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“System status, doctor?” Google prompted lightly—an inside joke and a rhetorical one at that. He had spied the dark rings under Edward’s eyes and the weary tremor in his writing hand all the way from the door; a quick scan further revealed that his blood sugar was too low, his blood pressure too high, and yet here he still sat long after hours.

The fact that he cared to ask had Edward smiling halfheartedly. “Optimal, obviously. Ten out of ten, five stars, clean bill of health.”

But perhaps nothing else stirs Miranda's passion quite so powerfully as Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory where his parents were born and which has suffered so much tragedy since the hurricane hit in 2017. Original estimates put the death toll at just 64, but a George Washington University study commissioned by the local government and released in August 2018 put the total at 2,975 lost lives -- more than Hurricane Katrina. Many of the deaths were avoidable, linked to a lack of emergency and relief services and a full year of power outages. "The power grid is key to everything, and so many of the heartbreaking stories we're hearing about were preventable," says Miranda. "There weren't fridges around for medicine. Health centers were without power."

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As part of his hurricane relief efforts, Miranda works with the Hispanic Federation, a nongovernmental organization that has given a lot of support to Puerto Rico's recovery. His father, Luis, is the group's founding president.

To aid in the recovery, Miranda has raised millions through TeeRico and his star-studded single "Almost Like Praying." "Through the Hispanic Federation, we've been working on providing solar energy for health centers so if everything goes down again -- it's a very fragile and outdated power grid, and I'm not confident it got fixed post-Maria -- there will still be medical care available," he says. "In some parts of the island, it's business as usual, and in other parts there are still no traffic lights. Everyone's still going on the honor system, and that's become business as usual, which is very sad. In some ways, it's back to normal, and in some ways, it will never be normal again."

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But Miranda is quick to explain that each project "works different muscle groups" and that he's not really working himself into an early grave. "I have a lot of help. I sleep. I take my kids to school and tuck them in each night. I'm not some kind of sleep-deprived tortured writing animal," he says. "Some days, I feel like I'm constantly trying to kick the pedestal out from under me that people are trying to put there."

The Gmorning/Gnight book came about as a result of the Internet. "There's no magic behind that. All I'm writing is what I wish someone would tell me that morning. If it's about anxiety, I'm probably feeling anxious. If it's about 'pace yourself,' I probably put toothpaste in my coffee," he says. "The more personal I get, the more it resonates -- which is an amazing lesson as a writer. Those are written and done, and all that's left is for people to have it."

A biography of Fosse and Verdon, written by Miranda's Wesleyan classmate Sam Wasson, inspired the upcoming FX series. "I put it in the hands of Tommy Kail [a director-producer and frequent Miranda collaborator] and Andy Blankenbuehler, our choreographer from Heights and Hamilton, who's as close to a modern-day Fosse as I know," he says. "That's not really work for me; it's helping put talented people together in a room and saying, 'OK, keep going.' "

Of Tick, Tick... Boom!, he says, "I know I'm going to have to wait to make it, because I want to make sure the screenplay is everything it can be. We really just started kicking the tires on it in earnest, and I don't think it'll get into production until late 2020. And playing Lee Scoresby feels like a vacation, even though it's hard work, because it doesn't require any part of my brain to be writing. So when you look at it that way, it's not really all that much at once."

Part of the reason Miranda's fan base is so vast and devoted is his goofy, self-deprecating personality -- he's a West Wing geek (the Hamilton line about "looking for a mind at work" was lifted straight from the series), and he once told Conan O'Brien that he totally freaked out upon meeting "Weird Al" Yankovic, saying "I have no chill whatsoever." It's as if he is simultaneously the hippest and the dorkiest guy in the room.

"It would take so much more energy if I had to pretend to be cool," he says. "I don't know how to do that. I feel very lucky that Hamilton came along at a time in my life when I already knew who I was. I was married, I had a kid. When you have that level of success as a person and you're still trying to find out who you are and what you want to be in the world, it can knock you off your feet in a very real way."

He pauses.

"Of course, I could still get knocked off my feet at any second," says Miranda. "Let's not predict anything!"

Best of Wives and Best of Women

Helping keep Miranda on an even keel is his wife, Nadal, whom he praised as "the reason everything gets done" in his heart-wrenching "love is love is love" speech at the Tonys shortly after the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, FL. His high-traffic Twitter feed is punctuated with mini "one-act plays" featuring dialogue from the Miranda household, which often involves Nadal keeping any sign of ego from her husband firmly in check.

"Vanessa is an absolute superhero who manages to do her own legal work while still nursing a baby," he says. "She's also not really a theater person. So if I've written something and she likes it, I know I've cleared a higher bar than someone who loves show tunes full stop. If Hamilton has gone beyond the base of people who like musical theater, it's because of her."

The couple is still adjusting to life as parents of two. "We're not outnumbered, but our attention can be split," he says. "The baby is still very dependent on us, and the 3-year-old is testing boundaries all the time. The 'threenager' thing is real! There can be nights she's with the baby and I'm with the older one, and we both fall asleep without checking in because we're freaking exhausted! So we really have to focus on taking the time to be with each other and not let drift happen. That's the foundation, not only for our kids, but for ourselves."