Pack Up the Moon

by Kristan Higgins

  “Oh, no, that’s nice of you, but unnecessary.”

  “Please? As thanks?”

  “Uh, sure. Here. This candle.” Radley grabbed a candle and sniffed it. “Lemon. Nice.”

  “How about a chair? You’ve . . . you’ve helped me a lot and I feel guilty.”

  “You do have resting guilt face.” He fondled a dark blue chair. “Is this velvet?”

  “Take it.”

  “We’ll have to ship it to you,” the clerk said.

  “That’d be great,” Josh told her.

  “Well, thank you, Joshua!” Radley said. “You’re so generous.”

  Josh looked at his watch, as the day had been endless. Almost six. “I can buy you dinner, too.”

  When they got home, the furniture guys were already there with the bed, and the mattress was waiting in the lobby. They carried up the boxes and mattress, then helped Radley and Josh with the couch. He tipped each guy a twenty, turning down their offer to assemble the bed. If there was one thing Josh was good at, it was putting pieces together, being an engineer and all. The mattress slid on top, a mattress Lauren had never slept on.

  Josh opened the packet of new sheets he’d bought and remade the bed, not caring if he should wash them first. They were blue. His and Lauren’s sheets had been white. He opted not to replace the bed’s throw pillows. What was the point of useless pillows you just put on the bed, then took off the bed? It looked more . . . masculine this way. And since he had no woman in his life, masculine it was.

  “Sorry,” he said to the dogwood tree/Lauren’s ashes. “This is what you get for dying.”

  Radley was doing something he called zhoozhing in the living room. Josh wandered in, and the room looked different. Pebbles had already made herself at home on the couch, which was the color of sand, not red, like their old one. He felt a momentary stab of panic. What had he done? Lauren had loved that couch! He hated change! Then Pebbles wagged, her head resting on a fuzzy throw pillow, which would absorb her drool nicely. Radley had moved a chair, repositioned the coffee table and added the little touches. The new floor lamp looked cool. The ugly-ish shelf had gone up with the DNA thingy on it.

  “Are you going to cry?” Radley asked.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. He wasn’t sure.

  “Let’s watch something violent and uplifting,” Radley said. “Mad Max: Fury Road? What food goes with that?”

  “Everything,” Josh said. “Should I get some beer?”

  “That sounds great.”

  “I appreciate you being nice to me.”

  Radley tilted his head. “Josh, you’re easy to like. We’re friends, buddy.”

  “Good. Good. I thought I was sort of like a test client for you.”

  “There is that. But no! I mean, I like you. You’re decent. You have no agenda. You seem to like me.”

  “I do. And that’s . . . that’s enough? To be friends?”

  “It is for me.” He raised his eyebrows.

  “Okay. It is for me, too. I just don’t want you to be here because you . . . pity me.”

  Radley rolled his eyes. “Kid, we all have shit that rains down on us at different times. Your time is now. My time was getting beaten up in high school and having my parents tell me I was going to hell. Should we get Chinese? Korean? Thai? Italian?”

  They ordered Thai food. Josh walked the two blocks to the nearest packie to pick up beer while Radley sat in a lounge chair in the rooftop garden and pretended to be Leonardo DiCaprio (in his own words).

  When he came back, it was a little bit of a shock, seeing the not-Lauren things in the living room. His heart hurt.

  But she would like Radley. Would have liked. She’d be glad he had a friend. That he was (oh, detested phrase) moving on.

  Tomorrow, he would apologize to Sarah. For now, he tucked the six-pack under his arm and went up on the roof to join his buddy. Like a normal person, no matter how empty his soul felt.

  18

  Lauren

  Twenty-one months left

  May 19

  Dear Dad,

  I think this diagnosis is kind of wrong. I mean, I believe the doctors, but I doubt very much I’m like the other patients. I’m not even thirty, for God’s sake. I’m about to turn twenty-seven. They keep saying they don’t know how this will play out.

  It’s really not that bad, to be honest. I’m fine. I’m really fine.

  Just wanted you to know.

