When Breath Becomes Air

The Prologue opens with Paul sitting in a hospital room with his wife, Lucy. When she asks him whether or not there’s a possibility that his ailment is not cancer, he tells her no.

Six months before this moment, Paul was thirty-six and on his way to the top of his field in neurosurgery. With fifteen months left in his residency, one of his professors told him he’d be the first candidate for a teaching position at Stanford when one opened up. In the midst of these successes, he began experiencing mild back pains and severe weight loss. A visit to the doctor results in a normal set of x-rays. A dose of ibuprofen dulls the pain, but the symptoms return as pain in the chest a few weeks later. One day, while lying in the park, Lucy sees him searching his symptoms on his phone and wonders why he isn’t confiding in her. Paul changes the subject and puts away his phone.

This, however, does not quell Lucy’s anxiety. She cancels the plans she and Paul have to visit friends in New York, describing the weight of the isolation she feels as a cause of him not openly communicating his symptoms with her.