WEBVTT - Code Blue Cafeteria 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.320 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. This semi conscious 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:10.560 woman moaning loudly on the bench wasn't just anyone. This 0:00:10.760 --> 0:00:14.040 was Jane, my partner of thirty years. What was happening? 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.040 Was she dying? She sure looked like she was dying. 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:20.440 I desperately wanted to help her, but I couldn't suppress 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:23.760 my fear and confusion long enough to think straight. All 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:26.680 the usual tricks we doctors used to create a self 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:30.760 protected distance between an acubely suffering patient and our own psyches, 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:34.040 the space that allows us to make an objective, rational 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:38.400 plan to help. They weren't working. They couldn't work. This 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:39.000 was Jane. 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:47.040 That's doctor Barrett Rowlins, oncologist, cancer researcher, professor at Harvard 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:51.000 Medical School, an author of the recent memoir In Sickness, 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:56.400 Barrett is a stunning story of love and subterfuge, secrecy 0:00:56.680 --> 0:01:00.880 and honor, loyalty and heartbreak, and the way that two 0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:15.280 brilliant people worked over time to keep themselves in the dark. 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:20.360 I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets. The secrets 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:23.240 that are kept from us, secrets we keep from others, 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:32.440 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. Usually I start 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:35.240 by asking my guests to tell me about the landscape 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:37.520 of their childhoods. But in your case, I'm going to 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:40.000 start in a different place, which is tell me how 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:41.840 you and Jane met oh. 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:45.720 I would love to. I was a medical resident at 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:49.320 the Boston Hospital, one of the Harvard Teaching hospitals, and 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:54.480 Jane was a third year medical student at Harvard Medical School. 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:58.320 So Jane was doing her internal medicine rotation, one of 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:01.520 the core rotations that medical students are required to take, 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:03.360 and she was doing it at the hospital where I 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:07.200 was working. The way that the hierarchy goes in the 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:10.880 hospital is that a resident like myself at that time, 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:14.359 as a senior resident, I was in charge of two teams, 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:16.320 one of which I ran, another one was run by 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:18.520 a junior resident, and then we had some interns working 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:21.600 with us, and then the medical students would be right 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:24.760 at the bottom of the totem pole. So there were 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:27.119 two female medical students who are going to be on 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:29.600 our joint team, one of my team, one or the 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:32.880 other team. So I hadn't met my students yet. But 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:37.280 one of my jobs at the hospital as the senior resident, 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:39.600 the nights that I was on call. I needed to 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:43.200 figure out how many beds were available in the intensive 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:45.680 care unit. In case anybody on the regular wards got 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:48.320 really sick, I would know what the capacity was for 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:50.639 transferring them. So I was walking through the intensive care 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:54.440 unit counting beds that I looked up and walking into 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:59.960 the intensive care unit was this tall, willowy, gorgeous woman, 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:03.040 you know, decked out in a short white coat, which 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:06.120 is the humiliating sort of costume that the third year 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:09.480 medical students have to wear. But she superseded the limitations 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:13.200 of her uniform and she walked up to me and 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:16.360 started asking me about some patient who was in the 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:19.040 intensive care unit. And you know, I didn't really know 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:21.919 who was in the intensive care unit because I wasn't 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:24.160 running the unit. I was only in their counting bits. 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:27.799 And her intern or resident had sent her into the 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:29.880 unit to find out how their patient was doing that 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:32.280 they had transferred the night before. A perfect thing for 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:34.800 a medical student to go do. But you know, again, 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:37.200 she was talking to the wrong person. So I said 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:39.760 to her, do you understand my role here? Thinking that 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:42.640 I would then sort of instruct her about what the 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:45.280 various roles are with the people that she would meet whatever. 