  Love,

  Lauren

  She was fine. Until she wasn’t.

  In June, six months after the diagnosis, she was doing great. IPF and its grim facts lurked in her closet like a childhood monster, amorphous and dark, waiting. But that monster had never eaten her, had it? So then. Everything made sense.

  Because it didn’t seem possible that she had something incurable. She’d never even heard of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Some days, she felt perfectly normal. Better than normal, even. So how could her lungs be changing, huh? Hm? Hadn’t she given Sebastian a piggyback ride? Hadn’t she and Josh had marathon sex the other day?

  She was slaying at work, proving herself again and again. How could she be dying if she was the company’s best exterior space designer? Bruce had just assigned her to a big job for a new T stop in Boston, and she’d spent the day in Beantown, all alone, watching people come and go, reading the pedestrian traffic flow report and staring at the ugly entrance. She was fine. Fine, damn it.

  There had to be a mistake. She was just waiting for Dr. Bennett to figure it out.

  Of course, there were days when she had to drink two cappuccinos to make it through the workday (but everyone had those days). Days when the thought of taking two flights of stairs to their apartment felt Sisyphean, and her legs felt like lead, and she felt dizzy and weak. But, hello! Hadn’t she also made it through a power yoga class? So what if she was short of breath sometimes? She could deal with it. She was dealing with it. She was on medication and had an inhaler. Not a big deal. So many people were in the same shoes.

  No matter what she Googled, she could not find a case of IPF where the person had been cured. Not one.

  That was fine. She would adapt to having a low blood oxygen level. No one could tell her she wasn’t going to live a long life. No one. She was freakishly young to have this disease . . . not the only one, but one of the very few. She joined an online forum and talked with other young people with IPF. They agreed; no one was planning any funerals, no sir.

  Except all of them used oxygen. All of them had been hospitalized and intubated multiple times.

  See? She must not have IPF. She’d never been intubated. Never spent a single night in the hospital.

  Until she did.

  Lauren had been having a completely normal day at work when she felt something . . . shift in her chest. Something weird, something she’d never felt before. A heaviness. A difference.

  She pulled in a breath, but it was off. It was . . . wrong. Her chest jerked, and then fire flashed through it. Suddenly her back twisted in agony—was it a heart attack, did someone just wallop her with a two-by-four?

  She sucked in air, but it wasn’t enough. Panic slapped her hard, and she tried again, but no, nothing. Was this a nightmare? Wake up! Wake up! Her chest was working, up and down, up and down, almost like she was choking on something, but deeper down. Oh, God, she was going to die.

  She pushed back her chair and said, “Call . . . 911 . . .” and slid to the floor, buzzing with adrenaline, but utterly weak. Her hands flailed near her throat, pulling at her collar, and God, the pain! Her chest hurt like nothing she’d ever felt before, like someone had rammed an arrow clear through her. Her back was spasming in torment, and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe.

  She fought. She fought like a wild animal in a trap, gasping in horrible wrenching sounds, her legs flailin
g, foot connecting with Santino as he tried to help her sit up. Her coworkers gathered round, saying things, putting their hands on her, but she couldn’t hear them, she was heaving and the sounds that were coming out of her—animal sounds, desperate and feral—drowned out everything.

  Louise was on the phone, yelling. “My coworker can’t breathe! She has a lung problem and she can’t breathe! She’s dying! Hurry up, hurry up!”

  “Somebody do something!” Bruce yelled. “Where the fuck is the ambulance? Somebody, help her! Jesus Christ!”

  Josh. She was going to die without Josh. She fought harder, kicking, gasping.

  Then Sarah was there; yes, yes, they were going to meet for lunch, but there was not enough air, damn it, she didn’t want to die. Sarah knelt beside her and held her hands, which were clawing at her throat. Bruce was sobbing and Louise was chanting, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” and all that seemed to be far away, because she was losing consciousness, oh, God. If she did that, would she die?

  “Slow and easy, slow and easy,” Sarah said, her voice stern and calm. “Help is on the way. You’re going to be okay. Slow down, try to relax. Got an inhaler handy? Someone get her purse.”

