Cherry narrates the events leading up to her seventieth birthday, when she and Ned booked a Jewels of Europe river cruise. Ned had recently become obsessed with longevity, studying blue zones, eating superfoods, fasting, taking cold showers, and going to the gym regularly. He wanted Apple Watches to monitor their health, but Cherry resisted, knowing his obsessive personality would make it all-consuming. Ned was fit and healthy by all measurable standards, with good cholesterol and regular checkups.

However, Ned mentioned feeling slightly more breathless than usual on the treadmill. Their GP wasn't overly concerned but referred him to a cardiologist. The earliest available appointment fell the day before their departure for Budapest via Sydney and Doha. Cherry couldn't accompany Ned because she had her own optometrist appointment. At the cardiologist's office, Ned was kept waiting for an hour. Growing impatient, he asked the secretary how much longer it would be. She snapped at him rudely, and Ned—who could not abide bad manners—walked out of the appointment entirely.

Cherry was cross when she learned Ned had left, but neither of them was truly concerned. They both viewed the cardiology visit as a box-checking exercise, and Ned hadn't noticed the breathlessness recently. They agreed he would reschedule after their trip. Cherry reflects on the Many-Worlds Interpretation of physics, imagining an alternate reality where Ned waited, saw the cardiologist, and received a life-saving stent that very day.

Instead, in Cherry's reality, Ned falls asleep on the flight from Hobart to Sydney and never wakes up. Cherry desperately tries to wake him after landing, repeating his name and shaking his arm, but he is gone. On the same day, their friends Jill and Bert are killed in a car accident while driving to their grandson's first birthday party—hit by a careless driver negotiating a hairpin bend. Cherry lost all three of them on the same day, just as she had once foreseen.

Cherry questions whether this foreknowledge made her psychic like her mother, or simply human—since everyone imagines terrible possibilities as a way of preparing or protecting themselves. She concludes that life's cruelty lies in the fact that both wildest dreams and worst nightmares can come true.