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:48.280 Jane would tell this story, and she dined out in 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:51.080 this story a lot. She would say that I asked 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:54.600 her that question in the following way, do you understand 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:59.880 my role here? In other words, supercilious, obnoxious, And it 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:03.720 didn't matter how many times I tried to sort of 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:06.520 fight against that story. When she would tell it, she 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:10.720 told it so well that nobody ever believed that. It 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:13.120 wasn't a jerk when I talked to her about this. 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:15.560 But eventually, you know, I explained to her what the 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:18.840 roles were, and that was that. But our eyes had locked. 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:20.960 I don't want to say love at first sight, but 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:22.839 there was certainly a lot of interest at first sight. 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:26.440 And from that moment on we tried to find ways 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:28.600 to flirt with each other. If she was writing a 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:30.920 note in the chart, I would find some reason to 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:32.880 write a note in another chart, and we'd stand next 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:35.440 to each other and our hands would brush against each other, 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:40.320 you know, stuff like that. The most striking sort of 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:44.000 flirtation story, and this one we both agreed on, was 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:46.640 that another one of my jobs as a senior resident 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:49.479 was to work in the emergency room and see acutely 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:52.560 ill patients in the site who gets admitted. And one 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:55.320 of the jobs of a third year medical student to 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.760 sort of learn the ropes of medicine, was for every 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:01.360 patient that they admitted it were taken care of, they 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:04.600 were supposed to look at the urine from that patient 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:08.520 under a microscope. And in those sort of benighted times, 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:12.840 there was exactly one microscope in the whole hospital that 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:15.000 students could use, and it happened to be in the 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:17.280 emergency room, and Jay knew that, and she knew that 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:20.320 I was working there, so she kept trying to get 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:24.800 urine from her patients. And what she didn't remember was 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:28.360 that she was actually assigned to a ward of patients 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:31.240 who had chronic renal failure. In fact, they weren't making 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:33.520 any urine, and the word they were on didn't have 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:36.599 any bathrooms because nobody was making any urine. So after 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:40.000 three or four days of frustration and coming to this realization, 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:42.880 she went into a bathroom in another part of the 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:46.440 hospital and peed into a cup herself and brought her 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:49.359 own urine down to the emergency room so that she 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:51.720 could look at pretending it was one of her patients. 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:55.240 And she ran into me and we sort of bonded 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:58.440 over this really romantic little cup of urine that she 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:01.159 was looking at under the microscope. Things just sort of 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:03.760 snowballed from there. I didn't actually ask her out until 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:06.560 she had rotated off the service, but that's where it began. 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:15.200 When Barrett meets Jane, they both come to the relationship 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:19.520 carrying their histories. Barrett has an ex wife and a 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:23.599 three year old daughter named Anna, who he adores, and Jane. 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:28.200 Jane has her quirks. During their courtship, they're quick to 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:32.800 fall into young love. They find one another extraordinary, but 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:37.560 there are other forces at work. Barrett writes festooned with 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:42.640 bright red warning flags plus sirens flashing lights, but I 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:46.040 didn't see them. I was too far gone to let 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:47.000 it keep us apart. 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:54.039 Jane lived in Cambridge, and when I went to her apartment, 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:57.560 I was kind of flabbergasted to see that it was 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:01.880 utterly infested with cockroaches. I mean it was like something 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:05.000 out of a David Cronberg movie. It was really frightening, 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:08.880 and I was, let's say, put off by the environment. 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:12.800 Jane acted as if there was nothing wrong, and she 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:15.000 had this odd habit of, yeah, we'd be in the 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:17.760 middle of the conversation or watching TV or something, and 0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:21.080 cockroach would go across the wall and she'd just reach 0:07:21.120 --> 0:07:23.800 out with her bare hand and crush it. And I thought, 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:26.600 you know, okay, So I had a balance that ad 0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:28.400 against all the good stuff, and the good stuff went 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:31.480 out there. Another example was in those days, Jane was 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:36.080 still smoking cigarettes and the sheets on her bed were 0:07:36.520 --> 0:07:40.600 just riddled with these holes that cigarette ash had made. 