Unforgettable: Always 2 (20 page)

She smiled up at me. Tanner did the same. “’Sokay,” he declared with a smile.

If it weren’t for the tubes in his nose and his arm, the lack of hair, the lack of color, the wheezing breath and sunken eyes, that smile would have made my heart sing.

“So,” Chase said, raising her head to look at me, “what’s happening now? Is Dr. Waters searching the donor bank again?”

I blinked. I’d forgotten Chase had no clue about Caden. “Actually …” I began.

Of course, that was the exact moment, Parker walked into Tanner’s room. With Caden.

“So that hurt,” Caden grinned, rubbing at the small round bandage on the inside of his right arm as he strolled over to the bed. “Hey.” He stopped and pointed at Tanner, who – I couldn’t help but notice – was pressing himself hard to Amanda. “You must be Tanner.”

Tanner stared at him, studying him.

Caden grinned wide. “I’ve got something for you,” he said, digging around in his back pocket before withdrawing his hand to show Tanner what he held.

It was a Caramello Koala, a distinctly Australian chocolate shaped like a cartoon koala and filled with caramel. They are delicious. I hadn’t eaten one since I was a kid. Caramel-filled chocolate is not, unfortunately, on my diet.

I could see
this
Caramello Koala, however, shouldn’t be on anyone’s diet. It was flat and clearly melted in the packet. Tanner frowned.

Caden frowned at it as well, a ludicrous frown of melodramatic proportions. “Well, bum,” he muttered with a comical pout.

A smile began to tug at Tanner’s lips. I glanced at Amanda. She was smiling down at him, the tears in her eyes threatening to fall.

“Wait a minute!” Caden held up a finger, grinning again. Tanner flinched at the sudden outburst and then started to giggle. With a crazy 180-degree twirl, Cade scanned the room. “Where’d you put my bag, cousin?” he asked. “Ah, there it is.” He swooped on it.

From Amanda’s lap, Tanner giggled more. After a few seconds of digging around in his bag, and with a dramatic flourish more suitable to a magician’s act, Caden leaped to his feet, spun around to Tanner and held out something completely different in his hand this time. No, not in his hand.
On
his hand.

Tanner stared at it. I stared at it. It was a koala sock puppet. A koala sock puppet with an un-melted Caramello Koala pinned to its felt hands.

“Oh my God.” Amanda burst out laughing. “That’s adorable. Where did you get it?”

Caden preened. “I made it. Waiting for the taxi that would take me to Sydney airport about” – he looked at his watch – “a billion hours ago. What time is it here, anyways?”

Tanner held out his arms, hands opening and closing, his focus locked on the sock puppet on Caden’s hand.

“A little after ten,” Parker answered.

I jumped. So did Amanda. I think we had both forgotten he was in the room.

Caden chuckled. “This jetlag thing isn’t anywhere near as glamorous as they make it sound in the movies.” He turned back to Tanner. For a second, a brief second, I saw him glance at Chase, as if only just noticing her. And then he was walking toward Tanner, sock puppet koala dancing ahead of him. “Here you go, Tanner,” he said, and then paused again, this time to look at Amanda. “Err … I probably should have asked if he can have it first. It’s been in a sealed plastic bag since I made it, if that helps. I can show you the bag. And the sock was clean. Brand new, in fact.”

Amanda’s smile was warm. And yet sad. “Sure,” she answered, brushing her hand over Tanner’s head once more. “What kid can’t have a sock puppet?”

A kid who has a dangerously low immune system. But even as the urge welled through me to snatch the puppet out of Caden’s hand before he could give it to my son, a wave of trust crushed it. I knew my cousin. He was smart. Very smart. And very aware of medical conditions. He’d fooled around with the idea of being a surgeon before choosing to study veterinary medicine. For all his perceived flippancy, Caden would know not to bring something into Tanner’s room that would cause him danger. If I asked, I bet I’d learn the sock was tumble-dried twice on extreme heat before even making it to its koala status. It was the kind of thing Caden would do. Hell, he’d thought to pack it in a sealed, plastic bag after all.

“Here you go, little person,” he said, sliding the sock from his hand.

