“Don’t leave me,” he said against her neck. “Don’t leave me. Don’t die, Lauren. Don’t leave me.”
He just kept saying that over and over.
“Oh, honey,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Being Princess Butterflies and Rainbows did put up a shield—but she was noticing that the shield was from everything. Maybe the terror was kept at bay, but nothing else was let in, either.
For months, she’d been worrying about Josh after her death. She hadn’t worried about him in the here and now, when she could actually do something about it. “I’m sorry, honey,” she said again. “I’ll do better. I won’t make jokes anymore.”
He pulled up, his hair crazy, eyes wet. “No. I . . . I know you need to. And I do, too. Just not all the time. Sometimes I need . . .” His voice broke.
“Sometimes you need to punch a wall.”
He nodded. “Sorry about that.”
“We can get a punching bag for the gym downstairs.”
He looked at the floor. “Lauren, I . . . I don’t usually . . . I call it a red-out. When I lose my shit like that. I’m sorry I scared you.”
“I understand, honey. We’re going through a lot.”
He nodded and swallowed.
This would be a process, she realized. There’d be curves and veers and long straight stretches, and that was normal. They got to be scared and furious and happy and grateful, and sometimes they could be all those things at the same time.
She climbed off his lap and handed him a tissue, then blew her own nose. They looked at each other, raw and exhausted. “Is there a way to head that off at the pass?” she asked. “You know. To save our walls?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I have techniques. Visualizations, distractions. Creative destruction.”
“Oh, I like that term. Like you go out and chop down a tree?”
“Yeah. Or hitting a punching bag. Ben had one in his basement for me.”
“Guess what you’re getting for a birthday present?”
“Is it a punching bag?” He smiled, looking older than his years, and her broken heart broke a little more.
“It is! How did you know?” She stood up, pulled him to his feet and hugged him. “I’m starving. I’m going to make us both omelets.”
He looked at her a long minute. “Are we okay? Do you forgive me?”
“Oh, Josh. Yes, honey.”
“Don’t ever mention us separating again. Okay?”
“Okay.” Then Pebbles pushed between them, and they smiled, and Josh picked her up and kissed her head.
* * *
THE CHANGES CREPT in. The diagnosis had been surreal and amorphic at first. But reality was making itself at home, and Josh’s red-out . . . it drove everything home.
There had to be time for grief and anger laced together with all that they did have, and that panoply of emotion made Lauren feel more real. She didn’t always have to be Princess Butterflies and Rainbows, and she didn’t have to be sobbing on the floor. Just because she was terminal didn’t take away from the fact that she was also a regular person.
There were the new realities of IPF. She learned to plan her day carefully, so as not to expend too much energy and have a setback. She and Josh bought a lovely teak bench for the shower, and a grab bar, in case she got dizzy or weak. Josh got her a beautiful leather bag to hold her portable oxygen, which she didn’t need every day . . . but it was nice that she had a bag that didn’t yell medical device even if she often had a plastic cannula in her nose.
College Hill was too steep for her to walk to work now. But she did walk around the Brown campus at lunch, because staying fit was important. Louise or Santino usually went with her; Louise was sharp and funny, but Santino was hilarious. He had the best stories about the women he dated—like the one he’d met for the first time, went back to her apartment and found pictures of himself taped to the fridge. Or the one who asked if he’d like to wax her lady bits as foreplay. Like most people who saw her frequently, her condition became normal to them (though Lori Cantore treated her like she was giving away gift-wrapped leprosy).
Bruce the Mighty and Beneficent had brought a twin bed into the staff lounge and made a sign that read Lauren’s sleeping, so fuck off in case she needed a nap. Lori filed a complaint (sigh), and Bruce called Lauren into his office and made her and Lori Cantore watch as he fed the complaint into the shredder. Dear, dear Bruce.
She, Sarah and Asmaa took a gentle yoga class a few times a week, which was great for keeping her muscles strong, which in turn helped her oxygenation. She went out a couple of times a month with her friends or sister, saw her mom and Stephanie at least once a week. She was planning these days, unsure of how much longer life would be normal, or if a bad flu season would force her to stay in the house for months.
Jen brought Sebastian over every Thursday night so they could babysit while Jen and Darius went out. Lauren loved those nights, Sebastian’s funny little questions about how the water got into the tub, or if elephants sleep in nests, or if he could stay with them for nine or seventeen days in a row. He’d fall asleep in their bed, and she and Josh would lie on either side of him, pretending to watch a movie but staring at his perfect skin and long lashes, curly hair and sweet little hands. Their sadness at not being able to have kids went unspoken, but when a few tears slipped down her cheeks, Josh would reach over and wipe them away and tell her he loved her.
Her medical stuff became routine—respiratory therapy, which involved huffing, pursed lips, diaphragmatic breathing, and her favorite, mucus expulsion, which was just as sexy as it sounded. She had pulmonary function tests, blood work and checkups.
The goal was to keep things steady. What lung space she had lost to the fibrosis and scarring was gone forever. Every time she got pneumonia, the therapist warned, she’d lose a little more.
Meanwhile, Josh was . . . amazing. Calm, caring, funny and, yes, sometimes sad. The punching bag was used three or four nights a week as a proactive measure, and when he came up, sweaty, his hands wrapped, his mood light, she was proud of them both. He got better at talking about those pesky feelings—she did wonder if she was the first person who’d helped him with that, since she suspected Steph had simply told him yes, life could be unfair, next question please? The wall-punching incident had loosened something in him.
“I was thinking about the Great Beyond,” she said one night over a vegetarian dinner so loaded with garlic it had cleared out her sinuses. She tried to keep her voice light, but his head snapped up.
“Are you feeling okay these days?”
“Yes! I feel great today.” She cleared her throat. “When my dad died, I thought about it a lot, that’s all. And . . . I’ve been thinking about it again.”