“Okay,” Lauren said, slightly reassured. “Great. Um . . . what’s my long-term prognosis?”
“I don’t want to jump the gun here.”
“Tell me anyway,” she said.
Kwana looked at Josh, who gave a small nod. “Well, our last line of defense is a lung transplant.”
“Would I be okay then?”
“We’ll cross that bridge if we have to, okay?”
Lauren looked at Josh.
Skin still gray. Jaw locked. Infrequent blinking. Oh, no. No, no. No thank you.
Josh knew a lot about medicine. A lot.
“Am I . . . am I going to get better?” she whispered.
Dr. Bennett leaned forward, folding her hands together. “Lauren, I’m very sorry, but as your husband said, there is no cure for this. There are some promising treatments on the horizon, but right now, I have to be honest with you. With IPF, the fibers keep growing until breathing becomes impossible. A lung transplant would be the final step. Otherwise, it’s a terminal disease.”
The world stopped. No sound, no smells, nothing. Just complete stillness.
Terminal. Final.
Terminal?
Lauren swallowed. Her eyes felt huge and cold. “So . . . I’m going to die?”
“We’re not sure what your trajectory is going to be. There are only a handful of known cases in people so young.”
“Can you answer the question? Am I going to die from this?” That loud voice, so rude.
Kwana didn’t take offense. “We can’t make any predictions. Especially in your case, since you’re not even thirty.”
“No predictions except that I’ll die?” she squeaked.
“She will not die from this,” Josh said, his voice hoarse and fierce, and for a second, hope leaped in Lauren’s heart. She was married to a certified genius who just happened to make medical devices. He would figure this out in a matter of weeks, Kwana.
“This is a lot to process,” Dr. Bennett said. “I recommend that you stay off Google and just read the literature in this packet.”
“Why?” Lauren’s voice was hard and loud.
“Because you should get your information from experts in the field,” she said, handing over a folder. “Trust me.”
She didn’t remember leaving the building or getting into the car, but she must have, because Josh was driving, and they were gripping each other’s hands, hard. Lauren stared out the window, vaguely registering the familiar sites—the Big Blue Bug, Rhode Island’s most famous resident. The capitol dome, the Superman building—so called because in the old television show, Superman had jumped over it, making Providence famous. There was Kennedy Plaza, the old Brown and Sharpe building. They pulled onto their street, into the parking lot, got out and walked into the building in silence, still clutching hands. She started toward the stairs, then walked through the lobby instead and pushed the button for the elevator.
The stairs would leave her breathless.
Tears gathered in her throat, and she swallowed hard.
The second they walked into the apartment, they both went to the couch and opened their laptops, almost exactly in sync, the only sounds their fingers on the keyboard.
Yeah, so Googling wasn’t a great idea. She had to give Dr. Bennett credit for that.
The prognosis for a person with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis was three to five years. Life post–lung transplant, so long as there were no complications, could last as long as five years. But lung transplants were tricky.
So, best-case scenario, Lauren might live to see forty.
But probably not.
She felt dizzy. Was this a dream? Was this whole life a dream, with her wonderful husband and all their happiness, their beautiful apartment, the honeymoon, the trip to Paris? Would she wake up in her childhood bed, groggy and confused, Dad still alive?
She squeezed her hands together, because pinching herself felt too cliché. If she was thinking about things like clichés, then it couldn’t really be happening, right? Also, the pillow on the chair across from her needed plumping. And she was hungry. Grilled cheese, maybe? So she probably wasn’t stuck with a fatal disease. She probably wasn’t dying.
Words from the computer floated in her brain. Final treatment. Terminal. No cure. Breathing becomes impossible. Three to five years. Quality of life.
Three to five years.
Last week, they’d gone sledding with Sebastian. Jen told her they were trying for another baby, and they got so silly, talking about celebrity baby names. And sure, Lauren had gotten out of breath laughing. But so had . . . yeah, no. She was the only one.
For a second, that moment came back to her, the warmth of her sister’s house, the cocoa, the laughter . . . the way she couldn’t seem to fill up her lungs with enough air.
Because her lungs were filling with fibers.
Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.
“Let’s go to bed,” Joshua said, and she jumped at the sound of his voice. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, but he was right. Bed was the only option. They stripped down to their underwear and got in under the puffy duvet, then wrapped their arms around each other so tight it hurt.
They were both shaking.
No words. Not then. Neither one of them was crying. Not then. Not yet.
The truth sat in the room with them, dark and heavy, waiting to be let into their lives, their bed.
She would die young. Josh would be widowed.
She was not going to get better.
She had a terminal disease.
She had really wanted a baby instead.
23
Joshua
Month eight, letter number eight
October
Dear Josh,
I hope you’re doing well, sweetheart. Eight months is a long time. I hope you’re feeling happier and more energized these days.
So this month’s task is pretty straightforward. Do something for your professional career, and try something you’ve been scared of doing.
You’ve got this. I believe in you.
Love, Lauren
Well. That was a pretty crappy letter, if he was being honest. He’d gotten changed and poured a half glass of wine for this? He stalked around, his bare feet silent. Pebbles lay asleep on the couch, oblivious to his mood.
