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My first call was to the airport. It's a small rural airport, and I know the people who work the desks by name. Could they get me off the island? Was there any chance, any seat at all?

Not on Memorial Day weekend. That long weekend is the unofficial beginning of summer. Every flight off Martha's Vineyard that afternoon had been booked for months.

I would have to take the ferry to the mainland and a car to Boston—three hours—and hope I could get on a flight from there to DC. The next ferry was at two thirty p.m. I could make it if I dumped the car in an illegal parking spot.

Then the home phone rang. Detective Evelyn from the DC police. He was gentle, considerate. I was thankful for this unexpected kindness after the brusque doctor. He was able to tell me exactly where Tony had been walking when he collapsed, and that the first to see him lying on the ground was a former Vietnam medic who yelled for someone to call 911 as he checked for vital signs. The detective described how women from the yoga studio across the road ran out with a defibrillator and in minutes two ambulances arrived—one from DC and one from Chevy Chase, because Tony had collapsed right on the line between the District of Columbia and the Maryland suburbs. Both teams of EMTs had worked on him—the detective was not sure for how long—before they rushed him to the downtown emergency room.

He asked me some questions about Tony's health, about why he was in DC. He explained that because there were no witnesses to his collapse, there would need to be an autopsy to rule out foul play. I asked if I could speak with the man who found Tony. He said he would try to put me in touch. I told him I was leaving for the ferry and gave him my cell phone number.

Then I looked for the number for Tony's brother, Josh. He and the rest of the Horwitz clan had gone to Maine for his daughter's college graduation. Small mercies: Ellie, Tony's mum, was with them. She would be surrounded by loving support when she heard this unspeakable news.

Tony had been staying in Josh's empty house in Chevy Chase. The Memorial Day holiday weekend had given him a welcome break in the relentless schedule he had been following since his book's publication. He'd done eight events in seven days, crossing the entire country. All his emails mentioned how exhausted he was after getting up early for flights, staying late at book signings, then heading out for drinks with the old friends who inevitably turned up at those events.

When he finally reached his brother's house, he slept for hours and called me to say how good it felt to have had some rest. By Sunday afternoon, feeling revived, he'd gone to visit our onetime neighbors in Waterford, the tiny village of eighty or so families in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, where we'd lived for a decade. That leisurely Memorial Day Monday, all he had to do was show up for a dinner in his honor with Washington friends. The next day he would be back on tour. He had a slew of interviews lined up starting early in the morning, then a book event that evening at the famed DC bookstore, Politics and Prose.

But there was no next day.

"Northampton Street?" Josh, stunned, whispered, when I told him where Tony had collapsed. "That's just a block from my house."

Josh, Tony's older brother, had matured from an unruly youth into the mensch of the family, the man you needed in a crisis. He said he would find a flight from Maine, leave right away. His sister, Erica, and her husband, David, would bring Ellie to DC by car. His wife, Ericka, would take their daughters to their various planes: the two young women had their jobs and school to get back to. He said he would likely reach his house before I would. He sensed the panic in my voice. "Take a minute, think what you should pack. You might be there awhile."

Despite his advice I left the house in what I was wearing, and would be wearing, for the next three days. Some underwear, a toothbrush—I couldn't think further than that. I had to make the two thirty ferry to get the last seat on the flight I had booked to DC. I called my neighbors, Fred and Jeanne, told them what had happened, and asked if they would look after our dogs and the horses. They will, of course they will. They will come right over.

On the boat I called the number for the resident that the first doctor had given me, the doctor who had relieved her for the evening shift. This young man had no idea who I was or what I was talking about. He was clearly up to his eyeballs in other people's emergencies.

When I asked if Tony's body would still be at the hospital when I got there, he snapped at me: "How should I know?"

I don't know why I expected better than this, but I did.

First, do no harm.