"The Lung" first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of the Cimarron Review, Issue 167.

The Lung

Half a dozen years ago, the doctors took my lung. But I didn’t tell my girlfriend, Margot, until just the other day because I was sure she would end our relationship. I still smoke (cigarettes and weed) and she hates these habits in general. Now she is consumed with worry: the remaining lung will suffer the same fate, that “if I don’t stop soon, it’s just a matter of time.” I say, I quit trying to quit a long time ago and would rather spend what’s left enjoying life.
One day Margot and I are lounging around my pool after lunch and she asks if a friend can stop by. So I reply, sure, why not? I should have known something was up. Her friend is an acupuncturist. Before I know it I’m confined to the shade and must keep still. A parade of needles sticks out across all regions of my body. I try to relax but I keep eyeing my cigarettes and lighter on the table next to me. I reach for them but just sliding a smoke out of the pack is difficult with the cluster of fine needles on the back of my hand. Instead I pick up the half a joint sitting in the ashtray which a few moments earlier, the acupuncturist and I were passing back and forth (stoned, he slipped inside to doze).
In the pool Margot shimmies off the blow-up mattress and wades to the side closest to me. “You light that up, I’m leaving,” she says. 
But I light up. “There’s no reason to worry about my lung,” I say, taking two tiny puffs. “Besides, smoking had nothing to do with my illness. They ran tests. I had some sort of weird, rare genetic cancer.”  
“Oh, sure,” Margot says. “Of course you did.” She emerges all curvy dripping woman and quickly pats dry. 
I don’t say anything. I tilt my head back and suck in a nice, long drag just for spite. But then I think about if Margot does leave for good, the house empty of our laughter. “And what if I try to quit but I still can’t?” I ask. “Does that mean I love you any less?”
“Do you love me?” she says. “I wonder how you can claim that, when you obviously don’t care very much about your health.”
I stub out the end of the joint.
Margot disappears to the outdoor shower. As I sit there covered in needles, I watch her soap and rinse. When she comes out her face is wet but her eyes are ember-red, either from the chlorine or, I wonder, tears. And I’m troubled by this because as much as I seek to enjoy every moment with Margot, I want just as much for her to enjoy me, too—otherwise, what’s the point? I fought the cancer after my divorce, by myself. I wouldn’t want to go through that alone again.
 
The next morning we awake to the smell of smoke. A haze now hangs outside even though the air the night before was clear.  The local news station tells us that wildfires are burning across the state. I’m glued to the TV set most of the morning. I work in the field of environmental protection, although the staff under my management amends developers’ agreements, not forest fires. A storm out in the Atlantic is blowing winds south, trapping the worst part of the smoke right above central Florida. The reporter concludes by warning that anyone with breathing conditions should spend the day inside.
  I open the patio door and light my usual morning cigarette. Any smoker will tell you there’s a vast difference between having a cigarette and breathing smoke. But in a few minutes, the double-inhalation of toxic fumes proves too much; I’m clutching my sides in a coughing fit.
Margot waltzes out with our two mugs of coffee and the newspaper for me to read. She says nothing about my hacking spell, but shoves the ashtray across the table so hard that it wobbles on its rim like a hubcap before coming to rest.
“My lung works at eighty-five percent capacity,” I start. “That’s better than most people with two lungs.”
“You’re a coward,” she says.
“If that’s how you see it,” I say. “I try every day not to smoke.”
“You say you love me and want a long, passionate life together, yet you act to destroy that very possibility every time you bring one of those cancer sticks to your lips,” she says. “Either you want to live, or you want to smoke and die young. Which is the truth?” 
I’m flabbergasted. But Margot is a lawyer, and for the first time I’m realizing just how she has won her reputation for ruthless cross-examination in the toughest of cases.
“Please stay,” I say. “See, this is the reason I love you. You’re right, and you’re the most brilliant woman I’ve ever known.”
“I appreciate that,” she says. “But I assure you, I get plenty of praise from my colleagues and everyone else who wants to get in my pants.”
Margot rises, strips off the sarong she wears in the morning, and struts over the pool naked. When we are alone at my house Margot jumps out of bed every morning and swims in the nude. Now she dips one foot in the water and tugs on a white swim cap, then plunges in the deep end. I smoke while her egg head skims back and forth over the length of the pool. The yard takes on a dull tinge from the wildfire smoke. Even her swim cap doesn’t gleam its usual bright white. 
Then I picture her climbing out of the pool, collecting her things and not coming back. Margot is that type of woman: she won’t waste time if she hits an impasse, but will survey her options and hop the next plane to wherever she wants to go. To the extent that I desire her tongue-lashing insights to keep my own ship sailing, I reel back en route.  
I fetch my car keys and call out to Margot that I’m going to the pharmacy to buy the latest nicotine patch system. I expect her to smile and wave a hand mid-stroke, but she stands up in the shallow end, coughing. She cuts short her workout; she says the smoky air hurts her eyes and lungs too much. We retreat to the indoors and barricade ourselves within the air-conditioning. I bring her a bottle of water but she is hacking so hard that she runs to the bathroom and throws up. 
At the store I buy the most expensive anti-smoking product on the market.

