A coworker's husband was horribly injured this week. A 4000-pound excavator slipped or fell and crushed his foot and, although he still has it, it is no longer a foot.

We were with her when she heard. We had just started a happy hour after having escaped the office following an afternoon of meetings. So we hadn't looked at our email or phones in a while, and when we sat down at the bar the phones came out and our faces lit up. She said, "That's strange, his sister never calls." She apologized for being rude and I said, "But you're going to forge ahead anyway," to tease her for apologizing for something she needn't apologize for, especially since we were doing the same thing. And suddenly she covered her mouth and said his foot was broken, a machine had fallen on it. Then she got up and walked away. When she came back, she seemed unsure what to do. She should go, that's what. So she did.

And then she went dark for two days, she who works from vacations and ski lodges on the weekends and who answers client calls at 6:00 a.m. and at 5:30 p.m.

That's how I knew it was bad.

I texted her the next day to let her know I was thinking of them. She replied that the first surgery went well but that it was the first of many.

They were worried about gangrene so they operated to see if the tendons and vessels were intact enough to supply the tissues. That was the first one.

She said she didn't sleep that first night nor the next day. She said she was a wreck, that no one should ever have to watch a loved one endure so much anger and pain.

I thought of how that's our charge, the ones loving. I know it is dark to say it, but it isn't extraordinary if you realize the dream of till death do us part—no?

But they are so young. Thirty or just over the cusp of it. And they are one of the most active couples I have known. Charmed. Full of life, and that life full of friends and family. A string of successes behind them and a life of successes leading all the way to the end.

It's still that way, it's just that the trajectory has changed.

But it's awful to watch a life turn as if bent by a prism.

I don't know if the reason the accident has been sitting so deeply with me is that we were with her or that it is just horrible. I feel profoundly aware of our shared vulnerability. I think of her eyes wide and her hand over her mouth. The sound of air rushing down her throat. I remember the fire in his eyes and the way he hugged her and tossed her up in the air when they danced together. I understand his anger. We will never know when it is our turn.