"She had a nearly romantic relationship with Death. She had beaten it out so many times that she was convinced she could go and kiss [it] all she wanted and still come out on the other side. Even when she wanted to die she couldn't seem to pull it off. Lucy, weighing about a hundred pounds, having survived thirty-eight operations, had become officially invincible. She believed that the most basic rules of life did not apply to her, and over the course of our friendship, without me knowing when it had happened, I had come to believe it myself. The sheer force of Lucy's life convinced me that she would live no matter what.