Chapter Thirty

On the day they transplant the stem cells, we all arrive early. There are no reporters and only two protesters who half-heartedly wave their signs as we pass.

I wash Ashley's hair, what is left of it anyway, and dry it and put it back in a head band. Logan sits at the foot of the bed and paints her toenails, which is about the silliest thing I've seen in a long time and makes us all giggle.

A nurse comes in around eight and ups the saline drip. "The doctor will be in about noon to inject the cells," she says, looking around at our motley little group. "I'm not sure the fumes from the nail polish are good for her," she adds.

"They're toxic, not bacterial," Logan says, using a q-tip dipped in polish remover to clean up the edges. She scowls and leaves.

The plastic bubble is gone, but Ashley still has oxygen tubes in her nose and several IV's and machines hooked up to her, making it difficult for her to move around much. Not that she would, since she don't have energy to do much other than breathe, which we find good enough.

When Dr. Van Der Campen comes in at noon he has a large syringe. "Should we give a drum roll?" I ask. He's amused by this and waits while we all pat our hands furiously on the closest hard substance.

"Ready?"

We nod, and he sticks the needle into part of the tubing and pushes the plunger.

"That's it?"

"That's it. Were you expecting fireworks?"

"It's so--"

"Anti-climactic," Logan fills in for me.

"Climactic isn't all it's cracked up to be," he says, pulling the syringe out and capping it. He attaches two more bags of clear fluid to the IV lines and opens the valves so they can drip into Ashley as well. "These will help the stem cells multiply and do their job on the beta cells. And one will bind the toxins in the stem cell solution."

"There are toxins?" All I can think is more poison. Lord almighty, how much can one person take?

"She'll be fine, Mrs. Babcock. We're almost out of the woods now."

Out of the woods for what I'm not sure, seeing as how she still has diabetes and is still allergic to insulin. As far as I can see, she's in the Black Forest.

So Travis can spend time alone with Ashley, Logan and I have been getting lunch out all week, but today he insists the boys go. It is the first time in several days I've been alone with her, and the excitement of the transplant has her more alert than in several weeks.

"Do you think I'll be home in time for the fall dance?" She unconsciously smoothes her hair.

After all of this I can't believe the dance is the thing on her mind, but I'm glad it is. I'm glad she's looking forward to something other than transplants and sponge baths.

"If we do get home in time, we'll have to go dress shopping. I'll bet you've grown five inches in the last four months."

"Yeah. My other dresses would look like sacks on me now, too. I've lost weight, don't you think? I feel skinnier."

"Quite a bit."

She picks up the brush I left on the nightstand and absentmindedly begins to brush her hair. I watch long strands come out with each stroke, and I put my hand up to stop her. "It's real pretty already."

She reaches out and touches my mask. "Why do you have to wear that all the time?"

"So I don't breathe germs on you."

"Because your germs would make me more sick?" I nod, wondering why this is the first time she's asked this, and wonder if today she's more awake and aware of what is going on around her. She's been so groggy since we got here, living in a fog, accepting everything around her without question because questioning takes too much energy.

She fingers the IV line where it enters her hand. "Do you know anything about the other kids? The ones in the trial?" I shake my head. "I wonder if they got their transplants too. Do you think? Do you think they're well now? If they didn't get pneumonia they should be ahead of me."

"Maybe. We don't know that they didn't get sick, too, though."

"Do you think Dr. Jack would tell us? Could we ask if they are making their own insulin yet?"

"I think that's private." She looks so devastated I add, "I can ask, though. Or, better yet, we can check the message board. We haven't even done that yet."

She brightens a bit. "When I get out, you know what I want?"

"To go to the dance with Brian Lee?"

She blushes. "Besides that. I want a steak. A really big one, with a baked potato on the side with sour cream and butter and bacon, just like they serve at the steakhouse."

"Not a cake?"

She squinches her nose. "No. I don't really feel like anything sweet."

"Okay. Steak it is."

She settles back, and I think for a moment she might be going to sleep, until she talks again. "What if I don't?"

"Get a steak?"

"Get out."

"Oh, Baby, I think you're getting out. They don't want you living here. They got other people they need to put in this bed. And I'm pretty sure they're tired of seeing my mug here." I smile my cheesy smile, but she don't bite.

"What happens if this doesn't work?"

I stop smiling. "You can't think like that. It will work."

"I've had dreams a lot lately."

"Oh yeah? What about?"

"About going to heaven. I drift off on a cloud and Jesus is there, and angels singing the most beautiful music you ever heard. And grandpa is there. And it doesn't hurt anymore. And I'm really, really happy."

"It's just a dream, Baby."

She stares out the window, complete peace on her face. "But I like it. That's the thing. I'm not scared anymore that I might die. Sometimes I dream I'm there, and it's so nice, and then I wake up and I'm here, and I can't breathe, and my head hurts all the time and my mouth feels like sandpaper. And I just wish I could go back to sleep and dream again."