“Hey,” Chase said, rising to her feet. “Hey hey, wait a damn minute.”

Amanda frowned at her sister. I did the same. Caden froze, half bent toward Tanner, his smile fading, his eyes on Chase. Without a word, Chase stomped around the bed, snatched the sock puppet from Caden’s hand and then turned to where her handbag sat on the table next to the crayons.

“Chase?” Amanda frowned. “What are you …”

Still without speaking, Chase pulled a small disinfectant spray bottle from her bag, held up the sock and depressed the button on the bottle. A fine mist of disinfectant coated the puppet.

Caden raised his eyebrows, his eyes still fixed on Chase. Ignoring us all, Chase pressed the button again, coating the other side of the sock.

“There.” She nodded, meeting Caden’s scrutiny. “
Now
you can give it to my nephew.”

His lips twitched and there was a flash of something in his eyes. “Well, as long as I can do it
now
,” he said, taking the puppet back from her.

She narrowed her eyes.

He grinned again, first at Chase and then at Tanner. “Now,” he said, crouching down until he was at eye-level with my son, “hold your hand up like this.”

He demonstrated what he wanted Tanner to do. Tanner, expression serious, did so. With gentle care, Caden slid the sock over Tanner’s small hand. “There you go.”

Tanner gazed at him, awestruck, and then looked at the puppet on his hand. “Sock.”

“Koala,” Caden said.

“Kala,” Tanner echoed. “Sock kala.”

Caden grinned. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“Well,” Parker said from the door. Once again, we all jumped. Even Caden this time. I saw him look at Chase again, the quickest of glances, and then he was straightening to face Tanner’s doctor. “I need to get back to work. Tanner, don’t go letting that koala eat too many eucalyptus leaves, okay?”

Tanner shook his head, patting the sock puppet’s head. “’Sokay. ’Sokay.”

Parker smiled. “It
is
okay, champ. It is.” He looked at Amanda, then at me. “It’s going to take a couple of hours.”

Amanda nodded. My gut clenched. It was easy to forget – during a moment of simple joy, such as the arrival of the sock puppet in Tanner’s life – that we were at the hospital because he was dying. The mind does that, I’ve realized. As a coping mechanism.

Or perhaps it was the optimist in me, looking for the good, the wonderful, the happy, in a sea of bleakness. Focusing on it, instead of the reality that would cripple us.

With a final grin at Tanner, Parker left. It wasn’t until he turned away from us that I saw how drained, how beaten, he looked. The happy grin he’d given Tanner slipped into a mask of bleak thought. His shoulders slumped. What did he know that I didn’t?

“Be right back,” I murmured against Amanda’s cheek.

Before she could ask what I was doing, I followed Parker out of Tanner’s room. I found him at the nurses’ station, leaning against it, eyes closed.

“Doc?”

He opened one eye a crack. “Big guy?”

A dull pressure wrapped itself around my temples. “Do I … Is there something I should know?”

Parker closed his eye again. “Let’s just get the results back before we talk, okay?”

“We’re out of time, aren’t we?”

I’ve never wanted to utter words less than I had those ones. Every molecule in my body rebelled against saying them. My throat clamped tight, as if in an attempt to prevent the muscles of my larynx from forming them.

Parker didn’t move. Didn’t make a sound.

“I can see how unwell Tanner looks, doc,” I said. My chest ached. So did my gut, a churning knot of cramping pain. “We’re running out of time.”

He let out a short sigh. “We are,” he finally said, rubbing at his eyes behind his glasses. “I am, I’m afraid, at a point where I am reassessing Robert Aames’ bone marrow compatibility with Tanner’s.”

I stared at him.

With another sigh, he opened his eyes. “If you do believe in God,” he said, “or any higher power for that matter, Brendon, I would suggest you start doing some bargaining. For Tanner’s sake, put everything you’ve got on your cousin’s test. Otherwise, we may have to choose riskier options.”

I couldn’t move.

He let out a low grunt and gripped my upper arm. “But I will hold off as long as I can. I promise. Go be with your family, big guy,” he ordered, squeezing my arm before giving it a pat. “Now.”

