9 months later 02 - baby business by novak brenda

Author:novak, brenda [novak, brenda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-01-22T12:55:02.325540+00:00

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Chapter 12

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Macy set her glasses aside and rubbed her eyes. It wasn't sinking in. She'd been trying to study since arriving at the hospital at eight, but the words were blurring together and seemed to bounce off her brain. Superinfections: the overgrowth of Staphylococci, Pseudomonas or fungi… The overgrowth of what?

Her mother and Haley were just a few feet away, talking and giggling as they worked the puzzle of a large Saint Bernard. It felt good to see Haley enjoying her grandmother. Macy wanted to close her pharmacology book and join them. She was too stressed, too tired, too worried to absorb anything remotely difficult. But time was so short. If she could just hold on long enough to pass her finals, just ten more days…

Putting her glasses back on, she took a deep breath and forced herself to keep reading. The basic human T cell is a—

"Ms. McKinney?" Dr. Forte stuck his head into the room, causing them all to look up.

"It's Mrs. Winters now," Edna volunteered. "Macy got married yesterday."

Forte raised his eyebrows. "That's wonderful news. Congratulations!"

Macy willed herself not to blush to the roots of her hair. "Thank you."

"Can I speak with you for a moment alone, please?" he asked.

A chill swept through Macy as she caught her mother's eye. What now? Every new hope the doctors had held out for her over the past year had been crushed in its turn. When they'd first found the tumors in Haley's abdomen, they thought surgery would take care of the problem. The cancer spread to her spleen. They tried chemotherapy, hoping for a remission, but the disease only paused before marching on to her pancreas. Next came radiation and the discovery of more tumors, these ones in her liver. Another operation, more chemotherapy, more radiation. The result? Cancerous cells in her spinal fluid. Now they were facing a bone marrow transplant. If that didn't work, Macy knew they were at the end of the line.

Edna drew Haley's attention back to their puzzle. Macy followed Dr. Forte out of the room and down the wide hall to a small cubicle that served as his office.

Perching on a hard plastic chair, Macy clamped her hands together to keep them from shaking.

"I've got good news," he said, smiling as he took his own seat behind a small cluttered desk.

Macy relaxed, but only fractionally. With a child as sick as Haley, good news was always a relative term.

"We've found a donor."

A donor! Fresh hope, too strong for the scars of past experience to temper or jade, charged through Macy like a lightning bolt. They had a donor. At last. "That's wonderful!" she breathed. "How? Through the National Marrow Donor Program?"

"Actually, he's local."

"I've been posting notices at school, begging people to come over and be tested. It's probably a student at the U."

"His age is about right. He's twenty-three."

"What's his name?"

"John Taylor."

A total stranger was going to help her save her child. His generosity awed her. "I'm grateful to him," she said, knowing the words were barely adequate.

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