I would slip out of the back doors of my medical school into the back doors of our cancer hospital for my after hours infusions. I would always carry the ID bracelet, so I wouldn't forget to take it off. I was thin. It was seen as fashionable.

It was hard for me to hide in plain sight. But I wanted to be treated like a full human being, and I saw how my profession treats people with cancer. Black people with cancer. How the world does. And, he didn't owe us a whisper about his illness.

He seemed like someone who did what he loved for as long as he was able in a world that remains unfair in a million ways. I'm deep in the collective grief. And thinking of his family.