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:42.840 And then when I asked her what it was, she said, yeah, 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:44.800 you know, they smoke it in bed, and you know, 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:48.720 the ash falls and it burns a little hole. She 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:52.200 never changed, she never did anything about this. This was 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:54.520 just sort of part of her thing and she just 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:57.440 didn't think about it. And then there was the night 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:01.720 before I began my fellow ship at Dana Farber in 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:04.440 medical oncology. You know, I completed my residency and now 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:06.920 I was going to do some specialty training, and it 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:09.560 was pretty high stakes for me, this sort of shift 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:11.880 to doing the fellowship, especially at a place like Dana 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:14.440 Farber with its reputation, and so I was a little 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:17.440 on edge. But still the night before I started, there 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:18.880 was a party that we were going to go to, 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:21.800 and Jada's didn't show up. She just never came and 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:24.400 I was getting more and more sort of worried about her. 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:27.480 And finally, you know, it got to be like eleven 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:29.320 or twelve o'clock at night and I needed to get 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.360 to sleep before starting my fellowship and got home called 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:34.319 her a bunch of times, you know, no answer. Then 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:37.520 finally she did answer the phone around one in the morning, 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:41.800 and it turned out that that night she had gone 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:45.160 to her ex boyfriend's house. One of these flashing red 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:47.000 lights was that when she started going out with me, 0:08:47.559 --> 0:08:50.439 she was still involved in this relationship with an older guy. 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:53.360 Guy was older than both Jane and myself, and she 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:55.960 hadn't stopped that relationship when she started with me, and 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:58.400 she was going to use that night to stop the relationship. 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:00.520 But you know, one thing led to an other, she 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:02.839 said to me, and she ended up going to bed 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:05.840 with a guy, and I was floored. We had sort 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:07.320 of planned all this stuff, we were going to move 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:09.560 in together. I thought things are moving forward, and then 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:13.280 she does this. And her explanation to me was, you know, 0:09:13.400 --> 0:09:17.280 she was having breakup sex. And I may be not 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:20.280 the most sophisticated guy in the world. And one of 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.000 the pieces of evidence for that is that I hadn't 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:24.920 heard of breakup sex. I mean, I now understand that 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:27.000 it's a thing, but at the time, it didn't feel 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:28.679 like a thing, and I was really fear as I 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:31.800 felt betrayed. I thought that she was sort of playing 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:34.480 with me and playing with this guy. I was pretty 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:38.559 angry and ended up trying not to have any contact 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:41.400 with her, and that lasted all of about forty eight hours, 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:43.680 and then we got back together and I just decided, 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:46.480 as I decided about so many things in the future, 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:48.760 I decided, I'm just not going to think about this. 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:49.719 Everything's flying now. 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:52.600 And it's funny. It's something that I've heard over the years, 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:55.040 which is that everything that you need to know about 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:59.240 somebody's marriage can actually be discerned on the first date 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:04.000 they're somewhere. Yeah, of course, with the twenty twenty hindsight, 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:06.800 but still it seems like there was, you know, this 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:12.079 intoxicating combination of great love and admiration. And also one 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:13.880 of the taglines for this show is the secrets we 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:17.160 keep from ourselves. In a way, you were already, it 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:19.640 seems to me, beginning with kind of a secret that 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:21.760 you were keeping from yourself, which was there are these 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:24.040 bright red warning lights, and I am going to ignore them. 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:26.160 Yeah, I think that's exactly accurate. 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:32.720 Barrett and Jane move in together. Both of their careers 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:36.480 are in a state of ascendancy. Jane lets Barrett know 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:38.880 right from the start that she does not want to 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:42.160 have children. She's entirely focused on her work and wants 0:10:42.200 --> 0:10:44.800 to keep it that way. The idea of making a 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:46.800 family together is a non starter. 