“A shitty letter, Lauren,” he said out loud. “Sorry, was I taking too much of your time?” Was she too busy to write more than a few sentences? Was he getting to be too much of a responsibility, and she only had a few Chicken Soup for the Soul platitudes to toss his way?
Rage swept through him, red and tarry, blotting out everything else, and before he could switch gears, before he could call his mom or Ben, before he could get to the gym and hit the heavy bag, before the quick brown fox could jump over anything, the red tar was everywhere and he was drowning in it. A far-off, still-calm part of his brain guided him to the cabinets. He heard a smashing noise and more yelling, and there was pain in his foot, a distant pain, and then he slipped and his head thunked against the floor and he was out.
* * *
HE WOKE UP to Pebbles licking his face. Her breath was awful. “Hi, puppy,” he said, and his throat was sore and scratchy. Also, something was sticking into his back.
He was lying on the kitchen floor.
He sat up, wincing, and felt the back of his head. A good-sized lump was there. And there were shards of porcelain everywhere.
Polka-dotted porcelain.
He picked up a piece and looked at it. Lauren’s coffee cup. She’d used it every morning. Actually, she’d bought four of them, because, she’d said, they’d be everyone’s favorite. And they had been. Even his mother had liked them, and she wasn’t a person who cared a whole lot about mugs. He remembered a weekend morning when Lauren had had her “three moms” over for coffee cake, and they’d all d
runk from these mugs.
From the look of the mess on the floor, he’d broken each one. Yep. Four little handles scattered amid the ironically cheerful destruction.
There was a knock on his door. He went to it, limping slightly, and opened it. Creepy Charlotte.
“Hey, I heard some noise. You okay?” She looked him up and down. “You’re bleeding, you know.”
“Stop stalking me, Charlotte.”
For a second, he wondered if Gertie the Medium had meant Charlotte, but if so, he would take that $500 back, thank you very much. He closed the door in her face, went back to the kitchen and surveyed the mess.
Nice job, asshole.
If Pebbles stepped on the broken mugs, she might cut her paw. He put her in the guest room to keep her safe, though she gave him a disappointed look. “Sorry, honey. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
The cut on the bottom of his foot was fairly deep. He cleaned it out with hydrogen peroxide, welcoming the burn as punishment, and wrapped it in gauze. Then he cleaned up the kitchen and bloody footprints.
No more of Lauren’s mugs to taunt him from the cupboard each day, and a new scratch in the floor from his rage.
He’d had more red-outs in the past few years than he had in the rest of his life combined. Now that the rage had passed, he felt ashamed. Lauren had been busy just staying alive, and so what if her note was short? He was a shitty and ungrateful husband—widower—for not being more appreciative of these letters, even if this one wasn’t his favorite. She’d been busy trying to live.
Josh sighed, got Pebbles and went up to the garden, careful to avoid looking over. Instead, he looked up at the sky. Almost sunset now. October’s days were notably shorter, and Josh was relieved. August had been wretchedly hot, the weather and humidity seeming to suck the color and life from everything and replace it with sepia-toned pollution or bland, not-quite-real air from the AC.
After seeing Gertie, he’d fallen into a funk. He wanted to feel completely different after the visit—my wife is in heaven and she sees me!—but it didn’t bring Lauren back. Was there a heaven? Maybe? He hoped so, for her sake.
But his problem wasn’t the afterlife. It was the here and now. He skipped karate classes, not wanting to bring his gloom to the little kids, and emailed Asmaa, saying he had a big project to finish, so he couldn’t help out at the center as much this month. She wrote back kindly, saying to take his time, and they’d be happy to see him whenever he could make it in.
It seemed so long ago that he’d been a married man. That his wife and he had sat in the rooftop garden, or at the Cape house, or downstairs, the two of them made safe by love.
Do something for his professional life, and try something he was afraid of.
He sighed. Pebbles jumped up next to him and put her head on his leg, and he petted her silky head, grateful for the perfect forgiveness of a dog.
Each year, Johnson & Johnson sponsored a giant medical device conference, and he’d gone every year since he was twenty, except for last year, when he was afraid to leave his wife. He could go again; he’d been thinking of it himself, more for a change of scenery than anything else. It was next week, so that would take care of Lauren’s request for this month. But it didn’t have the kismet feeling the volunteering letter had . . . the feeling that they were still in sync somehow, that she’d been able to read his mind.
As far as the “do something you’re scared of doing,” he wasn’t sure what that meant. He’d presented at this conference before, and while he didn’t love crowds, he wasn’t phobic or anything. He just left when it got too overwhelming or loud.
What had Lauren had in mind?
He would never know.
* * *
A FEW DAYS later, he flew out to San Francisco for the conference. He let the now-familiar refrain of the grieving run through his head. The last time I was on a plane, Lauren was . . . He’d posted on the forum about this, and it was a common experience; every experience clashing with a recollection of loss. For five hours, he stared out the window, watching America drift past below.
