When I was in the hospital, Dr. Bennett mentioned a lung transplant, and I thought Josh might have a heart attack. He had to leave the room and couldn’t talk for about an hour once he came back . . . he shuts down when the news isn’t great.

 The thing is, Dad, once you get a lung transplant, another clock starts ticking. A lung transplant is like . . . well, it’s like the three hundred Spartans holding off the Greeks. They’re glorious and brave, and you really believe they’re gonna win, until they don’t. For some reason, lungs don’t take as well as other organs. It’s not exactly a cure. The Mayo Clinic, whose website is my go-to medical source online, said, “Although some people have lived ten years or more after a lung transplant, only about half the people who undergo the procedure are still alive after five years.”

 So. I have a 50 percent chance of living five years if I get new lungs. Not great. Scary to think that could be my best option.

 These days, I can feel the difference. Josh understands the numbers—spirometry flow, lung volume, pulse oximetry, lung diffusion. He can see when I’m tired, and he takes such good care of me, but I can’t say, “How was that phone call to Singapore, hon? By the way, I can’t breathe as well today.” I know why Josh is obsessed with finding a cure—it seems like there’s something that could fix this. I picture the “fibrotic material,” as Dr. Bennett calls it, as a tangle of feathery yarn. Pink yarn. Pepto-Bismol pink. Where’s the tiny excavator that can get in there and shovel them out and give me my lungs back? A microscopic flamethrower that can burn it out without damaging the good stuff?

 I’m so glad I had this spring and summer. I felt better on the Cape, and I got to spend so much time with friends and just looking out at the ocean. There’s something about being near the ocean that puts your life in perspective. It’s reassuring, that’s what it is.

 I don’t want to focus on being sick, and yet it’s a part of every day. I have some tricks up my sleeve, courtesy of pulmonary therapy—hold the air in my lungs, puff it out, repeat. Lots of good visualizations of healthy pink air pockets expanding and contracting. But little things are getting harder, Daddy. Showering can be exhausting. My lunchtime walks with Santino and Louise at work are getting shorter and shorter. It’s embarrassing, which I know is a dumb thing to say. But I’m twenty-eight, and walking around the block wears me out.

 I have to have an energy plan for most days—if I shower and shave my legs, I’ll need a twenty-minute rest. If I want to see Sebastian and Octavia, I need to take a nap first, and a nap after, and I’ll probably be out of commission the next day, too. At work, I plan my bathroom breaks; it’s about thirty steps, and if I wait too long and have to hustle, it takes ten minutes to get my breathing back to normal.

 It’s harder to hold Octavia, and my arms tremble, but I just can’t give her up. When I read to Sebastian, I have to look at the words on the page and plan when to breathe, because he gets upset if I run out of air . . . he’s too smart, Daddy. He knows I’m sick, and he’s scared, and it’s awful when he cries, my sweet boy. So I try my best around him. Oh, Dad, you would love him so much! He’s an angel. Well, a little demon sometimes, but mostly an angel. I can’t resist him. I’m smitten by them both.

 So life is changing, and I know it won’t be changing back. That’s the bastard of IPF—every time I lose a little lung function to the scars and fibers, it’s permanent. It sucks, but I don’t have time to waste feeling bitter. God! That’s the last thing I want to feel. Whenever I get scared, I just look at Josh, or think about how lucky I am that we found each other. Sappy, isn’t it? And you know what he thinks, Dad? He thinks he’s the lucky one. He really does. He adores me. He loves, honors and cherishes me, just like he promised on our wedding day.

 Well, I should go. I love you, Dad. Watch over me, okay? I’m glad you’re there. It’s not that I didn’t love Gangy and Pop-Pop and Grammy and Gramps (please tell them hello from me). It’s just that you’re my dad, and I know you’ll be there for me when the time comes.

 Love,

 Lauren

Pebbles had learned to fetch the remote, the genius. If Lauren was on the couch, Pebbles was there, too, a ball of silken brown-and-white fur curled up right on Lauren’s perpetually cold feet. “What did we do before we had this dog?” Lauren asked Josh.

“You mean back when I was the love of your life,” he said, grinning as he cooked.

“Were you, though? Or was I just waiting for Pebbles?” she said, and he laughed. Getting him to laugh was akin to medaling in the Olympics, Lauren thought as she stroked Pebbles’s head. His kind of intellect didn’t have a lot of room for humor, so his laughter . . . the occasional joke, it meant the world. “Right, Pebbles?” she whispered. “You’ll need to brush up on your wisecracking, missy.”

“Before we eat,” he said, turning off the stove, “I got you a present.”

“Hooray! Is it a horse?”

“Um . . . no. But it’s really fun, and actually, you can ride it.”

She waited as he went into his study. A second later, he came out, pushing a . . .

A mobility scooter.

Her throat immediately clamped shut. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, she told herself, but her fists were clenched. She wasn’t supposed to need that! She wasn’t even thirty! He should’ve gotten her a damn horse. Or a motorcycle.

He was smiling, but she could see the echo of sadness in his dark eyes. He knew it was an awful present.

And he knew she needed it.

It was fine. It was smart. They could do more because of it.

So she flashed Josh a big smile, and after a second, it became genuine. “That is one damn sexy scooter,” she said.

“Please tell me you’ll wear leather when you use it.”