I almost thought this might be hantavirus, based on when he first started to experience problems. But ILD is the kind of thing no one used to think about. People died younger, heart attacks and other more common things carrying them off. They didn't usually live long enough to find out that miners weren't the only ones who could die from lung disease. The thought of all that sawdust and the fibers from ruptured greenchain bark is horrifying when you think of it building up inside your body.

the months’ long stay at rehab on a rocker on the deck he had built when a younger man a different man a man breathing through his own lungs I liked this line especially. The irony of yet one more wood project and what all of them cost him, the innocence of those earlier dreams he'd had for both of them... How could he have ever known?