When they landed, he took a car to the hotel where the conference was held, signed in, got his badge and went up to his hotel room, which was very clean and generic, and on the second floor, per his request. He unpacked, ironed his shirt and looked at the conference program, marking which presentations and speakers he wanted to see. He knew some of them. Plenty of people likewise knew his name, because for a thirty-year-old, he was kind of a big deal. When he couldn’t stall any longer, he brushed his teeth and went downstairs to the conference rooms and displays.
Shockingly, it was a relief. All these people who didn’t know, all these people who just wanted to talk to him about work, new products on the market, trends in design, new technology.
For two days, he was immersed in the field he loved, the only one he’d ever considered working in. He went to the keynote lunch, given by a billionaire inventor who believed in global healthcare and pandemic preparedness. In workshops, he was greeted with respect and recognition. Twice, he saw his design for the neonatal monitoring bed in presentations, which gave him a quiet flare of pride.
Chiron Medical Enterprises, the company in Singapore who’d hired him to design a smart scalpel for spinal surgeries, was a sponsor of the conference. He’d sent them the final design and specs just last month. Alex Lang, the CEO, and Naomi Finn, the COO, found him and asked him to dinner. He accepted.
They met in the lobby and took a town car to an impressive restaurant at the base of the Bay Bridge, that other unsung wonder of San Francisco. Alex and Naomi flattered him, talked shop, told him funny stories and generally schmoozed him.
Sure enough, by the end of the second bottle of wine, the pitch came. “Josh, we’d love to have you work with us exclusively,” Alex said. “You could live in Singapore, or you could stay in Rhode Island. And let’s be honest, you can name your salary and benefits package. We want you to head up the design team, and we’re willing to do what it takes to make it happen.”
“That’s very flattering,” he said.
“Have you been to Singapore?” Naomi asked. “It’s amazing. Seriously. I’ve lived in seven major cities, including Sydney and Paris, and Singapore is the most beautiful of them all.”
He nodded, remembered to smile, and for a few minutes, he let himself picture being the type of guy who could live on the other side of the planet, who could walk cheerfully into a glass office and have two administrative assistants and a gaggle of engineers to do the mundane parts of his job.
“Fly out, on us,” Alex said. “Have a look around. Bring your—hell, I don’t know if you’re even married.”
The question was like a baseball bat to the head.
Answer, he told himself.
The pause was going on too long.
“I’m not,” he said.
Naomi said, “That wedding ring is just to scare off any interested parties, then?”
They didn’t know. They didn’t know. If he told them now, he’d see their expressions change from interest to pity, or shock or compassion. “It’s a cultural thing,” he lied.
“Another one of the great things about Singapore is how multicultural it is,” Alex said, and Joshua was off the hook as the pair extolled the benefits of the city-state.
When the conference ended the next afternoon, Josh was exhausted from all that time with other people. But he didn’t want to go home just yet. The idea of going back now, in late October when the leaves had fallen in a heavy rain and windstorm and the city would be gray and dark . . . He decided to be spontaneous and stay.
Cookie Goldberg, his virtual assistant, switched his flight and booked him for another two days at the hotel. Then Josh texted Jen, Donna and his mom. Jen responded by saying that they might have to keep Pebbles forever, because Sebastian was so in love with her. She texted a picture of the bo
y, sound asleep, Pebbles sleeping next to him, her head on his pillow. Sweet.
Aside from a similar conference a few years ago, during which he’d never left the hotel, he hadn’t been to San Francisco, not properly. A little sightseeing would kill some time. Had Lauren ever been here? He didn’t think so.
So no memories, then. For now, he could be a guy who wasn’t married, wasn’t widowed. He could just be a normal person.
San Francisco was balmy, beautiful and overly gentrified. So many homeless people, so many new glossy, sleek apartment buildings to house the wealthy. He considered designing a pop-up shelter that could be folded and moved, but ten seconds on Google showed him it had already been done by a plethora of architects. He went to Japantown and Haight-Ashbury. Bought some gifts for the family. In Lower Pacific Heights, he stared for half an hour into a window of an aquarium store that had mystically beautiful tanks, filled with living plants and exotic fish, then ordered one to be shipped to Sebastian for a Christmas gift.
When his stomach growled, he ate lunch at the bar of a small Italian restaurant and watched the Red Sox lose to the Yankees. He imagined living in a number of Victorians, so different from their—his—loft. Were the people inside these homes happy, living in such a beautiful place? Was anyone widowed, wailing on their floor the way he’d wailed?
He walked and walked, soaking up the sunshine, admiring gardens and dogs—seemed like everyone had a dog in San Francisco. Pebbles and her friendly ways would fit right in. He found himself looking at the Ghirardelli sign, and stood in line to get an ice cream cone. It was worth the wait.
“Excuse me,” said a young woman, maybe twenty, twenty-five. “Do you know how to get to the Golden Gate Bridge?” She wore a backpack and had pretty red hair. Almost the same color as Lauren’s. Her eyes were green, though, not like Lauren’s whiskey-brown. Give her a pair of contacts and a different haircut, though, and they could’ve passed for sisters.
Pack Up the Moon Page 24