4

The Bone Marrow Ward. Logical, simple, ingenious, and if your case isn’t in the right statistics, terrifying. You don’t go there to be treated unless there’s nowhere else to go.

Tumors are perversely fascinating in their capacity for evil. They may be the only organic substance that left unharmed and given nourishment lives forever. In laboratory conditions, they survive and survive. With Matt, the initial combination of chemical agents (each combination is called a protocol) proved ineffective. After several administrations of it, a second protocol was tried, and that too proved ineffective. Matt’s tumor became classified as resistant, an especially malignant life force. The third protocol showed results, however. The mass shrank 50 percent, and surgery (which would formerly have killed Matt, so large was the mass to start with) now became possible.

The surgeon explained that the operation would take eight hours. Matt would lose the diseased rib and maybe one rib to the top and bottom, depending on what the surgeon found. The principal risk was that the tumor had grown so close to the spine that in removing the tumor the surgeon might accidentally cut a nerve—or else the artery that supplies blood to the spinal cord—and Matt would be paralyzed.

“What are Matt’s chances of that happening?” Fear made the question a whisper.

“Chances?” the surgeon had responded. “I do my best. I can’t give odds. What happens to each patient happens to him one hundred percent.”

So Matt, with utter calmness, allowed himself to be prepared for surgery. The nurse who took his heartbeat and blood pressure readings was astonished by how relaxed Matt’s vital statistics made him seem. David, Donna, and Sarie walked beside Matt’s bed as he was wheeled toward the surgical area. Then the family was told to go to a waiting room.