I walked back to Tanner’s room, numb. My hand was on the doorknob, when I caught myself. The last thing anyone in there needed was to see me shell-shocked like this. Closing my eyes, I counted to ten. I pulled in a deep breath, let it go, and did it again.

By the time I pushed the door open, I was the picture of complete calm. I was okay. I was good. I was gravy. I was chillaxed.

What I found surprised me. Tanner was asleep, hugging his sock puppet koala.

Amanda was brushing his head with her fingertips. Chase was slumped in the seat against the wall, staring at her phone, her teeth worrying her bottom lip.

And in the chair next to her sat Caden, his head resting on her shoulder, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling with slow, deep breaths.

Amanda turned her head to smile at me. “He fell asleep within the second,” she whispered. I didn’t know if she meant Tanner or Caden.

I looked at my son. Parker’s words ate at me. Big, gnashing bites that ripped at me like teeth through flesh.

“Bren?”

I raised my eyes to Amanda.

“You look like you’re about to fall over. Why don’t you go to the gardens? You’re a sun god, Osmond, and you’re denying yourself. Go meditate in the sun for a while. I’ll come get you when I need you.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s okay.”

Her answering chuckle was soft. “That wasn’t a suggestion. Go.”

I did as she asked. As much as I wanted to stay there with her, I went. If I didn’t, I think I would have unraveled. Riskier options. How does one come to terms with an option described that way?

It took me a few minutes to find the garden. It was beautiful, calm. Tall gum trees stood watch over lush green topiaries shaped into various animal forms. Two topiary elephants bathed in a pond, the water spurting up from their leafy trunks flowing back into the pond in a constant trickling sound. Flowerbeds dotted the area, full of bright, colorful blooms.

Stopping at a bench seat painted the most vivid sea-blue, I dropped onto it, rested my elbows on my knees, dropped my head and stared at the pebbled ground between my feet.

I didn’t know what else to do.

I sat that way, letting the sun bake into my back. I stayed there, not moving, considering all possible outcomes.

Caden’s test results come back and he’s a match. The transplant goes well. Tanner is declared cancer-free. Amanda and I get married. We have more children. At least two. A girl and another boy. Or maybe twin girls? I open a personal training business here in San Diego. We visit Australia every winter. Our children grow to be healthy, happy adults. We see them every week for Sunday dinner …

Caden’s test results come back negative. Parker transplants Robby Aames’ bone marrow into Tanner. Tanner’s body accepts it, after some serious medical help. He goes into full remission. Robby spends hours with Amanda as Tanner heals. Finally, he asks her out to dinner. She says …

Caden’s test results come back negative. Parker transplants Robby’s bone marrow into Tanner. Tanner’s body rejects it. He dies of complications. Amanda shuts down, emotionally, and no matter what I do, she never …

Tanner dies. No matter what Caden’s results are, Tanner dies. And I forget what it’s like to feel anything ever again …

“Bren?”

At the gentle sensation of being nudged, I opened my eyes, squinting up at the blue sky. Why was I on my back? Why was I outside?

“Bren?”

I blinked, rolling my head, my roaring, fuzzy head, and looked at Amanda, squatting beside me, her eyes red, her cheeks wet, her bottom lip shaking. Shaking. She was shaking. All over. Shaking and crying and sobbing my name.

“Bren,” she rasped, her hands on my arm. “Oh God, Bren …”

I sat up. My heart smashed into my throat. My stomach turned. No. Oh God, no.

“Have the …” I closed my hands over her shoulders and held her. “Have the results come back?”

Amanda nodded, fresh tears slipping from her eyes, down her cheeks.

I sucked in a ragged breath. And another. And another. “And?” I asked, even as I didn’t want to know. Even as I wanted to go back to sleep and stay there. Stay there and never wake—

“He’s a match, Bren,” Amanda cried. “Your cousin, Caden. His blood test … the initial one … it shows him being a match.”

Apparently Americans don’t do the whole
Hip hip Hooray!
thing at the end of singing Happy Birthday. So as a consequence, I looked bloody stupid shouting
Hip hip
at the top of my lungs in the park, with almost everyone at the party looking at me like I’d grown an extra head.