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:50.520 When I think about that time, I think of sort 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:54.240 of three threads that we were following. The most straightforward 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:58.720 one is career. I was climbing the academic ladder as 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:02.120 first a fellow and then a junior faculty member at 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:05.160 Dana Farberton Harvard. And you know, that requires a fair 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:07.559 amount of focus to stay on the track and a 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:09.400 fair amount of accomplishment to be able to stay on 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:11.520 the track. And I was lucky enough to be able 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:13.520 to do that. And I do that's not false modesty. 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:15.600 I really do think that I was lucky. I'm not 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:19.520 as smart or as naturally gifted around sciences so my 0:11:19.559 --> 0:11:22.640 colleagues were, but I was able to make career for myself. Jane, 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:25.400 you know, was several years behind me, still trying to 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:28.199 decide where she was going to do her internship and residency, 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.120 what sub specialty she was going to be on. But still, 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:35.400 because she started late, she really had her eye on 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:37.679 where she wanted to go, and so she was working 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:40.719 very hard to make sure that she was sufficiently accomplished 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.079 so that all options would be open to her at 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:46.520 Harvard or wherever she decided she wanted to go. And 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:50.840 Jane was incredibly smart, incredibly quick, and would be able 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:52.600 to do that as long as she performed well. So 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:56.040 we were both really focused on career and advancement, and 0:11:56.040 --> 0:11:59.679 that was one threat. A second threat was I learned 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:03.679 very very early on that the rules of our relationship 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:05.800 were going to be that Jane would be dependent upon 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:10.960 me for every practical matter. She didn't drive, I'd have 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:13.320 to drive her wherever she'd wanted to go. I was 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:16.719 responsible for doing the grocery shopping. I was responsible for 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:20.120 the laundry. I was responsible for finances. You know, you 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:22.280 could just go down the list of everything that's required 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:25.319 to maintain a household, and that all ended up being 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:30.280 my responsibility. She really liked to just lie in bed 0:12:30.400 --> 0:12:33.280 when she wasn't busy working. You know, she was an 0:12:33.320 --> 0:12:37.760 Olympic level sleeper and napper, and that left all the 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:41.240 practical stuff to me. Jane and I worked at the 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.480 same place she was at. Dana Farber also is incredibly 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:46.400 wonderful to be able to be working at the same 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:48.480 place and we knew all the same people. We went 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:51.120 into work together and went home together. We worked very 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.360 hard during the week, and again another domestic chore is 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:57.000 making meals, and so I made all of our meals. 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:01.280 But on Friday night we had eight night. On Friday nights, 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:04.160 it was my job to make a reservation at a 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:06.800 restaurant somewhere in Boston or Cambridge, and we would go 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:09.640 out to yat and we would sort of review the 0:13:09.679 --> 0:13:12.760 week's events and gossip a little bit, and we wouldn't 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:15.680 linger over dinner because Jane wanted to get home. And 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:18.120 the reason she wanted to get home was because as 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:20.680 soon as she walked into the apartment, she would say, 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:23.600 almost every week, she would say, guess what time it is? 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:27.000 And I'd say, what time is it, deer, and she'd say, 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:30.800 it's bedtime, and she would start shedding her clothes as 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:34.439 she was walking to the bedroom, crawl into bed. And 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:38.079 listeners may think that I'm exaggerating, but she would not 0:13:38.760 --> 0:13:41.240 pretty much get out of bed until Monday morning when 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:43.640 she had to go back to work. She watched TV. 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:48.439 She played Solitaire later you know, computer of games. I 0:13:48.480 --> 0:13:52.439 would bring her her meals in bed and she would 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:55.560 just sleep, wake up, watch little TV or have a meal, 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:58.839 sleep again, you watch movies, sleep again. That was really 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:01.880 essential for her. I think had nothing to do with 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:04.880 the physiology of sleep. I'm still not quite sure what 0:14:04.880 --> 0:14:06.400 it had to do with, but it was an essential 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:10.240 part of her personality that she be disconnected as much 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:13.360 as she could from the real world when the opportunity 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:14.240 presented itself. 