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beside his chair, squeezing his hand as tears prickled my eyes. “Listen to me—we agreed we would be grateful for every day God gave us, right?”
    He nodded, still looking glum.
    “If I get back early enough, why don’t I take you out for a walk before it gets dark? The fresh air would do you good.”
    The doctor had suggested buying an electric wheelchair or scooter to help Uncle Charlie get around, but unless the doctor intended to discount his services, there was no way we could afford one. So we made do with a manual wheelchair, which meant my uncle had to depend on me a lot more than he would have liked.
    “Don’t worry about me.” He pointed at the TV, which he’d paused with the remote. “I’ve got Seb here to keep me company.”
    I glanced over my shoulder at the TV. Seb’s handsome face was frozen on the screen, a half smile tilting those full, kissable lips. “Why don’t you call a friend? One of your old coworkers from the school? They should be home from work by now. You know any one of them would love to hear from you.” And it’s better than wasting time watching TV .
    “Maybe later,” he said, pressing the button to resume the show. “This is just getting good.”
    I walked toward the door, pausing in the doorframe as I pretended to watch the show. I wanted to believe he would take me up on my suggestion and reach out to a friend, but I knew he wouldn’t. He was isolating himself more and more as the disease got a firmer grip on him, and I hated to see it. He had been the fun, outgoing one. “The life of the party,” his colleagues had always said. I wanted to see that man again, not a shadow of him wasting away in a recliner with his eyes glued to the idiot box.
     
    ***
     
    “You know you didn’t have to come get me, dear,” Mrs. Ryan said, patting my leg as I drove out of the hospital parking lot.
    “Nonsense. It’s the least I could do after all you’ve done for us. I would have followed the ambulance to the hospital, but I had to check on Uncle Charlie first.”
    “How is the stubborn old fool today?” she asked, her smile revealing a slightly chipped front tooth.
    “He’s doing okay.”
    “Sitting around feeling sorry for himself, if I know him.”
    I curled my hand around the steering wheel. Mrs. Ryan had never been shy about speaking her mind. It was one of the many things I loved about her, but my first instinct was always to defend my uncle. “With all due respect, Mrs. Ryan, this hasn’t been easy on him. The doctor’s prognosis has been pretty grave, and he’s experiencing a lot of discomfort—”
    “He’s not dead yet,” she said, folding her arms over her ample chest with a huff. “But you sure as hell wouldn’t know it to look at him. As soon as those doctors slapped an expiration date on him, it’s like he’s been counting down the days.”
    I gaped at our landlady, unable to believe what I was hearing. “It can’t be easy to get that kind of news.”
    “I’ll grant you that, but he still had a choice: life or death. He chose death.”
    “I don’t think he chose it,” I said, getting angry on his behalf. “He didn’t do anything to contribute to this. They don’t know the cause of pulmonary hypertension, only that—”
    “That’s not what I mean,” she said, waving off my explanation. “Medical miracles happen all the time. Why couldn’t he be one of them?”
    I gave her a confused look. “What do you mean?”
    “When he told me the news, I gave him a bunch of books to read.” She shrugged, her lips pursed.
    “What kind of books?”
    “Just books about people living with their disease, not dying from it. Some about natural healing. Just trying to give him some hope, to let him know that all isn’t lost until he decides it is.”
    No one wanted to hold on to hope more than I did, but that was difficult in the face of the doctor’s pessimism. According to his physician, my uncle’s death was inevitable, and it was a question of