Charity nodded and took Rebekah’s hand. “Then we must go now.”
Leah felt a wave of panic. How could she let them leave her? “Can I write you?” she asked suddenly. “Does the mailman deliver to the Amish?”
Charity broke into a smile. “Of course.” She grabbed a pencil and jotted down her address. “Write me—us,” she corrected. “If you wish to write to my brother, enclose it in a letter to me and I will make certain that Ethan gets it. I will be praying for you, Leah. I will pray that your tests come out well.”
Leah watched the door swing shut behind Charity and Rebekah. The silence in the room made her feel depressed and anxious. It wasn’t her tests that worried her. It was losing her friends that was breaking her heart. It was losing Ethan because they came from two different worlds. No amount of wishing could change things. Amish and English simply didn’t mix. Leah realized that it was almost a miracle that they had gotten to meet and become friends at all.
Leah sat at the table in her room, her dinner tray in front of her, toying with the food. She heard a light knock and sat up. Her door opened and Dr. Thomas entered.
The look on his face told her that he had news he didn’t want to deliver. She set down her fork. “What is it?”
He pulled a chair closer to hers. “I believe I have a diagnosis for you.”
“And?”
“And based on the results of your bone scan, you have osteogenic sarcoma. Bone cancer.”
Leah thought she was having a bad dream. “Bone cancer? There must be a mistake.”
Dr. Thomas took her hand. She pulled away, not wanting this man to comfort her when he was shattering her world. “Osteogenic sarcoma is a disease that hits teens and people in their early twenties,” he told her. “It often starts in the leg bones, the femur and tibia. It’s unusual for it to be present in the kneecap or finger. A tumor has grown on the inside of your finger and weakened the bone. That’s why it broke. Another tumor is growing under your kneecap.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I wouldn’t make it up, Leah.”
“So if it’s true, what are you going to do about it?”
“We’ll fight aggressively,” he said. “Chemotherapy is part of the standard treatment.”
She recalled the cancer patients on the pedi floor; children bald from chemo, hooked to IVs. And Grandma Hall. This couldn’t happen to her. “I don’t want chemo.”
“Leah, your life is at stake.”
“I want to talk to my mother.” The words surprised her.
Dr. Thomas nodded. “I have a call in to her. When she calls back, I’ll send for you. I’ll put all of us on my speakerphone and we’ll have a three-way conversation.”
Leah’s eyes stung from holding back tears. “Can I be by myself now? I have to think about what you’ve told me.”
The doctor stood. His hand rested on her shoulder. “Leah, I know this is a blow, but you can lick it. I promise to help you every step of the way.”
Long after he was gone, she sat at the table, numbly staring into space. Somewhere down the hall, someone was playing Christmas music. How could she feel joy and peace when she’d been told she had cancer?
She sighed, and a long, shuddering sob escaped. Leah clenched her fists together. I won’t cry, she told herself. Crying would make the whole thing real. Crying would mean acceptance, and she wasn’t ready for that.
Leah felt like a caged animal. She wanted to tell someone. She wanted to call a friend and talk. Except that she had no friends. Charity and Ethan were on their way home, and even when they got there, Leah couldn’t call them. She could write them a letter, but by the time they got it, the news would be old. And besides, it wasn’t as if they could drive back to Indianapolis to console her.
Her door opened, and Molly came hesitantly into the room. Her expression told Leah she’d heard the news. “Leah … honey … I’m so sorry.”
“Maybe he’s wrong,” Leah said. “Doctors can be wrong, can’t they?”
“They can.” Molly paused, then added, “But I don’t think he’d have told you what he did if he wasn’t sure.”
Leah drooped. “Why is this happening to me, Molly?”
“I don’t know why. But I do know that you have a wonderful doctor to help you through it.”
“But I don’t want to go through it.”
“Leah, chemo treatments aren’t like they used to be.” Molly seemed to know that it was the chemo, not the cancer, that was scaring Leah the most.