That night the air in the house tastes of ash from the blazing fires, despite our efforts to keep the windows and doors sealed throughout the day. Margot has an early court case in the morning of the ambulance-chasing variety so she spends the night at her house. I go to bed with a burning sore throat and stinging nose. The air is so bad that I can’t sleep. I turn on the light and reach for my cure-all remedy (insomnia, nausea, glaucoma)—a joint.
I exhale my lungful of weed smoke and ponder: what’s the heart of the trouble between Margot and me? If in order to truly love someone else, you must first completely love yourself, then aren’t most relationships in the world not based in love but something else—dependency, security, urgency, sex? But then if in order to love yourself that includes accepting your own faults and failures wouldn’t that mean the other person has to accept those imperfections, too? I close my eyes, check the pulse in my neck and feel the blood gushing through my veins. Only two experiences illuminate our otherwise pointless existence with aliveness—proximity to death or risk-taking, both of which enable us to make choices out of love rather than fear. Then I think, maybe it’s Margot who’s afraid of death? 
I recall my most recent visit to the specialist who removed my lung. We examined the glowing X-rays of my chest, the doctor pointing out the solo lung’s incredible expansion into the cavity left by its twin, the strange starfish arms branching out every-which-way from the body.

The next evening after dinner, Margot spots the 5-step nicotine system in the kitchen and reads the box in its entirety while I rinse dishes and stock the dishwasher. “So where’d you stick the patch?” she asks.
“I didn’t start yet,” I say. “Today was my last day to smoke.”
“Oh,” she says, replacing the box on the counter as if she had wasted too much time divulging all those directions and diagrams. Then she rummages through her purse for a piece of dark “antioxidant” chocolate, her after-dinner habit. Between chews she says, “Are you going to stop smoking weed, too?”
“Weed I can quit anytime,” I reply. “Just whether I want to or not.”
Margot offers me a piece of the chocolate (70% cacao), but I refuse. The stuff tastes like dirt pie mixed with soot, not that I would know.
“I love you,” she says.
“’I love you,’ what does that mean?” I retort, whirling around and shoving the dishwasher door shut with a thud. “What happens if I quit now but breach contract with a pack of American Spirit in five years? Then you won’t quite love me so much, maybe?”
She’s quiet for a few moments, collecting her thoughts, and when she speaks her voice is steady, each word chosen with extreme care and deliberation. She says, “I want evidence that you believe in the value of your life, an action or something specific. If not, we might as well end this right now because we’ll just keep failing to understand one another.”      
I think, This argument isn’t even about me smoking or having one lung. This is about two people defining what love is going to mean between just them. This is laying a foundation for a brick house rather than plodding along and tossing up some shack of twigs and straw, which is what most people settle for instead. And now the time has come for me to throw down the largest brick of all, the cornerstone upon which my life with Margot will either tower majestically or crumble into a pile when the pressure heats up later on. Once again squared off with Margot’s brilliant insight, I feel overwhelmingly grateful for her. And I know exactly what to do next. A simple gesture, really, but one that will either cause her to flee and never contact me again or else ignite much weeping and embracing as a result. But she’s waiting for me to say, do something, and I must take my chances or lose her to impatience.      
“Go into the garage,” I say. “Look above the refrigerator in the back. Tell me what you find.”
“What does this have to do with anything?” Margot says. “What am I looking for?”
“A plastic bucket, orange,” I say. “Possibly surrounded by a peculiar odor, but with the brushfires you might not be able to tell.”  I flick on the garage light for her.
Margot returns gagging, but not from the smoke. She carries the sealed bucket far out in front of her with both hands, slides its contents back and forth slightly.  The bucket sounds like it has a rock inside as she steps closer to me, ker-thunk, ker-thunk.
“Whatever this is, it stinks of chemicals,” she says, wrinkling her nose.
“You really don’t know?” I ask her. “Look. The bucket’s got Xs and crossbones and ‘cuidado’ marked all over it.”
“Can I throw this away, please?” she says. 
“Absolutely not,” I tell her, pretending to take offense. “That’s my lung.”
Margot screams and drops the bucket. It hits the floor but luckily the hospital must seal up medical waste to outlast a nuclear war because the lid stays on.
“I had to fight with the doctors for them to give me my lung as a reminder,” I say. “Even having that old cancer-ridden lung in my house didn’t work to stop me from smoking. And I kept that bucket here and stared at it for a long time, trust me. But that old lung’s still here and so am I, and because of that lung I love every moment of my life.”
Margot just stands there, one hand plastered over her mouth, staring at me. I stoop down and grasp the bucket. Ker-thunk, ker-thunk.
“Jesus,” she mutters. “That’s sick.”
Ker-thunk, ker-thunk.
But then we both start laughing. As I laugh the petrified lung rattles and clunks even more in the bucket, which makes us crack up even harder. Margot follows me outside and all the way down the driveway to the trash receptacle. I throw open the lid and say goodbye to my lung.
We are still reeling and speechless afterwards. Underneath the driveway spotlight we wipe our eyes, grip our aching ribs and howl until the harsh smoky air finally turns our chuckles to chokes. Surrendering, we head inside and hit the sheets.

