. Though his story is remarkable, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to share it. Not because our predictions as his medical providers were wrong — I am comfortable with admitting to prognostic error — but because most people, when faced with illness, secretly believe that they may be the outlier, that improvement is possible even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Doctors want that for our patients as well. That is what leads oncologists to offer terminally ill patients fifth lines of chemotherapy and last-hope clinical trials, and it is what brings surgeons back to the operating room one last time. Sometimes that drive to beat the odds is what pushes doctors to be great. But if taken too far, these instincts lead to false hope and suffering for our patients and their families, protracted critical-care admissions and futile procedures. After all, in most cases in the I.C.U., our initial prognoses are correct. So there’s a risk to standing at the bedside, thinking about that one patient who made it home despite our predictions. We can give that experience too much weight in influencing our decisions and recommendations.