I have wondered since why it took an illness.

Two proud, private people can live alongside each other for a long time, being polite, keeping the ledger, and never once close the distance, because closing it requires someone to be the first to need, and neither of us would be first.

Pride is, among other things, a refusal to be caught needing.

But you cannot be proud with a fever of a hundred and three.

Illness strips the coat right off you; it makes you helpless and disgusting and dependent, and there is no dignified way to be sick, and that, it turns out, is the mercy of it.