“But he could be wrong,” Leah insisted.
Molly didn’t answer. Instead she put her arms around Leah, and together they stood while the joyous strains of Christmas music danced in the air around them.
Eventually dinner trays were cleared away. For the first time since she had checked into the hospital, Leah turned on the TV set in her room—mostly to keep herself distracted.
The room was lonely. She missed Rebekah and Charity. Most of all, she missed Ethan. She flipped through the TV channels aimlessly.
A night nurse brought her a pill. Leah asked, “What’s this?” She was half afraid it was some form of chemotherapy.
“A sleeping pill,” the nurse said. “Dr. Thomas thought you might need it tonight.”
“Do you know if Gabriella’s come on duty yet?”
“Who?”
“Gabriella. I don’t know her last name, but she works on this floor at night.”
The nurse shrugged. “Sorry. I don’t know her, but I’m rather new to the nursing staff. If I run into anyone with that name, I’ll send her straight to your room.”
Leah swallowed the pill and waited for it to take effect. Much later during the night, she was vaguely aware that someone had come into her room. She struggled to talk, but she was too drowsy. She felt the squeezing band of the blood pressure cuff and the cool metal of the stethoscope against the inside of her arm.
“Gabriella?” she whispered.
No answer.
Leah fell back into a deep and dreamless sleep.
“Leah, wake up!”
Someone was shaking her. “Go away.”
“It’s six A.M. Dr. Thomas sent me. I’m supposed to bring you to his office. Your mother’s on the phone, and she wants to talk to you.”
Leah struggled to throw off the grogginess from the sleeping pill. The nurse helped her up, settled her into a wheelchair and headed down the hall. Leah grabbed a carton of orange juice at the nurses’ station and sipped it during the ride up in the elevator. By the time she arrived at Dr. Thomas’s office on the top floor, she was fully awake.
His office was small and cramped, and he was sitting behind a desk heaped with medical books and file folders. The nurse put on the chair’s brake and left. Leah heard her mother’s voice through the speaker phone. “This is preposterous,” she was saying. “My daughter checks into your hospital less than a week ago with a broken finger, you diddle around with all kinds of testing and then you call and tell me she has bone cancer!”
“Mrs. Dutton, please listen—”
“No! You listen. I want to talk to Leah. Now.”
Dr. Thomas looked at Leah.
She leaned forward. “I’m here, Mom.”
“Oh, darling, are you all right?”
“Not really.”
“You just sit tight, baby. I’m coming home just as soon as I can get packed up. Neil’s making arrangements to get our tickets changed even as we speak.”
The calendar on Dr. Thomas’s desk showed that it was Tuesday, December 21. It was late Tuesday in Japan. If everything went like clockwork, the soonest her mother and Neil could be there would be the next night. “Please get me out of here,” Leah said. “Please don’t make me spend Christmas in this place.”
“Not to worry, Leah. We’ll get you out of there as soon as possible—”
“Mrs. Dutton.” Dr. Thomas cut in. “Now that we know what we’re dealing with, we should get Leah started on chemo immediately.”
?
??You do not have my permission to do anything to my daughter before I get there,” her mother said sharply.
“I don’t recommend waiting.”
“I want a second opinion,” Leah’s mother said stubbornly.
“All the opinions in the world won’t change the diagnosis, Mrs. Dutton.”
Leah swallowed. The doctor wasn’t backing down, but neither was her mother. At that moment, Leah was glad her mother was so strong-willed.
“I stand by my original statement,” Leah’s mother said. “Don’t do anything to my daughter except take care of her daily needs until I get there. Is that clear, Dr. Thomas?”
“Perfectly.” The doctor didn’t look pleased. “I’ll let you sign off with Leah.”
“Mom … I sure wish you were here.”
“I will be soon, Leah. You just hold on until Neil and I get there. We’re not going to give up without a fight. You can count on it.”