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:21.320 And the third thread in this complex braid was Jane's 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:26.920 attitude toward Barrett's very young daughter Anna. Early in their relationship, 0:14:27.360 --> 0:14:30.080 when Jane had learned about Barrett's previous marriage and daughter, 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:33.880 she had said, I waited for you. Why couldn't you 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:38.520 have waited for me? A nonsensical question, But as their 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:42.240 relationship continues, this is a feeling Jane maintains, and it 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:44.880 manifests in her not wanting to have anything to do 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:48.440 with Anna. Not only does she not want children, she 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:51.760 doesn't want a stepchild either. She has no interest in 0:14:51.800 --> 0:14:55.960 Anna and is actively dismissive, always finding a way to 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:58.040 get out of seeing her when Barrett tries to get 0:14:58.040 --> 0:14:58.880 the family together. 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:05.280 There was a real effort on Jane's part to deny 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:09.160 that I had had any other life, and this is 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:11.200 one of the parts of the story that I am 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:15.280 most deeply ashamed of. You know, there is a lot 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:18.720 of complicity in the kinds of secrets that couples keep, 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:21.480 but in this particular case, a lot of Jane's secrets 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:24.880 could not have been kept had I not been complicit. 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:31.960 And to my undying shame, I suppressed my underlying desire 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:34.000 to spend time with my daughter so that I wouldn't 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:36.200 make Jane angry or any more jealous than she had 0:15:36.200 --> 0:15:38.280 to be. And I can't begin to tell you how 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:40.040 terrible I feel about that, but it's what I did. 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:44.040 What I'm thinking about right now, Barrett, is it's almost 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:47.040 like the emotional arc of how you held all this 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:50.200 and how it made you feel. Because what you're describing, 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:53.520 and this is earlish in your relationship was the initial 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:57.640 red flags, and then the degree of being taken care 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:03.040 of that Jane required, and then her inability and complete 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:05.000 lack of desire to have anything to do with with 0:16:05.080 --> 0:16:08.400 your child during those years. How did you hold that? 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:10.560 Where did you put that? And how did it make 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:12.720 you feel about Jane during that time? 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:16.400 Early in the relationship, I would be angry. I would 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:18.800 try to suppress it, but it would bubble up, and 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:21.520 when it did bubble up, I would be frustrated. One 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:23.960 of these things happened. I just made Jane her lunch 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:25.720 and give it to her in bed, and then she 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:28.760 asked me to do something, or maybe she had refused 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:32.160 to see Anna the next day. And then as I 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:35.520 walked back to my little home office, I kicked a 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:38.680 huge hole in the drywall. And I surprised myself because 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:41.840 I'm not a demonstrative kind of guy, and when I 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:45.080 get angry, I really don't yell on screen and pound 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:48.320 the table. But clearly there was a lot of feeling 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:50.400 in there that came out in my right foot. I 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:53.000 think I remember sort of thinking to myself, Oh, holy shit, 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:55.320 this stuff is really bothering me. But I didn't do 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:58.000 anything about it. What I worked at, instead of dealing 0:16:58.040 --> 0:16:59.960 with the anger like a healthy person, what I want 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:02.800 work that was suppressing it even more so that I 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:03.280 wouldn't have. 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:23.120 Said, Jane, We'll be right back. Years pass as Barrett 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:26.719 tamps down his feelings of anger, and the couple stays 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:30.639 deeply immersed in their very intense work. What could be 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:35.320 more intense than the work of saving lives. Eventually they 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:39.160 moved to a beautiful apartment in Boston's Back Bay, overlooking 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:41.680 the spot where fireworks are set off each fourth of 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:46.480 July at Dana Farber. Barrett and Jane have lunch together 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:50.119 every day. They're attached to the hip, and though they 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:53.399 have a world of colleagues and friends, and though a 0:17:53.520 --> 0:17:57.119 kind of hero worship surrounds Jane, it's really just the 0:17:57.160 --> 0:17:59.600 two of them. Even when they seem sociable. 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:04.000 We were very much in a bubble, which is kind 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:08.000 of ironic because this business, the lunch table, sort of 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:11.440 looms large in James legend. In fact, some of the 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:15.080 senior faculty members used to derisively call it Jane's high table. 