Thankfully Caden saved me, yelling out
Hooray
after the unexpected silence. Why he hadn’t yelled it straight away I’m not sure. Jetlag maybe? Or maybe it had something to do with Chase. They were sitting near each other, pretending not to notice the other was there. At least, Chase was pretending. Caden may have been asleep for most of it. He had, after all, arrived in San Diego only an hour earlier. Melbourne to LA on the red-eye, and Chase had collected him from LAX. I’d told him a month ago it wasn’t necessary for him to fly over for Tanner’s second birthday but he’d insisted on coming.

“Try keeping me away,” he’d laughed during our Skype conversation. “That kid’s got a piece of me in him. We’re bone marrow brothers now.”

I’d snorted, even as a rush of gratitude choked me.

“Which means,” he’d continued, a stern expression creasing his eyebrows, “I’ll be expecting a present as well, okay? I could really do with a new car. Or maybe a
—
”

I’d ended the conversation with a laugh, turned to Amanda where she sat on the floor of my office, the blueprints for my personal trainer business scattered around her as she built a Duplo tower with Tanner. “He’s coming.”

She’d grinned up at me. “Excellent.”

“Chase may disagree with you on that,” I’d said.

Amanda had laughed and turned back to Tanner. “Aunty Chase doesn’t fool anyone, does she, tough guy?”

“Nope,” Tanner had agreed, pressing a bright red block onto the tower.

On that day, he’d been cancer-free for four months.

Two months after the successful transplant, Parker had called us to his office and told us it was time to take Tanner home.

Home.

He’d explained we had a long road ahead of us, daily visits to the hospital, ongoing treatment, regular blood tests, and Tanner was restricted in the things he could do, but we were allowed to go home. Together. All three of us under the one roof.

Today, on his second birthday, he’d been cancer-free for five months.

Today, we were celebrating not just his birthday, but the fact he was well enough to come to a park and play.

Today, we were celebrating just how much of a fighter he was.

Today, we were celebrating life.

“Hooray!” he yelled, grinning up at Caden from where he stood on the park bench. He wore a T-shirt with the words
Suck It Cancer
printed on the front. A party hat sat at an angle on top of his head, partially covering a messy crop of blond hair that Amanda had spiked into a short Mohawk. “Hooray!”

I grinned at him. I don’t have to tell you I’d never been happier, do I?

Around us, the guests of his party laughed. Parker Waters shouted out his own hooray, as did Heather, who’d arrived two days ago and hadn’t stopped being – to use her own words – “the bestest honorary aunty ever”. Maci and Raph joined in the hoorays, along with my mum and dad (who, I have to say, hadn’t stopped spoiling Tanner since the first time they met him).

Jacqueline’s hooray was one of the loudest there.

I’d like to say Charles joined in with equal enthusiasm, but I can’t. Maybe next year? Or maybe he’d finally forgive his daughter when Tanner turned twenty-one? Maybe then, we’d get a hooray from him?

Maybe?

I wasn’t holding my breath. I wasn’t holding a grudge either. As I’d learned all too painfully, life is too fragile to hold a grudge.

Tanner may be in full remission, but the battle wasn’t won. When it came to the long-term outlook for a kid who’s had leukemia, well … let me just say, we were planning on celebrating Tanner’s life every damn day.

A warm arm slid around my waist and I glanced down at Amanda, a sense of concentrated joy flooding through me. She smiled, the signs of stress and tired worry I’d found in her face six months ago now gone. “Everything okay?”

I slid my own arms around her and smiled back. “More than okay.” I dropped a quick kiss on her lips. “Everything is gravy.”

“Gravy,” she murmured, turning back to our son.

I did the same, watching as he leaned over the Optimus Prime cake on the table and blew out the two candles on it.

“Hooray,” I whispered as I hugged Amanda closer to my side. As I held my wife, and our son laughed and lived.

Lived.

If that’s not a reason for shouting
hooray
I don’t know what is.

Hooray.

Hip hip hooray.