Leah felt immensely relieved after the conversation with her mother. Dr. Thomas still insisted that she had bone cancer. But at least Leah didn’t feel so alone anymore. Just knowing that her mother was hurrying to be with her brought her comfort.
Now all I have to do is kill time until Mom arrives.
She hobbled to the rec room, using her crutches, and discovered that it was full of kids. She could barely stand to look at the ones who were obviously on chemotherapy. Their bald heads and gaunt bodies made her queasy with dread. This might be how she would look in a few months.
Leah ended up in front of the Christmas tree. The clean pine scent blocked out the medicinal odors of the hospital. She thought back to when Ethan had strung the lights in the tree’s branches.
She gazed at the elaborately dressed angel ornament and thought over the strange things Charity had told her about angels. Nothing was the way it seemed. Leah had thought angels were just pretty inventions by the creators of fairy tales. Now she half believed they might be real. She had thought that her broken finger and sore knee were no big deal, but she’d been told she had bone cancer. She had thought Ethan and his sisters were backward and strange. Now she thought of them as dear friends whom she would remember as long as she lived. Nothing was ever the way it seemed.
Carefully she broke off a small twig from the towering tree. She wanted to take it back to her room and place it under her pillow so that she could smell its aroma and imagine the snowy woods on Ethan’s farm. Maybe by touching and smelling the pine needles, she could imagine herself closer to Ethan and the things that he loved.
She went to the library, picked up a copy of the Bible and returned to her room, curious to read about angels for herself. She read several stories, but she could not get a clear picture of these strange, heavenly beings. Sometimes they appeared as ordinary people. In other places they were “bright lights,” striking fear and awe in people.
Molly stuck her head in the doorway. “Feel like a visitor?”
Leah smiled. “If it’s you.”
“It’s me.” Molly came inside and pulled out a chair at the table where Leah was sitting. “You reading the Bible?”
“I figured it couldn’t hurt. Charity and Ethan made me curious.”
Molly nodded. “Are you feeling better today?”
“As good as a person can feel after she’s been told she has cancer.”
“It’s a bad blow, Leah.”
“Yeah. Just think, when people ask what I got for Christmas, I can say, ‘Bone cancer, how about you?’ ”
Molly made a face at Leah’s black humor, then said, “Don’t forget. I’ll be your nurse if you stay in this hospital.”
“I appreciate that.” Leah remembered their conversation about the nurse who had taken care of Molly’s sister. “You’ll be my Mrs. Duncan, won’t you?”
“Yes. Except your case will have a better outcome than Emily’s and your grandmother’s. All cancer isn’t fatal, you know. Many people can be cured. Or at least have long periods of remission.”
Leah wasn’t comforted. “If I do have bone cancer and I have to have chemo, what will it be like?”
Molly took a few minutes before answering. When she spoke, her words sounded as though they were coming from a medical text. “You’ll be put on a protocol of drugs that will take from nine months to a year to administer. Most of the chemo is toxic—it kills cancer cells and normal cells. Your immune system will be weakened, so you’ll have to be very careful about germs. Even a common cold can land you in the hospital.
“They’ll probably want to surgically insert a catheter—a plastic tube—into your chest, for administering the chemo. That way they won’t have to stick you with needles for every dose. No swimming and no contact sports while you’re wearing the device because you might get an infection.”
Leah grimaced, hating the idea of a tube protruding from her chest. “Will I throw up?”
“Sometimes. Some of the drugs are stronger than others. You can experience everything from mild nausea to vomiting.”
Hearing all of this made Leah lightheaded. “Will my hair fall out?”
“Yes. You can wear a wig until it grows back. And it will grow back, Leah. The hospital sponsors seminars for cancer patients to help them cope. And to help them look good and feel better about themselves throughout their treatments. You’ll learn makeup tricks and get clothing tips.”
“Whoopee,” Leah said without enthusiasm.
Molly smiled. “Any other questions?”
“Not right now. I think I know more than I want to know.”