  Lauren locked eyes with Sarah, gasping like a fish out of water. Sarah was here. Sarah of the great sleepovers, Sarah who could do such good French braids, Sarah who cried so hard when Lauren’s dad died. She wanted to thank her, but all that came out was a high-pitched squeak.

  “Back off,” Sarah snarled at the coworkers. Then the inhaler was in her hand, and she gave Lauren a hit, but it was hard to get the medicine into her lungs. Sarah repeated the action, then again. A little better breathing, but the chest pain . . .

  “Josh,” she croaked.

  Sarah pulled out her phone. “I’ve got this. You just breathe, easy and slow, easy and slow.” Her voice was calm and firm, and Lauren forced her brain to repeat easy and slow, easy and slow. “Josh, it’s Sarah. Meet us at the hospital. Lauren’s having trouble breathing. The ambulance is already here.”

  Then the paramedics were in her view, and someone put a mask over her face, and there was medical talk, but everything was going gray. Sarah gripped her hand. “I’m right here. You’re gonna be fine. Stay awake, okay?”

  Lauren fought against unconsciousness. It felt like a truck was parked on her chest. The mask was helping and smelled funny, but her chest, her chest. Your lung collapsed, said a part of her brain, but all she could think about was breathe, breathe, get the air in there, breathe, breathe, breathe. Then she was in the back of the ambulance, and they were moving. The paramedic talked to her, but she couldn’t hear, or wasn’t listening.

  She forced her eyes as wide as possible, then felt the slip of her eyeballs as unconsciousness gained a step. No. Bite me. This was no gentle faint, no coughing fit, this was a battle, and she would fight it viciously, fight the suffocation, fight the grayness. No. No. I am not dying.

  At the ER, doctors and nurses swarmed her. Patient collapsed at work, given three hits of albuterol, friend says a history of IPF, limited breath sounds both sides. Pneumothorax. Intubate. Then Lauren was floating, and a doctor was hunched over her face, opening her mouth.

  Unconsciousness won, but it was okay, she was being helped, and then she was just . . . blank.

  There were dreams, strange dreams and sounds of hissing and squeaking. She dreamed she could fly. She dreamed that she was lost and couldn’t find Sarah’s house, so she took an elevator down to a train but remembered that she was married and had to go home to Josh. She thought she was in Hawaii in their beautiful sunset house, but Hawaii smelled like flowers, and it smelled sharp and bitter here. She dreamed that she was in a tree house, but everyone had forgotten about her, and the ladder was gone, so she would have to live there, and there was no bathroom.

  She dreamed her father was here, and she wanted to get on a train with him to go to New York City, but he said no.

  She woke up, throat aching. She gagged. Josh and Jen were there, telling her it was okay, she was safe, she was getting better. Lauren tried to smile, but fell back asleep.

  The next time she woke up, Josh was there, and her mother, looking like hell.

  “Hi, honey,” Josh said, leaning forward. “You’re intubated, so don’t try to talk. You have pneumonia, and your lungs collapsed. But you’re better now. Just take it easy.”

  “You almost died,” her mother wept. “Oh, honey, you almost died. I couldn’t live if you died! Don’t you know I already lost your father? Please don’t die!”

  Josh didn’t take his eyes off her, but his perfect lips twitched, and she knew what he was thinking . . . Shut up, Donna. Or maybe he did actually say it.

  She squeezed his hand. “It’s been four days,” he said, and oh, she loved his voice. “They kept you sedated so you could breathe better. But you’re okay.” He kissed her hand. “I love you.”

  She fell back asleep.

  They extubated that day or the next . . . time was slippery in the hospital. She was exhausted in a way she’d never felt before. Even moving her eyes or smiling took effort.

  She had almost died. There was no avoiding that fact. It slept with her there in the hospital, amorphous no longer, but a sharp steel blade. It was real now. She woke up thinking about it, and she took it with her to sleep, and it was there in the foggy places in between.

