While at the Caffé Buongiorno this afternoon I found myself pondering the limits and responsibilities of friendship; at certain times, it seems, we are called upon to perform heroic acts.

I had been attempting to give my undivided attention to D, a friend, who was seated directly across me. D was midway through a convoluted narrative, attempting to describe the precise route taken by a virus which had recently been rampaging through his lymphatic system node by node; I thought of General Sherman’s pitiless and unstoppable march to the sea.

“I picked it up on Monday,” D explained, as he applied a sodden cotton handkerchief to his swollen nose. “The day we last had coffee, in fact.”

He accompanied this remark with a mournful sniff, and a glance in my direction which seemed to suggest that, while he did not exactly accuse, he nonetheless forgave.

“It started here,” he said, indicating the right side of his throat, “and then it moved up into my sinuses.” He placed both index fingers upon his cheekbones.

“Then it moved into my left eye.” He blinked rheumily, and made a gesture in mid-air which I understood to represent the flanking manoeuvre employed by the unnamed virus. “And into my left ear as well.”

He sighed, and dabbed again with his handkerchief, which squelched.

I noticed myself push back gently against the marble tabletop, leaning casually away from him as if I’d simply felt the need to rearrange my limbs. I held my coffee cup between us as a kind of talisman, while simultaneously feigning an intense interest in D’s account. I shook my head sympathetically, and replayed our earlier meeting on the sidewalk.

D had seemed in perfect health just then, and I hadn’t hesitated before asking if he had time for coffee. I wondered how I could missed the signs which now seemed so obvious: the sniffling, the matted hair, the self-pitying expression on D’s face; the mis-matched socks.

“And then it moved down into my lungs,” he continued dolefully, and coughed. For a moment I thought that I could actually detect a jihadi vanguard of the virus, an advance party which rode the air, willing to sacrifice themselves by the teeming millions to advance their cause. I leaned further back, until I felt the coolness of the window glass pressing through my shirt.

“Tell me more,” I muttered between laced fingertips, while looking desperately around me for some socially acceptable escape route. The caffé washroom, perhaps, and an apologetic explanation a few weeks later: an urgent phone call; no opportunity to explain at the time, unfortunately; regrets…

Absorbed in his viral travelogue, D gestured in the air between us with his handkerchief, then leaned abruptly forward to continue. I recoiled, but then embraced my fate; for what else could a true friend do in such circumstances?

“And then,” D added with what seemed a note of pride, “it dropped into my stomach. And I can tell you,” — this said with apparent relish — “what followed afterwards was not a pretty sight…”