It was a night just like this. The hulking and surly sportswriter Randy Whitehouse was approaching the front door to an apartment building when he slipped on ice. One foot remained fixed on the ground and the leg bone above it snapped. Down went the surly one and on came the agony.

That was a few years ago and I wrote about the mammoth sportswriter’s experiences as he lay in the dark and cold with no one coming to his aid. I wrote about his surgery, his recovery and his overall foul temperament.

I figured this was the worst the young journalist would experience for many decades, so I wrote it with a mood of optimism. Whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, Whitehousenstein. We must first pass through bitter waters before we reach the sweet.

But then, this past summer, his largeness told me he’d be going under the knife to have a heart valve replaced. The first thing I thought at the time was that Whitehouse was too young to be worrying about heavy matters like his ticker. And I thought it was an aberration because all my friends are young and healthy and they will probably live forever. Like me.

And then I took inventory. Over the past year, I went to three funerals. One friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer and now clings to a life that was, just months ago, uninhibited by dire medical news.

One cold night in the middle of winter, I was called out to the hospital where my closest buddy was lying in an intensive care bed being treated for blood clots flying like bullets to his heart and lungs. The prognosis was ugly. He pulled through, but weeks later, he suffered a seizure and was back in the hospital for more tubes and needles, more frowns from the doctors.

Again I thought this must be the result of some form of voodoo, because surely no friend of mine should be staring down the long, black tube of mortality. Not yet, by God. Because we are young people, who just a few years ago were barking at the moon and going to keg parties and driving like idiots.

It occurs to me, when I venture out of my cocoon of denial, that any real belief in immortality has faded like adolescent acne. I write about men and women who drop dead after years of reckless living and more often than not these days, those who succumb are my age or younger.

Back when I was truly immortal, I viewed the deaths of friends as cosmic mistakes. But those were suicides, car crashes, drownings. They were not lowly matters like heart valves, blood clots and seemingly random invasions of cells.

Back then, we did not fret over strange lumps on our bodies unless they were unappealing and thus, a hindrance to dating. We knew what the concept of blood pressure was, but it did not apply to us. We smoked, drank and lived hedonistically, doing everything at the high pace of cocky youth. We were like rock stars who would only die if we chose to.

The bow is drawn. The arrow flies. The arrow falls. We were flying, man, and just fresh off the bow. Now I wonder at which point the arrow hits its zenith and begins the downward arc toward obliteration.

But I’m far from being overly concerned about my own medical condition. I go the other way. If something is wrong with me, I assume it will self-repair, just like the ancient car I drive. Hear a funny rattle? Crank up the radio and ride it out. The nuisance will be gone when silence returns.

But these friends of mine keep messing up this rock ‘n roll optimism by succumbing to ailments that belong to much older people. You can’t walk into a hospital to visit a close friend without spying your own mortality disguised as shadows around every corner. I wish they would knock it off so I could get back to baseless confidence that we’ll still be around when someone lands on Titan and finds a race of editors living up there among the slime.

Whitehouse is fine, though still as grouchy as a skunk with its head stuck in a jar. My blood clot friend is well and more obnoxious than before the attack. Quit smoking too, the showoff.

With a new year coming, I’d rather not spend much time wondering about the well-being of these friends of mine with their nasty habits and rotten moods. So if they’d knock off the medical dramatics, we can all return to a state of blissful optimism and ignore the obituary pages for another year.

The arrow still soars, boys. Crank up the radio.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. You can share tales from the razor’s edge at [email protected].