“Really?” Misty sniffed at the bottle.
“Yeah,” Hailey sighed. “One good whiff of the magazine sample of Chanel that Rachel rubbed on her wrist, and he threw up almost instantly.”
“Poor guy,” Misty frowned.
Hailey stretched out her arms as though preparing for a workout on the basketball court, trying to rid her body of the soreness that comes with spending a week sleeping on a hard, hospital floor. “He doesn’t eat. He was bordering on dehydrated despite the IV, and the doctors are talking about steroids they’re going to have to give him and warning us about how they will change not only his appearance but his personality.”
Misty looked at her friend, not quite sure how to ask the question that was forming in her throat. “So…”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Hailey shook her head, knowing Misty was questioning the inevitable. Hailey had heard the percentages, the survival rate of those suffering Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. Those numbers, those statistics meant nothing to her. Those numbers swam in her head along side the blood counts that were constantly being dictated to her. Red blood cells, white blood cells, platelet transfusions, the rate of this, the level of that, the chances of one thing or another. It was all more than she could comprehend. Nothing had ever made her feel quite as simple-minded as cancer and all its terminology had managed to. She nodded when the doctors spoke, too ashamed to make them stop and define every word of doctor-speak. She tried to remember some of the words, so she could look them up later. She listened as Nora tearfully asked many of the same questions she had, but the answers never seemed to be definite, and they varied slightly depending on which doctor you were speaking to.
One doctor felt one method of treatment would work better, while the other championed another regimen altogether. One doctor wanted to try one thing while another argued that, while he saw the benefits that stood to be gained, the risk to another aspect of Grant’s health was simply too high.
Hailey had always thought of medicine as a science, something exact and clear-cut with right answers and wrong answers. That wasn’t the case at all, she realized. Medicine, she’d decided, was a high-risk art. It was a life or death scale masterpiece resulting from the artistic vision of high-priced painters called doctors.
Hailey had confessed her confusion to Melissa and learned that, if anybody understood how she was feeling, it was the mother of a child who had seen countless neurologists and therapists and had her medications, her diet, personalized learning plans and her prognosis changed, tweaked and argued more times than one could count.
Medicine, Hailey had learned, is no different than anything else. Doctors, though they represent some of the best and brightest society has to offer, are just humans doing a job and trying their best to do it well. In many ways, they are like authors writing a novel. They decide what the next course of action will be, and they weight the consequences that said action will have on the totality of the story. And, while Hailey was grateful for their knowledge, their years of dedicated study and their willingness to help those in need, Autism and cancer had made her acutely aware of something she already knew; doctors could do all that they knew how; they could give their opinions and explain what precedent dictated was supposed to happen, but, unlike the author of a novel, the end result was totally and completely out of their hands!
The percentages didn’t matter because the doctors with those percentages memorized to share with grieving families didn’t know how the story would end. They were not in control. Control over Grant’s disease belonged to One much more powerful than the best doctor they could find. Grant’s life was in the hands of the Great Physician. Only He had the power to heal Grant. Only He knew how this story would end.
Hailey walked into the tiny chapel tucked away in the corner of the hospital’s first floor, expecting it to be empty, the way she had found it for over a week now.
The new year had come, and school would be starting back soon. Christmas vacation was nearing an end, and Hailey knew that returning to school without Grant would symbolize more in her mind than she could allow herself to focus on. That is how she found herself in the chapel again; she was doing the only thing she knew how. As she straightened her shirt and pushed the large, wooden, chapel door open, prepared to get on her knees before God, she noticed the chapel wasn’t empty.
Randy turned at the sound of the door opening, and his eyes met Hailey’s.
“Oh,” Hailey gasped apologetically, “I’m sorry to interrupt. I can come back.”
“No,” Randy said softly, looking away but motioning her forward.
“Are you sure?” Hailey asked tentatively.
“You know what they say,” Randy said, his voice sounding more strained than Hailey had ever heard it. “Where two or more are gathered, right?”
“Right,” Hailey said with a half smile. She walked up the single aisle of the chapel, moving slowly as she noticed Randy swiping at his cheeks in the dim light.
Hailey’s mind raced, searching for the right words to say.
“Honestly, I think I’ll go,” Randy said, standing. “I’ve said what I had to say; I’ll let you have your turn in private.”
As Randy passed by her, Hailey felt her hand catch his arm to stop him. Part of her couldn’t believe she had actually done that, and it took a moment for her thoughts to register. Hailey looked up, her eyes meeting Randy’s, who seemed equally shocked by her action.
“I’m sorry,” Hailey said, letting her hand drop from his arm. “I just thought…it might be nice to pray together.”
Randy nodded his head slowly, allowing Hailey to lead him down the aisle to the small, red-carpeted alter. Hailey looked up at the strapping, six-foot-six man who stared down at her with tear-filled eyes that seemed to sparkle with what looked like admiration.
Hailey felt her insides trembling and hoped her voice would not come out sounding equally shaky.
Randy knelt down in front of the first step and leaned forward, resting his elbows on a higher step, his hands folded beneath his bowed head.
Hailey had seen men pray; she had heard Pastor Jordan pray in front of the congregation a million times; she had heard her daddy pray as she and Jessica knelt down with him at night before bedtime; it did her heart good to hear Grant pray as they studied their devotionals together, but there was something about this man, this prayer that had caught Hailey off-guard. She watched his body lean onto the platform, as though he needed it to hold his weight, and decided it is a curious thing watching a man so solid completely falling to pieces. Hailey blinked, suddenly feeling closer to Randy Cohen than she ever thought she could.
Randy turned his head to the side, glancing at her. “Are we going to pray for my son?” he asked gruffly.
Hailey nodded as she knelt next to him, but the words that came out of her mouth were not a prayer. She was looking at Randy, the timid hesitation gone as she saw a different man than the one she had come to know. “He opens doors for me. He carries things for me without being asked. His hands are strong, but they’re always so gentle with me. For all the brash, sarcastic, negative condescension that he presents to the rest of the world, he is actually incredibly kindhearted. He knows how to make me laugh, and he knows just what to say when I’m crying. He teaches me things all the time. He talks about our future, and he makes me want more out of life than I ever thought possible. He’s helped me realize my dreams, and I was lucky enough to fall in love in the process.”
Randy moved slowly to put his arm around Hailey, pausing to make sure she was receptive to the gesture. He looked into the innocent eyes of the young woman his son loved, and her expression said that a hug was exactly what she needed.
“Grant and I pray together,” Hailey blurted, not knowing quite why she had said it until she saw Grant’s father visibly considering her words.
“I’ve never been too good at this,” Randy confessed.
“What do you mean?” Hailey gulped.
Randy frowned. “I don’t know,” he shook his head. “I’ve been in here for an hour just trying to figure out what to say…”
“I think we should just ask God to continue watching over Grant,” Hailey said simply. “To give him the strength that he needs to keep fighting.”
“You know…after my son Ike died…” Randy’s words fell off. Hailey offered Randy a brief glance that was so sympathetic and genuine that he continued. “After Ike died it took me awhile to accept that God had not ignored my prayers.”
“I spent a lot of time trying to find a purpose in my mother’s death,” Hailey said thoughtfully. “It was that searching, the thirst for answers that got me in the Word.”
“I think God’s been trying to get my attention for a long time,” Randy shook his head as he moved away from Hailey.
Hailey watched Randy stand and run his hands through his hair. “I hurt my family. As if my wife and I had not been through enough…” Randy’s eyes filled with tears. “And now, He’s punishing me…”