My own mouth is parched suddenly. I don't know what to say. I take her hand in mine. Her skin feels dry and fragile, like onion paper, and I'm afraid I'll hurt her holding it. "It'll get better, Ash. This time next year you'll forget how bad all this was. You'll be back at school, playing in the band, fighting with Logan, eating anything you want, and this whole thing'll be a bad dream."

"But if I'm not. . ."

"You will be."

She squeezes my hand and lets go. "I'm really tired. I think I'll sleep a little."

"Okay."

I watch her sleep, see the moment when the tightness of her face eases, when her eyelids stop quivering and her body relaxes into itself. I'm selfish to want her here. To want her to keep fighting through all this. Maybe if I were her, I'd just want to let go too.

I slip out and go to the restroom to cry. I wash my face before meeting Travis and Logan, and I don't tell them about the conversation. I pretend to be excited about the transplant and tell them Ashley is curious about the others and that I think she's back to her competitive self because she wants to be the first to have it work. We talk about her name being in medical journals and all the others who will be cured after her. I don't mention her dream. I don't mention death, because today is all about life. I want to hold on to that as long as possible. As Travis and Logan shove down sandwiches and chips, I watch the animation on their faces, their hopes wrapped up in possibility, and I stay quiet.

~~~~

The sun is barely set by nine o'clock, and we say goodnight to Ashley, although she's already asleep again. Logan's invited to go to a celebration dinner with one of his basketball friends, and so Travis and I walk around the Johns Hopkins campus. He holds my hand, and I feel closer to him than I have ever felt. The trees haven't started to change yet, but the air feels like fall already.

I want to ask Travis something, but I can't bring myself to do it. Words have never been easy for me. I open my mouth, and then close it and pretend to find something fascinating about the squirrels running across the path.

Travis, though, feels it.

"All this time, Babs, you were right. This was the right thing to do."

"It hasn't worked out yet," I answer, measuring my words and tempering my hope.

"It will though," he says. "One way or another, it'll be okay."

He squeezes my hand; I squeeze back. "How can you have such faith in God?" There. I've said it. I wait for his avalanche of self-righteousness, but it doesn't come. Travis, it seems, is measuring his words too.

"I think sometimes you mistake me trusting God to answer, for liking what he has to say." He says this slowly, weighing the thought as though maybe this is a new revelation for him, too. "I trust that God will do what is best, because that's what the Bible says. I trust that he hears my prayers, because that is what the Bible says. It also says he always answers, but it doesn't say he answers the way we want him to. Just that the way he chooses will be the best way. In the long run."

He stops walking and stares up into the darkening sky. I wonder if he's looking to see if God is there, or if God will strike him down for thinking what he's thinking. "I believe he can save Ashley's life, but maybe if she dies, something greater will happen. Something good in us, or in someone else." There are tears on his cheeks now, and he turns to look me in the eye. He is more fiery now. "But I don't like that. If he takes Ashley, I may trust that he's going to make something good come out of it, but I'm still going to hate the answer with a passion for awhile."

This is the first time it's seemed possible Travis could be mad at God.

"So how can you trust that he's good, then?" I ask.

"Because the Bible says. Because everything in nature and history shows us that he can make good come of bad. Because," he shrugs. "Because he loves me."

I suddenly have a flashback to a dinner table argument with Logan and Ashley when they were little, about eating broccoli. They wanted nothing to do with the green vegetable. Why couldn't they have candy instead? I don't like it, Ashley had whined. It tastes yucky.

But it's good for you, I'd said. You may not like it, but you have to eat it because it will make you healthier.

Was that like God? Were we just like children who couldn't see for the life of us how something so bad could be good for us?

Travis and I begin to walk again, our fingers still intertwined.

"I don't always feel like God is there," I say.

He nods. "Sometimes it's that way. But he's there."

"How do I know?"

He strokes my palm with his thumb, his fingers running over mine. "Because he promises he will be." It seems like too simple an answer, but then I think of Brenda and Yolanda and Donna Jean and Janise. I think of all the food they made and the laptop that brought us here, to this very place, this very hope. And I suddenly realize God was there, in all of that. He loved me through the people around me.

"I want to believe," I say, stopping again. "I want to trust that God will take care of us, the way you believe it."

He raises his eyebrows at me. "Even if Ashley doesn't get better?"

I suck in my breath. Tears spring to my eyes, but I nod. "I want to trust him even if he don't answer the way I want him too." I hold both his hands in mine and look into his face, wanting desperately the peace he has. "I think, if Ashley doesn't get better, I'm going to need to trust him even more than if she does."

He wraps his arms around me, and I melt into them. He's saying words in my ear, and it takes a minute to realize he is crying and praying. I cling to him under the oaks trees, along some dark and foreign path, and pray with him.

~~~~