Hannah hates hot feet, so she often moves barefoot around their house. And she moves quickly. Every year or so, she clips the little toe of her left foot on a table leg or other furniture. Maybe she breaks the toe or probably it’s just a sprain, but she has to elevate her foot, apply ice, and sit still for a couple of days. James loves it. Hannah doesn’t mind it, after an initial indignant rebellious twenty minutes.

But Hannah’s toe-spraining is an injury, not an illness. James is looking at the columns of illness definitions, and he can’t fit this domestic mishap into the category. He continues to ponder the subject now and then as he works on the plan to unravel a family-owned business conglomerate, consisting of an adult movie theater and an Italian delicatessen. The two businesses are about equally profitable, but that doesn’t make division any easier; James’s mission is to effect the most tax-advantageous split of two businesses among three now-hostile brothers, each of whom is spiteful enough to want to cause tax problems for the others even if it hurts himself. The Gianni brothers’ problems are about emotions rather than taxes, James knows, so he’s giving them some time to react and adjust. He told Tracy to hold all calls from them. This is why James has time to consider a favorite illness. And that’s fortunate, because the seminar meets tonight, and it’s small enough that absences or silences are noticed. The partner who pushed James to enter the Portals Program has become very active in it; Edward will hear about it if James isn’t prepared. And Edward, who’s as much of a hound as Rich Adams was, also’s as much of a rainmaker. Add the fact that he’s the only partner of African descent, and you’ve got what James knew: a shitty situation.

“Stomach-ache is pretty bad. Which is better: sore throat or headache? A cold is usually obnoxious, always inconvenient, but not that bad…except that one isn’t ill enough not to work…unless one is Tracy…” James ruminates without success. “Adams dying on her didn’t keep her away from the office, but she misses three days whenever she has a cold.” Tracy is the secretary who best understands James’s verbal fastidiousness – she may mess with the margins but she takes care of the apostrophes – so he’s always aware of her absences. Tracy is also the person who pokes apart James’s philosophical logjam today.

She first inserts when she puts a call through from Gus. She buzzes James on the intercom to announce the call, but before he takes it, James asks, “Quick. What comes to mind when I say ‘Favorite Illness?’”

“Fever.” There is silence on the line after she says the word. She continues. “Sometimes I just get a little fever. No other symptoms. It makes me drowsy, sensual, a little delirious. I rather like it, provided I can stay home. Now,” she summarizes, “shall I put Gus through?”

Augustus Murphy is a psychologist. He spends most of his professional time evaluating alleged stress injuries for worker’s compensation insurance carriers. He is also James’s best friend. They were accidental freshman roommates, and they continued to share a home until Gus married Patty after grad school. Back in the days when they were both going for undergraduate BAs, Gus in psych and James in English, James edited Gus’s writing, and wrote his transitional paragraphs, while Gus did the social science course work for James.

When Patty entered their lives they became a companionable threesome, and then Hannah fit in too, so the friendship continued through wrong turns into teaching, and beyond that to psychological evaluations and tax law. Gus and Patty have two sons; those boys and James’s nieces are the closest James and Hannah come to parenting.

Gus and James talk on the phone every couple of days, and lunch together every Friday. This call is nothing special. Except that when James describes the Portal assignment, Gus suggests, “Diabetes. That’s your favorite illness. Talk about that.”

James knows about diabetes, because Gus has it. Gus thirstily presented with the disease twelve years ago, and it was James’s job to understand the condition. He read books, joined the national association, and helps Gus adjust his insulin doses. James is the scientist, at least when it comes to words. He’s not strong in math. If he had been, he’d probably be an engineer instead of a lawyer.

He swivels to look out the window while they talk about the elegance of the illness. It’s terrible to have, except that the treatment is the prescription for any healthy life: good food, exercise, low carbs, low stress. With understood diabetes, the doctor is not in control; the patient is making the adjustments between food, exercise, condition and insulin. The patient acts as his own pancreas. James appreciates that. He also appreciates his new telephone headpiece. He has a tendency to carry his stress in his neck, and he spends a lot of his business day on the telephone; until he bought the headpiece he kept exacerbating his pain by cocking his neck to hold the phone while he wrote. Now he can look at the view, take notes, type at his computer, peel an orange.

Gus is lower tech. He’s still using an old-fashioned headset, and he’s living with chronic neck pain. He’s also resisting the idea of an insulin pump. After twelve years on insulin, the man is experiencing a side effect or two; he’s getting less sensitive to low sugar symptoms and more likely to have trouble in bed. If James were Gus, he’d try a pump.

No. James likes knowing about diabetes. James likes being able to counsel Gus. But it isn’t his favorite illness.