Something bit me on the neck.

I was at my desk in Denver — working, not doing anything interesting — when I felt it. Couldn't tell you what it was. Probably a boxelder bug. Those flat, red-striped freeloaders are everywhere in Colorado, and while they're not exactly known for biting, I wasn't about to rule it out. Whatever it was, I swatted at it, went back to my screen, and forgot about it.

Then a lump showed up.

Slow at first. Just a firmness under the skin, behind my right ear, tucked along the jaw. Easy to ignore. I ignored it for months.

---

Late January, we were in Scottsdale for the annual golf trip — eight guys, a rented house, three or four rounds depending on how the liver held up, card games, and dick jokes. The format hadn't changed in years. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Travis spotted the lump on the second day.

"What's that thing on your neck?"

Apparently more visible than I thought. It just happened that two guys in our group — Kelby and Mike — were GPs. Eight years of golf trips, and I'd never once thought to consult them professionally. Between drinks, I asked. Both of them looked it over, poked around a little, exchanged a glance.

Fatty mass. Lipoma. Benign. Common. Nothing to worry about.

Good enough for me. Hand me another beer.

---

By July, we'd sold the Grape Street house and moved to Decorah, Iowa — population 7,000, or closer to 5,000 if you subtract the Luther College students who disappear every summer. We chose Decorah so Soren could grow up near his grandparents. It's in the driftless region, the stretch of northeast Iowa that the glaciers somehow missed, leaving behind bluffs and valleys and the Upper Iowa River cutting through it all. I'd canoed that river as a kid visiting relatives nearby. We told ourselves it would be our mini-Colorado.

It was not Colorado. But it had its moments.

I hadn't seen a doctor in years, so I found a local GP and went in for the basic checkup. Mentioned the lump while I was there. He agreed with Kelby and Mike — fatty mass, nothing concerning — but offered an ultrasound if I wanted to be sure.

I was ready to skip it. Tina was not.

Stop being so hardheaded and get it checked.

She wasn't wrong. She's never wrong about these things, which is why I love her. I scheduled the ultrasound.

---

I'd been in ultrasound rooms before — Tina's pregnancy, nicely lit, warmed gel on the belly, a technician making small talk. This was different.

The room was dim. I lay back on the table while a young technician positioned the wand against the front of my neck. She worked methodically — wand in her right hand, clacking away at the keyboard with her left, occasionally pausing, occasionally not. The pauses were the part I didn't like.

Fifteen minutes of this.

Then she put the wand down and said there were suspicious nodules on my thyroid that would need further examination.

Well, that sucks, I told her. But you haven't scanned the lump yet. That's why I'm here.

She scanned the lump. Nothing suspicious.

I left with a referral to the endocrinologist and a new question I'd never had to ask before: What exactly is the thyroid, where is it, and does it have anything to do with the lump on my neck?

---

The endocrinologist confirmed what the technician had flagged. Nodules, two of them in a size range that warranted a biopsy. The biopsy is not a subtle procedure. First, a needle of local anesthetic into the neck. Then a thin needle — guided by ultrasound — inserted directly into the thyroid to draw out enough cells for analysis. They do it multiple passes to make sure they get what they need. You're awake for the whole thing, lying still, staring at the ceiling, trying not to think too hard about what's happening four inches below your chin.

I went back a week later for the results.

You have thyroid cancer.

There's no way to describe that sentence the first time you hear it. The room doesn't change. The lights don't shift. But something in the air does, like the pressure dropped two floors and nobody told the walls. I sat there trying to locate the right response and came up empty.

The doctor walked me back from the edge. Thyroid cancer — papillary thyroid cancer specifically — is among the slowest-growing cancers there is. The survival rates are extremely high. We would remove half the thyroid, possibly the whole thing depending on what surgery revealed, and monitor from there. If we only took half, my remaining thyroid might carry on without medication.

The facility in Decorah wasn't equipped for the surgery. He'd refer me to Gundersen Hospital in La Crosse, Wisconsin — ninety minutes away.

That was the second time in a month I'd noticed we might have moved somewhere a little too small.

---

That same week, Corky died.

Fourteen years. He'd been with us through houses, moves, and renovations. We'd lost Marley a couple years earlier while still in Colorado, and we thought we were ready for the quiet. We weren't.

The 4th of July weekend was coming. We'd planned to spend it in Door County — a short drive, something low-key, a way to explore our new geography. Tina had a different idea.

It was Thursday.

"What would you think about going to Hawaii instead of Wisconsin?"

I didn't have to think long. Yes.

"And I want to stay somewhere really nice."

I started looking at vacation rentals. Shared a few options.

No. Really nice.

I looked up from my screen. What are you thinking?

"I found a deal at the Four Seasons in Maui."

Book it, Danno.

On Friday, in a single afternoon, we booked a trip. We flew out Sunday.

---

The Four Seasons is the kind of place that makes you feel like you've been living wrong. We splurged on the hotel, then immediately undermined the elegance by hauling grocery bags of food and drink up to our room to stock the minibar ourselves. Some habits don't care about zip codes.

The main pool is enormous — fountain in the center, hot tubs flanking both sides, the Pacific ocean thirty yards beyond. The first season of The White Lotus was filmed there. If you've seen it, you know the pool. Watching that show later felt like revisiting the trip.

Soren and I were in the pool one afternoon while Tina settled into one of the hot tubs. We swam over to talk to her, and I caught her expression shift mid-sentence — eyes going wide behind the sunglasses, that particular look she gets when she recognizes someone.

Do you know someone?

"No, no." A pause. "Paul Rudd is here. He's walking toward us."

I made the tactical decision not to turn around. Instead, Soren and I swam off to observe from a distance. As I surfaced from an underwater stretch, I saw Paul stepping into the hot tub beside Tina. He was with his son. They were having a conversation, unbothered, just a dad and his kid at a pool.

I watched Tina from across the water — sunglasses on, leaning back, looking for all the world like she was half-asleep.

I said to Soren: Look at your mom. She looks completely relaxed. She is absolutely losing her mind right now.

We swam back over. Got in the hot tub. Stayed a few minutes. Left. Paul was deep in conversation with his son, and interrupting felt wrong.

Tina didn't say a word to him.

That evening, hotel flyers announced the Maui Film Festival. Paul was there to receive an award. The next morning, he sat behind us at breakfast. We gave him his space again. Others stopped to chat; he was gracious with all of them.

The day after that, the three of us stepped into an elevator, hit the button for the 4th floor, and heard footsteps — fast, urgent, the sound of someone running to catch it. We could see the doors narrowing. A face appeared in the gap, then disappeared as they shut.

"Son of a bitch," Tina yelled out.

She'd been that close to riding an elevator with Paul Rudd.

---

Back in Decorah, I drove to La Crosse for my surgical consultation. The surgeon reviewed my file and apologized for how long it had taken to get me in.

I told him it wasn't his fault. The endocrinologist had explained that thyroid cancer is slow-growing, so we'd taken a quick detour to Maui.

He stared at me for a second.

"Wow. Yeah — no problem at all. That was a great idea."

I walked him through the whole thing — the bug bite, the lump, the guys on the golf trip, the ultrasound technician who hadn't planned to scan my neck at all. He shook his head at that last part. The lump had been dumb luck. A coincidence that sent me to a room where someone found something else entirely.

He said we'd remove half the thyroid. And while we were in there, we'd take the lump too.

The surgery went without complications. The thyroid was clear of any spread. My remaining half picked up the work on its own — no medication required.

And the lump on my neck, the whole reason any of this started?

Benign.

Just a fatty mass, same as Kelby and Mike said.