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:19.399 There were lots of our contemporaries, and especially a younger 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:22.600 junior faculty, who would love to sit with us and 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:26.240 have lunch. And Jane, she was clever, and she was witty, 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:30.320 and she actually cared quite a lot about junior faculty. 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:32.639 You know, one of the reasons she was revered is 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:36.080 that she was just an outstanding mentor. She took incredible 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:39.919 care of the junior faculty that some of whom she 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:43.159 was responsible for, some of whom she wasn't. It's just 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:46.280 so obvious that these were surrogates for the children she 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:49.520 didn't have. So the lunch table, which involved a lot 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:51.680 of laughing and a lot of stories, and there was 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:54.000 a rule that you couldn't talk about your works, which 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:56.880 meant that anybody could then be there. Nobody was trying 0:18:56.880 --> 0:18:58.880 to jockey for position based on the kind of stuff 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:02.159 they were working on. That was very, very social, and 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:05.840 people felt like they were our friends because we were 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:09.000 sitting around the lunch table having these raucous times. But 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:15.040 Jane would adamantly refuse, for the most part, to have 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:20.840 contact with people like that, colleagues, friends outside of that environment. 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:22.600 When she was home, she was home. 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:27.560 And also her family of origin, her mother, her brother, 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:32.520 her sister, you describe as Jane really not feeling close 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:32.880 to them. 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:37.280 She really pushed them away. There was sort of no 0:19:37.640 --> 0:19:43.920 objective rationale. Her family was lovely. She would tolerate calls 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:47.600 from her mother she would tolerate calls from her brother. 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:51.600 She actually would not tolerate calls from her sister. From 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:53.320 my point of view, these were all lovely people, but 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:56.000 I was team James, so I really couldn't do much 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:56.399 about them. 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:03.560 Barrett and Jane have their occasional friction, as every couple does, 0:20:04.160 --> 0:20:06.920 but for the most part, they've built a fulfilling life 0:20:06.960 --> 0:20:12.480 together professionally and personally. In many ways, their relationship from 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:18.160 the outside is enviable. It's twenty twelve. They are about 0:20:18.200 --> 0:20:21.359 three decades into their marriage, both at the pinnacle of 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:26.080 their careers. Jane is sixty. One week they head to 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:30.000 their usual lunch in the hospital cafeteria. That evening, they'll 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:34.800 go on their usual Friday date, business as usual, but 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:38.720 in an instant, the ordinary instant, as Joan Didion has 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:41.760 called it, catastrophe strikes. 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:44.439 It was just a typical day. In fact, it was 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:47.680 a Friday, and I had made reservations at our favorite 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:50.679 Mexican restaurant for date night. And what we would do 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:53.080 on you every day is I would come by Jane's 0:20:53.080 --> 0:20:54.520 office and pick her up, and then we'd walk to 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:56.800 lunch together. So we're walking down the hallway to lunch, 0:20:57.920 --> 0:21:01.040 and Jane Jay was very tall. She's feet even sometimes 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:03.639 sixty one when she was really standing up straight, but 0:21:03.720 --> 0:21:07.280 she had this sort of loping gait like tall people have, 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:09.399 and it was always a little slower than I was. 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:11.679 But that day she was even slower than usual. You know, 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:13.160 I had the sort of what I called a Jane 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:16.320 adjusted gate that I would adopt, but she was even slower. 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:17.960 And I remember turning to her and saying, you know, Hun, 0:21:17.960 --> 0:21:20.320 are you okay? And she said, yeah, yeah, it's fine. 0:21:20.359 --> 0:21:23.719 And we turned the corner to the cafeteria and she 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:27.159 just plopped herself down on a little bench and her 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:31.240 lips were blue. She was breathing very hard, her eyes 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:34.040 were closed, and you know, I said, what's going on? 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:35.960 Are you all right? She said she just looked at 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:39.000 me and said, you know, really couldn't tell me what 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:41.600 was going on. So I was scared to death, and 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:43.439 I thought, you know, I've got to get her to 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:46.359 an emergency room. She obviously can't walk anywhere anymore. And 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:49.920 I look around for a wheelchair, and you would think, 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:51.760 of course, in a hospital he'd find a wheelchair at 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:54.879