It was exhausting. It was like swimming in hot black tar. He worried about Donna and Jen, already having suffered the loss of Dave, Lauren’s beloved father. He worried about his mother, who had worried that Josh would never find someone and had been so glad when he did, and now had a thirty-year-old son who was a widower. He worried that Pebbles would die of a broken heart. He worried that he would die, and there would be nothing, no Great Beyond, no afterlife, no reunion, and then he wondered if that would be a chance worth taking.

In a nutshell, life was ruined.

He’d jerk awake at night to check her, reaching for her side of the bed, worried about her breathing, then realize, nope, she was dead. He got up in the morning and put the kettle on for her tea. One night, he called down the hall for her before remembering. Sometimes he woke up and wondered if he’d dreamed their entire marriage.

Dead. The word sounded exactly like what it was. Hard. Flat. Ugly and cold.

Since her diagnosis, taking care of her had been his job. Oh, he’d finished one medical device design and sold it to Johnson & Johnson, but mostly, he’d been trying to save her. He’d read every scholarly article about IPF he could find. He spoke to doctors, foundations, patients and pharmaceutical researchers, and the desperate search for a better outcome had eaten up hours of his day.

Then there was her actual care. Cooking for her, doing the regular household chores, getting her prescriptions filled, taking her to the myriad doctor’s appointments, arguing with the insurance company. Taking walks with her, doing her respiratory therapy, monitoring her O2 sats. Getting her to the bathroom when the medication gave her such bad diarrhea, he had to hold her on the toilet because she’d been too weak to stay there on her own. The past six months, he’d helped her shower almost every day. He’d had to make sure she took her meds at the appointed times. Make sure she had enough oxygen. Make sure she was eating enough. Make sure she was sleeping enough, happy enough, entertained enough, loved enough.

He missed every second of it. He’d cut off his arm to go back to that time.

He was lost. Utterly and completely lost. The Josh who was Lauren’s husband no longer existed, and all that was left was . . . this.