Chương 4
The sentence cut cleanly.
I deserved enough of it that I couldn’t even be angry properly.
A nurse appeared in the doorway.
“Noah Bennett?”
Grace stood.
Noah climbed out of the stroller without being asked.
His face had gone pale.
“You said no poke today.”
The nurse crouched.
“I said I’d check.”
“You said maybe no poke.”
“I did say maybe.”
“That means no.”
“I wish it did.”
His lower lip tightened.
Grace touched the back of his neck.
“Hey.”
“No.”
“Buddy.”
“No.”
The nurse waited.
Noah kicked one wheel of the stroller.
“I hate this place.”
Grace nodded.
“I know.”
“I hate you.”
Sophie went very still.
Lily stopped banging the pan.
Grace’s face flinched, but she didn’t look away.
“Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“Okay.”
“I want Daddy.”
The room went silent.
Noah’s eyes filled instantly, as if the words had surprised even him.
Grace looked at me.
I could not breathe.
The nurse looked between us, confused.
Noah scrubbed his face with both hands.
“I want the daddy from Sophie’s show.”
Grace let out a broken little laugh.
Sophie whispered, “He means Bluey.”
The pressure inside my chest released and became something worse.
Of course.
Of course he had not meant me.
He did not know me.
I was a stranger in wet dress shoes sitting in his hospital waiting room.
Grace crouched beside him.
“Can Ryan come with you?”
Noah looked at me.
I looked at Grace.
She did not seem happy about the question she had asked.
Maybe she was desperate.
Maybe she was tired.
Maybe she simply needed another adult for five minutes.
Noah shrugged.
“Does he get poked too?”
“If that helps.”
The nurse smiled.
“We can probably avoid poking Ryan today.”
Noah frowned.
“That’s not fair.”
For the first time since seeing him, I smiled.
“You’re right.”
He studied me.
Then he pointed at my coat pocket.
“What’s in the box?”
My hand went still.
Grace followed his finger.
The velvet case had worked its way partly out again.
I pushed it down.
“Nothing important.”
Grace looked away.
The nurse led us through the door.
The girls stayed with a child-life specialist in the waiting area, and Grace came with us down a narrow hallway toward the lab.
Noah held her hand.
After ten steps, he reached backward with his free hand without looking at me.
I stared at it.
Small fingers.
Pale skin.
A tiny adhesive bandage from some earlier puncture still wrapped around one knuckle.
I took his hand.
He did not react.
Grace did.
She looked at our joined hands and then straight ahead.
In the lab, Noah climbed onto the chair and announced that he was not crying.
The nurse said nobody had mentioned crying.
“I’m not.”
“Okay.”
“Even if I do, it doesn’t count.”
“Absolutely.”
“Because medicine crying is different.”
“I agree.”
He looked at me for confirmation.
I nodded.
“Completely different category.”
Grace gave me a quick glance.
It was almost the expression she used to give me years ago when I accidentally said the right thing.
The nurse tied a blue band around Noah’s arm.
His fingers clamped around mine.
Much harder than I expected.
I looked at his face.
He stared at the ceiling.
“Don’t tell Lily.”
“I won’t.”
“She says I scream.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
Grace said, “You absolutely do.”
Noah glared at her.
“Traitor.”
The nurse laughed.
Then the needle went in.
Noah’s grip became fierce.
He made one small sound through his teeth but did not cry.
I watched dark blood fill the tube.
Something primitive and impossible moved through me.
I had spent years negotiating contracts worth tens of millions of dollars.
I had built companies, fired executives, bought an apartment overlooking the lake, and trained myself to believe that responsibility meant paying for whatever problem stood in front of me.
None of it helped here.
I could not buy the blood back into his body.
I could not negotiate with a malignant cell.
I could only let a three-year-old crush my fingers.
When it was over, the nurse gave him a dinosaur sticker.
He examined it critically.
“Wrong dinosaur.”
“You want another?”
“No.”
He put it on my sleeve.
“You keep the bad one.”
Grace laughed before she could stop herself.
I looked at her.
For half a second, she was twenty-nine again, sitting barefoot on our kitchen counter while I ruined pancakes on a Sunday morning.
Then the laugh disappeared.
The doctor met us in a consultation room twenty minutes later.
Dr. Shah was younger than I expected and spoke to Noah first.
She asked about his legs, his appetite, and whether Rex the dinosaur had been behaving.
Noah said Rex had bitten Lily twice.
“That sounds serious.”
“It is.”
Dr. Shah turned to Grace.
“We got the preliminary numbers.”
Something in Grace’s posture hardened.
“Okay.”
“His counts are lower again.”
Grace pressed her lips together.
“How low?”
The doctor gave the numbers carefully, without trying to make them less frightening.
I understood almost none of them.
Grace understood all of them.
That frightened me too.
Dr. Shah explained that Noah’s leukemia had not responded as well as they had hoped to the current treatment.
They were discussing a transplant pathway.
Grace nodded before she finished.
“We already tested me.”
“Yes.”
“And the girls.”
“Yes.”
I looked between them.
“What kind of transplant?”
Dr. Shah turned to me.
“Bone marrow, potentially.”
My mouth went dry.
Grace stared at the table.
“The girls aren’t matches,” she said.
“I’m not a match.”
Dr. Shah’s expression became cautious.
“And biological siblings can be ideal candidates, but obviously they’re very young.”
Grace nodded toward me without looking up.
“This is Ryan.”
The doctor waited.
Grace finally said it.
“He’s Noah’s biological father.”
Noah was on the floor pushing Rex along the baseboard.
He did not hear.
Or maybe he did.
My chest tightened.
Dr. Shah looked at me with a professionalism that did not quite hide surprise.
“Have you been tested?”
May you like
“No.”
“I found out he existed about forty minutes ago.”
