Jillian giggled wildly. Then she rested her head on Grant’s shoulder, and Grant snuggled Zachariah next to her.
“Are you scared to be sick?” Jillian asked, almost in a whisper.
There was a brief pause during which Grant absently stroked the bear’s arm with his finger. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I guess I am scared of being sick, but I also have faith in getting well.”
Hailey realized she was crying, and she blotted tears away before Grant or Jillian could see them, which worked until Jillian said, “me too.”
A young woman walked into the waiting room. “There you are,” she gasped when she saw her daughter. “Didn’t I tell you not to run off while I was talking to your doctor?”
“Hi, Mommy!” Jillian exclaimed. “This is my new friend; his name is Grant. He doesn’t have any hair.”
“Hi, Grant,” the attractive young woman laughed, embarrassed. “Thank you for being so sweet to her; I’m sorry she bothered you.”
“Oh, she didn’t bother us,” Grant replied quickly. He swallowed. “I’m sorry… I noticed you said that you were talking to her doctor…?”
Jillian’s mother smiled as she put on a brave face. “Jillian has Leukemia…she’s starting treatments again today.”
“Again?” Hailey gulped, feeling there was a long story behind that word.
“Yeah, she and Zachariah are old pros,” the young woman said as she took her daughter’s hands and helped her off of Grant’s lap. “She’s been in remission for nearly six months, but the cancer’s back now.”
“Oh my goodness,” Hailey sighed. “When was she diagnosed?”
“At a year…before she even remembers it,” the woman nodded. “She’s been in remission three times, but it never lasts. There are complications that make her case challenging.”
“Grant’s sick too, Mommy,” Jillian announced. “But Zachariah can make him feel better, just like he always makes me feel better in the hospital! Isn’t that right? That’s why Zachariah wanted to give him hugs! Isn’t that right, Mommy?”
“Yes, Baby…that’s right,” the woman nodded with a forced smile. She lifted her little girl onto her hip. “Do you have Leukemia too?” she asked Grant.
“Yeah,” Grant nodded.
“I’m sorry,” the woman sighed.
Grant shook his head as he stared at Jillian and then at her mother. “No, I’m sorry…”
“Thank you,” the woman smiled. “But she’s a tough little girl; we’ll make it.” She turned to walk away. “Say bye-bye, Jillian,” she told her daughter.
“Bye Grant! Bye Hailey!” Jillian waved. She held up her teddy bear and, waving his arm, she mimicked the voice that Grant had used as she called, “bye, Grant! I love you!”
As Jillian and her mother disappeared around the corner, Hailey laid her head over on Grant’s shoulder. “Wow,” she exhaled.
“Yeah,” Grant gulped. “That’ll put things in perspective real quick, huh?”
“She’s so happy…and upbeat,” Hailey reflected.
“How can a kid that was diagnosed with Leukemia before she could ever remember not being sick be so optimistic?” Grant grumbled, sickened by the thought that a child like Jillian had faced the things he had been through lately. “Better medicine than I’ll get anywhere else in this place today.”
“She was amazing,” Hailey agreed. She wove her fingers in Grant’s. “I’ve been doing a lot of praying lately…I’ll definitely be adding her to the list.”
“She’s gonna make it,” Grant said confidently.
Hailey nodded. “You both are,” she replied.
In the weeks that followed, Grant and Jillian became inseparable on the mornings they were both at the hospital for treatments. They took a tag-team approach to fighting cancer, each encouraging the other. On many days Grant would hold Jillian and read to her. He would read her happy fairy tales that transported them both, if only for a short time, away from the realities of Leukemia to worlds where the only fears were of talking wolves and witches and other figments of the imagination. On other days he read her Bible stories about miracles like when Jesus fed the masses with only five loaves of bread and two fish, how Daniel survived the lion’s den and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego survived the fiery furnace, how David slayed the giant and how Lazarus was raised from the dead. On other days Grant would listen as Jillian relayed, with childlike ease, stories about her previous hospital visits. They laughed as they whispered back and forth, sharing the secret messages that Zachariah spoke only to them. On bad mornings when one of them was more sick than usual, Grant and Jillian would simply sit together quietly, holding hands and finding amazing strength in the willpower of the other.
“The success rate of a related donor has statistically proven more successful than using the marrow of an unrelated donor, though unrelated matches are not at all uncommon. Siblings usually provide the best opportunity for a match.” Nora and Randy listened as the doctor spoke.
“He has siblings, so we will have no trouble locating a match, right?” Nora said hopefully. “We can have them tested right away.”
“We do want to be proactive and go ahead and have everyone tested,” the doctor nodded. “It is not a given that his siblings will be a match, but it is a positive starting point.”
“More than likely one of them will, right?” Randy asked.
“We hope so,” the doctor nodded.
That was all Nora needed to hear. The doctor had told them that Grant was in no way ready to receive a bone marrow transplant, and that it would not be an option until somewhere down the road, if ever. He did, however, stress the importance of preemptively finding a donor for when the time came, as, often, finding a match can take time. Nora had listened to the statistics though; she had hung on every word the doctor had told them, and she was confident that Grant’s siblings were the key to finding a match for him.
Phone calls were made; appointments were scheduled. Though Nora and Randy had been told that it was less likely they would be matches than their other children, they were tested anyway.
When Nora and Randy’s results came back negative as matches, Nora told herself that she had expected that. David and Joanna had been tested, and surely one of them would be the match they were hoping for. One of them just had to possess the miracle marrow that would save their baby brother.
David’s results came back first, and he was devastated to learn that he was not a match for Grant. As the results of Joanna’s test were relayed to Nora and Randy, Nora felt her heart sink. How was it possible that Grant’s brother nor his sister were matches? Had the hope she had heard in the doctor’s voice been manufactured in her own mind?
Randy had his phone to his ear, determined not to give up until a donor was found. “Rachel, your mother and I worried that because you are pregnant, you wouldn’t be considered an option, but, after speaking with the doctor, I feel like it is safe for you to go ahead and be tested. The doctor assures me that the procedure presents minimal risk to you or the baby. If you are a match, they would want to wait until after the baby is born to do the procedure, but Grant’s doctor says he most likely won’t be ready before then anyway.”
It wasn’t until the day that Rachel’s results came back negative that Nora broke down. She folded into Randy, exhausted from a search that had only just begun.
