The cost of the trips back and forth to Paris and the treatment would run us close to $180,000.

It should’ve been a no-brainer. We could never afford that.

But somewhere along the way, as the months went by and the barrage of treatments and therapies we tried didn’t help, I started to wonder, what if?

What if we could afford to fly to Paris and meet with Dr. Reveno?

What if the twelve case studies he’d published online were all true?

What if it worked for Keith?

What if we could have our lives back?

I think Dr. Bryant would’ve let it go if I hadn’t started asking more and more questions about it.

If it works, he’d be able to walk again?

Yes.

Run?

Maybe.

Swim?

That, I don’t know.

But there would be more than a three percent chance.

Yes. Much more.

And just as soon as we’d start talking about it, Keith would get upset and demand to know why we were still discussing a treatment we couldn’t afford. One that couldn’t be “won through lottery tickets or pieced together from DAC fares,” he’d told me once in a conversation-turned-argument.

“It’s like it’s all you can think about,” he’d said. “Finding ways to scrape money out of couch cushions so that we can afford to make me better. Has it occurred to you that I don’t want you doing that?”

“Why not?” I’d asked. “Dr. Bryant said—”

“I don’t care what Dr. Bryant said!” he had said. “I am so damned tired of talking about this. We can’t afford it. Please, Paula, just let it go.”

We didn’t talk about it much after that, but I hadn’t let it go. In fact, it had become almost an obsession, a pipe dream I couldn’t shake. Because if all that separated us from the life we once had—the one where we rolled around in bed on Saturday mornings and drank whiskey cocktails for fun, not straight from the bottle to go to sleep—was $180,000, then I would search every couch cushion and pick up every DAC I could find.

I would do whatever it took.

In fact, as I neared our apartment building after leaving the diner, I stopped next to my car where I’d parked it on the street a few hours earlier.

Unlocking it, I opened the back door and leaned inside, letting my hand brush the cushion of the back seat.

I did this once or twice a day, looking for loose change, jewelry, wallets, or anything else of value. People left the most ridiculous things in DACs, and it was surprising how few actually followed up for them.

The seat was empty, and I was about to slam the door when the streetlight bounced off something on the mat behind the passenger seat.