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 flailing, 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.