潸然泪下，急救室里的求婚_大学英语阅读

潸然泪下，急救室里的求婚

经历一次失败的婚姻后，我认识了现在的老伴。在一起生活了14年之后，他在医院的急救室向我求婚。这让我感动不已：我们互相理解，关心彼此，无私付出，这就是爱。

We should not have been surprised to end up in a hospital on that blustery[1] night, as my partner and I were both in our 60s and hospitals had all too frequently become destinations. The tally had been fairly even: him—quintuple bypass surgery; me—major thoracic surgery; his turn again.[2]

But, in between the melodrama[3], we were having a great life together. Both divorced since our 30s, we’d been living together for 14 years, our faith restored in the idea that just the right person could exist, and that fits of hysterical laughter could be part of every day.[4] We were two productive[5] people enjoying days filled with work, family and friends.

Yet, that night driving down snowy streets to the hospital, it seemed, well, like the perfect ice storm had come to finally freeze our happy home. It began when the phone rang at 12:30 a.m. “Get to the hospital immediately,” my partner’s new doctor told him. “I just reviewed the EKG[6] you took 12 hours ago and it reveals a heart attack has occurred—you need to go to hospital, now.”

The emergency room doctor, a woman who looked pubescent, hooked my partner up to some formidable-looking cardiac equipment, drew blood, and said with authority, “It will be a while before we know anything definitive.”[7]