  Josh was always by her side. Always. Jen and Sarah were there often, and her mom, who cried a lot. When she was a little more alert, Darius brought Sebastian in, who was fascinated that her bed could go up and down with the push of a button.

  Her voice was raspy, and she was given milkshakes that tasted grainy, nothing nearly as good as an Awful Awful from Newport Creamery, she said, so Josh went out and got her one. She’d lost weight, apparently. She’d always been curvy with a little tummy Josh said was the sexiest thing on earth . . . that tummy was flat now. Weird.

  She’d had pneumonia, the resident told her. Nonobstructive atelectasis, bilateral . . . in other words, two collapsed lungs thanks to pneumonia combined with IPF. Her O2 sat was so low they intubated her and fought the pneumonia with IV antibiotics.

  Dr. Bennett came. She’d been in daily, apparently, but Lauren didn’t remember. Her presence was reassuring; she projected an air of calm, like . . . like Florence Nightingale, or a homesteading wife from long ago who’d put a poultice on Lauren’s chest and a cool cloth on her head.

  “I’m so glad you’re better, Lauren,” she said, pulling up a chair next to Josh. He needed a haircut and a shave, but damn, he was so handsome. Lauren smiled at him, reassured when he smiled back. “We almost lost you,” Dr. Bennett said.

  “Yeah,” said Lauren, her smile dropping. “It felt that way.”

  Josh gave her a sharp look.

  “This kind of episode is going to happen from time to time,” the doctor continued. “The absolute best thing to do is get in to see me the second you feel any additional difficulty breathing. Even if you’re imagining it, or it’s caused by a weather change, I want to see you. No toughing it out, because every time you get sick, you lose a little lung capacity, and it’s gone forever.”

  “Gotcha,” Lauren said.

  “And, Josh, you have a background in medicine to some degree, right?”

  “Sort of.” His voice was flat.

  “I’d like to teach you to listen for changes in her breath sounds with a stethoscope.”

  “Yep. Fine.”

  “We can play doctor,” Lauren said to him.

  He didn’t smile back. Not even a flicker.

  “I’ll be in tomorrow,” Dr. Bennett said. “Keep up the good work, and I’ll see if I can discharge you.”

  “Thank you,” Lauren said. Then she fell asleep.

  * * *

  SHE SENT JOSH home later that evening so he could shower, take a walk with Ben Kim (Yoda to his Luke Skywalker, Lauren alw
ays said), see his mom and bring Lauren the dinner Mrs. Kim had made for them.

  She also needed some time alone. Once the sweet nurse left after taking her vitals, Lauren closed the door, got back in bed, and took a few slow breaths.

  She didn’t have asthma. She wasn’t someone who coughed a little more than usual. Her lungs were not going to get better. She would die from this disease. She didn’t know when, but she did know how.

  She was terminal. It wasn’t if . . . it was when. It was coming. A decade, or a half, or a year or a month, but last week, she and Death had wrestled, and this time—this time—Lauren had won.

  Barely.

  Her lips trembled. She swallowed and considered the facts.

  Her life would be short.

  For a few minutes, that was all there was. She would die young. She would not grow old. This kind of feral fighting to breathe, these hospitalizations would happen again and again until she lost. Until she died.

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  At the sound of footsteps in the hallway, she looked up, expecting Josh.

  It wasn’t Josh. It was a father, carrying a small, heartbreakingly thin child with no hair, no eyebrows and a cannula in her nose. Lauren knew it was a girl because she had on a flowery hairband. The little girl didn’t lift her head from her father’s shoulder, but she saw Lauren and smiled. Instinctively, Lauren waved.

  Then they were past her doorway.

  As quickly as she could, Lauren got up and went to the door, dragging her IV pole with her. She looked down the hall, but the little girl and her father were gone.

  “You okay, Mrs. Park?” the nurse asked.

  “Um . . . a little girl and her dad just went past?”

  The nurse nodded. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “She didn’t look so good,” Lauren said, her own tears falling.

  “I can’t discuss another patient,” the nurse said, but her mouth wobbled, and Lauren knew.