Molly leaned forward. “I have a question for you.”
“Sure, ask me anything.”
“Tell me about Gabriella.”
Leah was caught off guard. “What about her? I mean, she’s your friend, isn’t she?”
Molly shook her head. “I don’t know her.”
“Are you serious? She’s on the night shift. I thought you knew her.”
Molly’s expression looked guarded. “I know everybody on every shift. There’s no Gabriella on our staff.”
“But I’ve talked to her. She came into my room at night. Actually, she visited Rebekah first, and then she started talking to me when Rebekah was leaving.”
“This troubles me, Leah. I’ve never met the woman and there’s no record of her in our personnel files.”
A creepy sensation inched up Leah’s spine. “That’s weird.”
“Very weird,” Molly agreed. “Listen, you need to alert us if it happens again. Push your call button no matter what time of day or night.”
Leah frowned. “But she’s been really nice to me. She would sit by Rebekah’s bed all night when she was scared.”
“Nurses haven’t got time to sit by a patient’s bed all night. The night-shift staff is minimal, and there’s plenty of work to do.”
“But why would she do it?” Leah watched Molly’s face as she considered the question, as if deciding how much she should say.
“I don’t want to frighten you.”
“Too late.”
Molly leaned forward. “There are some strange people in the world, and most of the time they’re harmless. Some of them like to hang around hospitals. Fantasize about being nurses and doctors. Goodness knows why—there’s nothing very glamorous about our jobs.
“Anyway, these people sometimes sneak into hospitals and pretend to be part of our community. Once we had a woman who haunted the neonatal ward—where the newborns are. She would sneak in and try to hold the babies. We tightened security and caught her. She went to a psychiatric hospital.”
“And you think this Gabriella is some kind of a nutcase too?”
“I don’t know what to think. But you and Rebekah are the only people who’ve seen her, and since Rebekah’s gone, she may come back and visit you again.”
“She already has.”
“What!” Molly sat bolt upright. “When?”
“The night Rebekah left. I ran into Gabriella in the rec room. She walked me back to my room and stayed with
me until I fell asleep.”
Grim-faced, Molly shook her head. “I’m having security beefed up. What does she look like?”
Leah closed her eyes to get a clearer picture of Gabriella. “She’s pretty. Her hair’s short and reddish. I think her eyes are brown. She’s about your height and size.” She opened her eyes and saw Molly’s worried expression. “I don’t think she’d harm anybody, Molly.”
“Probably not,” Molly said slowly. “Still, she doesn’t belong up here. I don’t like the idea of anyone sneaking in at night and bothering our patients.”
“Well, if she shows up again, I’ll push my call button.”
“Good. Now, let me go and have a talk with security.” Molly stood, told Leah not to worry and left.
Leah shuddered. What a crummy day this had turned out to be! She’d learned about the horrors of chemo and about a weirdo stalking the halls at night. A weirdo only she could identify.
Still, try as she might, Leah couldn’t picture Gabriella doing anything mean, and she didn’t want her to be turned in to security. “You’d better not come and see me again, Gabriella,” she muttered under her breath. Then she clicked on the TV and turned the volume up to chase away the chills she felt.
Leah spent most of the next day reading, playing video games and watching TV. She wanted to keep her mind as busy as possible. When her mind did veer to the subject of cancer, she quickly shut out the frightening thoughts and grabbed something else to do.
After dinner, as she was settling down for the night, she heard a commotion in the hallway. Moments later her door swung open and there stood her mother—her face flushed from the icy December air—wearing a long fur coat and a look of steely determination.
Leah threw her arms around her mother, hardly believing how much she’d missed her.
“Honey, we got here as soon as we could. Neil had to move heaven and earth to change our tickets so close to the holidays, but he did it.”
Neil stood behind Leah’s mother, looking tired but triumphant. Snowflakes clung to his head of silver-white hair, and his blue eyes were full of concern. “How are you, Leah?”