12th of Never

Chapter 77

I HELD JULIE and tried not to crush her with my maternal love. She fussed, and so I cooed and cradled her, pushed her dark curls back from her face. Her skin was warm but not overheated. She opened her beautiful dark eyes and looked at me.

I don’t know how much a four-week-old baby can sense, but I didn’t want her to know how scared I was. How scared we were.

I said, “Hi, sweetie. How’s my girl?” “I want a second opinion,” said Joe.

“What do you mean, Joe? We shouldn’t do the chemo?”

“I want someone else to see her, to do the tests again, see if we get the same results.”

“But that could waste valuable time. Maybe that loss of time would just tilt the odds from fifty–fifty to sixty–forty against her. I like Dr. Dwy. I like this hospital.”

Joe said, “May I hold her?”

I gave the baby to my husband and he held her against his shoulder the way he likes to. He walked around the small room with her, rubbed her back. She closed her eyes and started to breathe rhythmically until she was in a deep sleep.

I thought about my mother’s cancer, what a tenacious bitch it was, and how, despite the chemotherapy, the radiation, the surgery, and my mother’s strong will to live, she had died.

I heard Dr. Dwy in my mind saying, “These acute leukemias move very quickly.”

“I want to take her to Saint Francis,” Joe said. “I’ve done a lot of research. There’s a very highly regarded hem-onc there.”

“A what did you say?”

“Hematologist-oncologist. I want to bring Julie to Mark Sebetic. He’s busy. He’s famous. He’s well guarded by his staff. I’m going to knock down whatever doors I have to. I won’t accept ‘no’ for an answer. I’ll sleep outside his office if that’s what it takes.”

I was torn right down the middle of my heart. I didn’t want Julie to go through the sickness and discomfort of chemotherapy, but I also didn’t want to delay treatment that could save her life.

My husband is older than me, has been uncle to more than a dozen children, and has made life-and-death decisions for other people his entire professional life. But we loved Julie equally. We had to agree on the best course of treatment for our baby.

We had to decide together what was best for her.