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course of my treatment, I was eager to put this health crap behind me and get on with my now-resurgent career, with a renewed focus and commitment to my family. Those precious few weeks on the Vineyard had done much to reinforce how important Tracy and Sam were to me.
    At the end of my second treatment, however, the doctor took me aside, handed me the business card of a neurologist friend of his, and strongly recommended that I see him as soon as possible. I'd already told him about the neurologist in Gainesville, and since we knew that there was no evidence of stroke or tumor, I didn't see the point. “I really think you should see him,” he persisted. When I mentioned this later to Tracy, she was adamant that I make the appointment. Unbeknownst to me, the doctor had called her separately and put it very succinctly: “Just make sure he goes.”
    TWO WORDS
    New York City—September 1991
    Contrary to the happy-go-lucky image I cultivated, there were things that worried me more than I'd let on. My health, however, had never been one of them. But even if it had been, the most paranoid, hypochondriacal fantasy I could think of would not have prepared me for the two words the neurologist bludgeoned me with that day: Parkinson's disease.
    Recollecting my exact response to this pronouncement is difficult; there are gaps. Dramatically, this scene would be served by the certainty that I broke down, kicked furniture, screamed “FUCK!,” cursed God, or challenged this doctor, not much older than I was, maybe told him he was full of shit—and didn't he know who he was talking to? I might have charmed him—god knows I'd charmed my way out of some deep holes before. “Look . . .” one plausible in-character response might've been, “you've obviously screwed up here. But you've probably read in People magazine that I'm one of the nicer guys in showbiz, so I'm going to let this slide. Don't worry . . . this stays between us.”
    Didn't say any of that; I don't think I said anything. I don't think I felt anything. The doctor said some more words, like— Young Onset, progressive, degenerative, incurable, very rare. At your age, new drugs, new hope . . . . The air sucked from my lungs, my left arm was shaking clear up to the shoulder. My only clear memory is of wondering why the hell he was doing this to me, and what was I going to tell Tracy? There, on the bad news side of the doctor's desk, I sat listening quietly, nodding impassively—as if this man were my agent, telling me my last film had tanked. I wish.
    He handed me a pamphlet: an elderly couple, on the beach, sunset. Which one had the incurable brain disease was not clear; they both looked happy, holding each other and beaming . . . a seagull overhead, he looked healthy too. I wanted to hit him with a rock. Something about a new drug. Maybe it was the nurse who slipped me the pamphlet, I don't know. I looked up at the doctor and stared; he was so composed. Tough for him, I bet, dropping this on a guy my age. He was really very good. I hated his guts.
    As I stepped out the door of his office building and onto the rain-soaked streets of midtown Manhattan, it was as if I were entering a whole new world. In actuality, the world had changed little in the hour I had spent with the good doctor. True, the late afternoon rush-hour traffic, especially right there near the Fifty-ninth Street bridge, had intensified, but the only profound change was not around me, but within me. Dazed and confused, I could have easily stood in the rain for hours until the late afternoon gloom turned to night and the blare of car horns faded away. I had to get home, though. Hailing a cab wouldn't be easy in this weather, at this time of day, and the ride itself would be slow going. That was okay—I needed every second of that time to sort out what had just happened and how I was going to translate it into an explanation for Tracy, and for that matter my