, an interventional cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital, in New York City, had just finished an angiogram. And, flattering as his words were, he was not all smiles. “Well, it’s more complicated than we’d hoped,” he said. “You have two major arteries that are 80 percent blocked. We need to do some more tests, and then we’ll talk about bypass surgery.”

I must have looked really shocked and upset. I was shocked and upset. “Bypass?” I said. Bypass surgery was definitely not in any future I could imagine. It just didn’t fit with the image I had of myself. “Don’t worry,” Dr. Iyer said. “There’s good news. Your heart’s in perfect condition. There’s no damage anywhere. You’ve got the heart of a 30-year-old.”

“Yeah, and the arteries of the 2,000-Year-Old Man. Tell me the part again about how smart I am.”