The match had finished with its usual bonhomie and good will. We had, as often happened, been beaten by two brothers of a collective age of 130. Our collective age was 80. I returned home that Thursday evening in a tranquil state of mind and security. The summer sun sank slowly over the neighbouring churchyard casting lengthening shadows against a fire red sky. Little was I aware that the relationship with my tennis partner would rapidly take on a much more serious and painful tone. I was amused on Saturday when I saw his card among the files of patients to see me that morning. My heart lifted at the thought of a few minutes' crack and quick biting wit against one another to enliven the dull mundaneness of Saturday summer surgery. There was a long stream of Offa's Dyke knee and summer dog bites and all manner of exposed parts nipped by passing adders while their owners lay in the succulent summer bracken. The first cloud on this azure blue horizon appeared when he was ever so slightly short of breath as he walked into the room. This was well disguised by his charming and warm greeting. This way of contact was one of the great attractions of the man, his joy for living and for his friends. The cold clinical facts showed an area of consolidation in his right lung, with a cough introducing the illness four weeks earlier. There was no fever. Suddenly this man, who had walked laughing off the tennis court with me only 48 hours before, looked ill. I felt a chill go through me, a feeling I increasingly recognise as a prognostication of disaster. Fighting hard against this little man in my head and gut telling me what I did not wish to hear, I arranged an emergency x ray examination for my friend. Lobar pneumonia, effusion but apyrexial?I shuddered at the prospect of a 44 year old with a bronchial carcinoma. The poker face was down now. With a smiling countenance and as much reassurance as I could muster I made optimistic noises about pneumonia, mycoplasma, and the power of tetracycline. He left to go home to bed. I spoke to his wife on the telephone; more reassuring platitudes but a caveat of a further x ray examination and perhaps a referral. As I sat back into my surgery chair it felt as if my head would sink into my chest and my bones would crumble under the possibility that faced me. If and only if this turned nasty: the effects of such an illness ran through my mind. I was one sort of professional in the village, he another. We were of the same age, same interests, and the same social circles. After only a few seconds of such thoughts my mind fused, a useful psychological trick we all possess to shut off the unacceptable. Five days later he was feeling better, although the clinical signs had changed little. A repeat x ray examination, which I hoped with all my heart might show an improvement, had cleared enough only to show what I had feared and dreaded most. A bronchoscopy was arranged for the following day and it was with a heavy tread and an immense weight on my shoulders that I made my promised visit.