Well, traffic got me again and on the night of one of the most important readings of the whole tour --- at one of my all time favorite bookstores, R. J. Julia's in Madison, CT --- just outside New Haven.

Even though the drive only takes an hour, Doug Scofield (the man I live with) and I set off a half an hour early. But even that wasn't enough. Turns out there had been an enormous traffic jam on I95 and there was no way we were going to make it on time.

Late for my own reading!

And not just any reading.

This was a special event for Doug and me because it was also a party for the doctors and nurses at the Yale New Haven Organ Transplant Unit. And the end of my reading I was presenting them with a donation.

What's the connection?

Well, IN FIDELITY is not about doctors or hospitals or transplants. It is a fictional story that explores the ties that bind us each to the other. It is suspenseful, a little bit sexy and very much one woman's psychological adventure.

But it was the book that kept me company during the worst two years of my life.

In the fall of 1998, just as I was ending a 12-month mourning period for my mother, Doug went into the hospital for a routine outpatient kidney biopsy.

An hour later, his doctor came to the small, windowless waiting room to tell me something had gone dreadfully wrong and Doug was bleeding to death. They had 15 minutes to save his life.

Doug survived and spent the next two weeks in intensive care. It was while I was sitting by his bed in Stamford Hospital, while he slowly came back to life, that the idea for IN FIDELITY was born.

Was I cold and heartless to be able to think about a novel when the man who I was very much in love with lay there asleep, hooked up to monitors and machines? I don't think so. It was how I survived.

For the next year, this brilliant 41-year-old composer and musician lived a half-life of doctor's visits and five-hour dialysis treatments three times a week. His work was no longer writing music. It was staying alive. He was in and out of the hospital over 30 times in 12 months.

And I? When I was not being a caregiver --- I wrote IN FIDELITY.

I did it to escape into a world I could control. I did it to hide from hospitals and doctors. And I did it to prove to myself that there was life outside of the illness we were facing.

And then after a long year of hospitals and doctors and infections and waiting, we were given an amazing Christmas present. David, Doug's brother, decided to give him one his kidneys.

On December 30, 1999, at the Yale New Haven Hospital, Doug's received a new kidney. On January 4, 2000, we came home. Doug was able to go back to work in less than a week, and I was able to sit down at the computer and finally finish IN FIDELITY.

So the party at R. J. Julia's was to celebrate with the doctors and nurses and present them with the first of what I hope will be many donations from the proceeds of my novels.

We arrived to a room full of the people who had helped us so much. Our delay hadn't caused much concern. The bookstore had supplied wine and cheese, and so the guests and good doctors and nurses (who weren't on duty) had been able to enjoy themselves while they waited.

After reading from the first chapter and answering some questions I signed a few dozen books.

The last person to come up to me, book in hand, was Doug's surgeon. It was what he said to me then that I will always remember about this stop on the tour.

"We appreciate what you've done, but we don't expect thanks. This is just what we do," Dr. Lorber told me. And then he looked over at Doug who was standing and talking with another doctor. "Seeing him like this is all that matters."

And then he asked me to sign his copy of IN FIDELITY. Which I did --- gratefully --- with a few tears in my eyes.

Note: My next stop is Brooklyn, NY on January 31 at the Cobble Hill Barnes & Noble at 7 PM. Please do stop by.

--- M. J. Rose