Doctor A. looked at me with pity and condescension.

“It’s very important to breathe. Ok?” He put on his pediatrician tone and sat down facing me. “Let’s do it together. Take a long deep breath...”

He inhaled; I inhaled.

“Keep going. All the way in. Now let it all the way out. Do that a few times.”

A medical doctor was teaching me how to inhale and exhale. Something about the lesson and the instructor made me wish I specialized in medical malpractice. But it helped to have someone walk me through it. I felt my lungs fill and (perhaps only in my imagination) my brain relax. I felt my body relax. I wanted to stay in that exam room and just breathe for a few hours.

“Nice, right? People forget to breathe deeply all the time. They forget how nice it feels.”

* * *

The day before I last defended a deposition, I wrote 5-6 standard objections on a post-it note as a reminder. Objections don’t stop the questions or obviate my client’s obligation to answer them, but it’s important to preserve them for the record. (Or so we lawyers tell ourselves; else it becomes another item on an already long list of meaningless exercises for which we bill in increments of 6 minutes. But I digress.) When the time came, I half-listened to the questions posed to my client and rattled off objections without much conscious effort, as though on auto-pilot. I didn’t once refer to my note.

Yet there I was, sitting in front of Dr. A., getting a refresher course on breathing.

* * *

The next day, an EKG ruled out heart attack as the cause of the chest pains that lead me to Dr. A.'s exam room; there's some speculation that stress is to blame and rest is in order. Five days after that, I booked a ticket to Hawai'i. Five days after that, I touched down in Hilo. A day later, I'm driving a convertible with the top down and breathing deeply without much conscious effort, as though on auto-pilot.