Van has spent a lifetime counting every penny and trusting no one. Now, in his fifties, the wealthy miser faces the one thing money can't buy—more time. As he struggles through chemotherapy and radiation for stage-four melanoma, he's convinced death is waiting just around the corner. Fear only sharpens his bitter tongue and sarcastic view of the world.

Too weak to drive himself, Van reluctantly hires his beautiful next-door neighbor, Delta, a compassionate nurse, to take him to his treatments. She is everything he is not—kind, generous, and patient. Yet even while she cares for him, Van refuses to spend a few dollars on gasoline to run the air conditioner during the sweltering summer heat, forcing them both to endure the suffocating ride while he battles waves of nausea.

Meanwhile, Delta juggles long nursing shifts and the demands of raising her young son, Buster. One heartbreaking afternoon, tragedy strikes when Buster's beloved Great Pyrenees chases a passing truck.

Told entirely through Van's cynical, often darkly humorous thoughts, the story reveals a man imprisoned by greed, fear, and loneliness. But after a routine checkup, his doctor delivers a blunt verdict: the cancer won't be what kills him if he refuses to change. Unless Van starts exercising and taking responsibility for his health, he will shorten the life he is so desperate to keep.

For the first time, Van is forced to confront an unsettling question: Is surviving enough, or is it finally time to learn how to live?