After we make love Margot falls asleep but I’m still brimming with energy and joy, so I turn the TV on real low. The wildfires are still splashed all over the airwaves. The smoke might hover over the city for days; it’s impossible to predict when the fires will be under control. I think about the dream I had last night and wonder at the power we have to create miracles in our own lives once we recognize that. I’d like to hunt up the X-rays of my starfish lung. Then I picture its double, now at the bottom of the Dumpster at the end of my driveway. I wonder what the dead lung looks like—shriveled, formaldehyde-stinking—if the lemon-sized tumor has been preserved along with the healthy tissue. For a while I turn the strangeness of my two lungs over in my mind, the dead rock-lung and its living star-shaped brother underneath my ribs, breathing in and out. There are two kinds of survivors—those who use their second chance to transform themselves, body and soul, to capture life’s best moments and the others who, lacking the courage to deeply question this, let their life flicker and expire in a hazy abyss.   
 
By the following weekend, life has shifted somewhat. Instead of having my first cigarette while Margot swims, I join her in the pool. Mostly I interfere with her laps by swimming around and groping her naked body under the water, and this begins a cycle of her squirming, crying out in protest and finally, kissing me. She hasn’t mentioned my quitting smoking since the night we tossed out my old lung. The wildfires die down and the wind shifts, clearing the air. In the late afternoon, the rains come. Margot and I make love while the sky pours buckets. Afterward, I sit out on the porch inhaling the clean, cool air brought by the rain and enjoy my only smoke of the day (a joint).    
Margot slips out of house clad in a sarong and carrying a towel. She prefers the outdoor shower because the indoor one lacks the appeal of geckos and insects darting around her feet, and the slim but dangerous possibility of a snake. A couple of weeks ago I found a baby rattler while cleaning leaves out of the pool filter. Not what I’d call exotic, but Margot likes to pretend we’ve got our own Garden of Eden tucked away in the backyard. The shower jerks to life.
Suddenly I feel confessional; perhaps it’s the weed. “I was afraid you’d leave,” I say. “If I didn’t stop smoking.”
“Is that why you quit?” she asks and shoots me a skeptical look but her tone is bemused, sparring. “Mr. I-Don’t-Live-In-Fear?”
“Cut it out,” I say. “Would you rather I take for granted waking up next to you every morning?” (Which is what happened to my first wife and me; no wonder the bedroom air got stale). 
Eyes closed, head tilted back, her body is framed by the night-blooming jasmine and papaya trees of my tropical garden so that when she speaks she’s like Demeter sprouted up from nowhere.
“Modus operandi,” she says. “If we love one another, we should use this to keep us in check—that at any time, for any reason, either one of us may leave or die.”
“But you’re staying?” I ask.
“I’m staying,” she says. “And I believe you love me a tad bit more, but that’s just today.”
      I nod and think, fair enough. A great horticulturist accepts that no two days are exactly alike in the natural world, no two moments, no two creatures; that’s why living organisms brim over with mystery and surprise. I’m fixated by this in Margot, her churning bundle of deliberate yet spontaneous qualities. She’s like a reviving serum that keeps me reborn. 
After the rains stop, I rummage around in my office. The groaning of boxes and banging filing cabinet drawers summons Margot to the doorway.
“What are you looking for?” she asks.
I reply, “I want you to see my good lung, so you believe me.”
Margot helps me look. Together we tear the desk and drawers apart. We move on to the closet. We conduct this brick-laying ritual together, unearthing gestures and evidence of my devotions to love and life.
She asks, “How can a lung grow, especially with you smoking?”
“In spite of smoking,” I point out. “After the operation, I was still in the hospital but able to walk around, and I went sort of crazy. I did laps around the ward just to prove to myself that I was okay, alive. Over and over and all I thought was, ‘I have a fantastic lung.’”
Wedged between a stack of bent Get Well cards and some back issues of High Times, Margot discovers the X-rays. The light is too dim to reveal anything distinct. I turn on the closet light and hold up one sheet of film.
“I don’t see anything,” Margot says. “Just a dark blob.”
In my hurry to exit the closet, I trip over some boxes.  The sheets fly out of my hand and fan out across the floor. The afternoon sun hits this side of the house pretty strong and the blinds are wide open.
“Oh, my gosh, is that it?” Margot says. We both squat near the spread out X-ray film. I pick up the transparency on top and walk it over to the window. Then I stick it in the window crack so that the light shines through. 
“Isn’t that something,” she says and hugs me from behind.
We study the peculiar image before us. Mysterious as a snowflake, my solo lung has great arms. It splays out in my chest like a flesh-made Star of David and reaches out of my body, across the universe.