1A man named Eric is on a walk with his dog, Nova.
2While on the walk, Eric loses Nova after she pulls the leash from his hand in pursuit of a rabbit
3that happens to jump out of a bush as they pass by it.
4Eric chases after Nova but this only inspires her to run faster,
5until she completely eludes Eric's vision
6continuing on her pursuit of the rabbit, that has, by now, hidden somewhere in the other direction.
7After a great deal of time passes, it becomes clear that Nova has outrun her sense of orientation and is now lost.
8Eric spends the rest of the day and the days following searching for Nova.
9He notifies neighbors, enlists friends and family to help, puts up signs, and so on.
10A week goes by, Nova is still missing, Eric is devastated beyond comprehension.
11He thinks about how horribly unlucky it was that the rabbit jumped out at just the wrong time.
12and that his hand position was just in the wrong place to allow Nova to pull the leash from it.
13About another week later, a woman shows up at Eric's front door, she has Nova.
14After nova and Eric reconnect in a chaotic, heart-warming display of affection, Eric thanks the woman.
15She introduces herself and tells Eric her name is Vanessa.
16She's beautiful, and about Eric's same age.
17Eric and Vanessa talk for a little while and seem to hit it off.
18In the following weeks they hang out several times and things go so well, they soon begin dating.
19Eric finds her to be absolutely gorgeous, kind, funny, smart, spontaneous...
20all the right buzzwords for a perfect romantic partner in a story.
21Soon, Eric and Vanessa fall in love,
22the relationship is everything one could reasonably hope a relationship to be.
23Eric thinks about how lucky it was that Vanessa was the person who happened to be in the right place at the right time to find and return Nova.
24A couple months go by, Eric is driving on his way to pick up Vanessa.
25While driving through an intersection, Eric is T-boned at full speed by a driver
26who distractedly runs a red light coming from the perpendicular side street.
27Eric is knocked unconscious as he and his car are sent in a thrashing 1080 degree spin.
28An hour or so later, Eric finds himself in a hospital.
29A doctor informs Eric of what has happened, and explains that he has suffered a severe head injury,
30and that they will need to run some immediate tests as well as a brain scan to determine the severity,
31and if there's any chance of permanent brain damage or internal bleeding.
32As his consciousness begins to more clearly return to him,
33Eric thinks about how unlucky he was to have been going to get Vanessa in the exact direction at that exact time.
34He's furious at the possibility that his life could be ruined by this one random happenstance.
35Eric is held overnight at the hospital.
36The next day, the doctor comes into Eric's room.
37"Eric, how we doing?", the doctor asks.
38"Fine. A little fuzzy I guess.", Eric replies.
39"Yeah, I would certainly imagine. You took quite the smack.", the doctor says.
40"Yeah", Eric responds.
41"So, I've reviewed the CT scan and I have some bad news and I also have some good news."
42Confused, Eric says: "OK, uhm... I guess I'll take the bad news first."
43"Well, technically they're sort of the same piece of news", says the doctor.
44"What do you mean?", Eric asks with an escalating level of concern and confusion.
45"The bad news is we found what appears to be a glioma in your brain."
46The doctor pauses for a moment, and Eric looks at him unaware of what this means.
47"It's a tumor", the doctor goes on to say.
48"The good news though, is we found what appears to be a glioma in your brain."
49"What do you mean? How is that good news?", Eric asks.
50"This tumor has nothing to do with your accident. You actually got out of the accident relatively unharmed."
51But because of your accident we ran the brain scan.
52Because of the brain scan we found the tumor.
53Normally we only catch a tumor like this after someone realizes something's wrong
54when they start to feel the symptoms, which is almost always too late.
55Because we found the tumor right now, though,
56we caught it while it's still benign before it became malignant and grew into any other areas of your brain,
57which in almost all cases becomes fatal.
58Since it's still in this stage, though, we should be able to remove it almost entirely without any issue.
59Eric, in a weird way, this car accident basically saved your life.
60"So I guess, you know, sort of good news disguised as bad news.", the doctor concludes.
61Eric starts to feel a weird, visceral tingling sensation and becomes slightly disoriented.
62Maybe it's the head injury, maybe it's the emotion of the situation.
63Maybe it's the fact that the doctor just essentially said the same thing twice
64but Eric experienced two totally different mental responses.
65Maybe it's everything.
66Regardless, Eric looks around at the room.
67He thinks about how lucky he was to have been going to get Vanessa in the exact direction at that exact time.
68He thinks about how lucky he was to have gotten in the car accident.
69He thinks about how weird it is to think this.
70For something so bad to be so good, and for something so good to be so bad.
71In this moment, Eric realizes how little he knows about what anything actually is.
72That he has never and can never know what exists on the other side of anything that happens to him or because of him,
73no matter how good or bad, lucky or unlucky any of it might seem.
74Eric feels a strange, paradoxical sense of helplessness and liberation.
75About a week later, Eric undergoes brain surgery to remove the tumor.
76The surgery is successful.
77Eric is mostly as good as new, with exception to a scar running down the side of his scalp.
78Several days later, after being released from the hospital, Eric is at home with Vanessa, recovering.
79To get some fresh air, he takes Nova out for a walk...