Beauty from Ashes: Authors & Dancers Against Cancer Anthology

by Vera Quinn

  Oh, God. Maybe a change of subject. I’m starting to cry now, and at least one of us needs to stay sane and hold it together. Right?

  “Not your job, honey,” I muttered under my breath. I mean, I know Annika was an adult when she turned eighteen, but holy shit. I remember that even I was still a kid back then. Shit, I was still a kid in a lot of ways. My mom and dad still called me, and I still went over every Sunday for dinner. They were still my parents and dispensed parental advice, approval, and disapproval where required… Annika was in this weird space in-between kid and adult and had her navigation knocked clean out by her parents all of a sudden becoming as absentee as they could get.

  I got it, I really did, but I sure as hell wasn’t trying to be a substitute parental figure here, either. Just an active listener. Someone to talk to. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Annika was feeling in some ways. In one regard, I knew all too well, and it was sort of killing me knowing that sickening free-fall she was in, knowing it all too well, yet also having no way to relate.

  My wife had died. Her sibling was dying. I certainly hadn’t had all this extraneous shit going down with it. When Maia had gotten ill, it was pretty straight forward. The anguish was only coming from one direction. Annika was weathering a barrage from every which way, and I felt incredibly sorry for her.

  We talked until two in the morning and I couldn’t have any regrets about it even though it was technically a ‘school night’ in that I had work in a scant few hours by the time we were done.

  Chapter Two

  Annika

  “I don’t want you to get your hopes up, but we’ve found a good match in the database, they’re being contacted as we speak.”

  “Oh, my God! That’s great. Why wouldn’t we get our hopes up?” I fought not to roll my eyes behind my mom’s back. She just didn’t seem to get it. Just because you were in the database didn’t mean that you had to donate. You could renege at any time for any reason. They could call this guy or girl up and they could be all ‘thanks, but no thanks’ for any reason at all.

  Seemed Dr. Kendrick and I were on the same page. She reached out and touched my mom’s elbow and pretty much explained as much in no uncertain terms.

  There were a lot of things I tuned out, and this conversation was one of them.

  I thought about Brody, wondering if he was on the registry and if they called him up, if he would follow through. It was a pretty big commitment. Time off work, time laid up, sure the procedure was only a few hours and a lot of donors only spent one night in the hospital. Heck, some of them even went home the same day.

  I know, if I ever got the call, that I would do it. Even if it meant I had to travel closer to wherever the recipient was to donate.

  That was the other thing. Travel expenses weren’t always covered.

  “Annika!” my little brother hissed from his hospital bed. I turned around and smiled and went over to him.

  “What’s up?”

  “What’re they talking about?” he asked.

  “They found a match,” I said in hushed tones. “They’re contacting them today to see if they would be interested in saving a life.”

  “They could say no, though. Right?”

  I nodded and adjusted the beanie covering his bald head.

  “Yeah, little bro. They could say no, but here’s to hoping they won’t.”

  He huffed out a big sigh.

  “Mom’s crying again.”

  “You know Mom,” I rolled my eyes dramatically and smiled. “Crying at the drop of a hat lately. She loves you more than anything.”

  “Wish Dad did,” he said dejected.

  “Hey, he does!”

  “Is that why he’s always too busy to come see me anymore?”

  “He’s working lots of overtime, Luke.” I hated lying, but Mom and I had decided it was best for now. “He has to.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He gave another melodramatic sigh and flopped back into his hospital bed. He looked so frail, and I was miserable inside for him.

  “They got a DVD player available?” he asked hopefully.

  “Well,” I declared, thoughts wandering back to my new favorite escape from all of this. “You don’t have to wonder because I brought ours from home. What do you want to watch?”

  I felt torn as I always did. Wanting so badly to get on my phone, to get back on Reddit to trade DM’s with BrohemianRhapsody.

  Chapter Three

  Brody

  “This had better not be a robocall,” I answered my phone tartly, ninety-nine percent sure that was exactly what it was going to be as my boss stood by my desk.

  “Mr. Kristofferson?” the female voice asked confused through the line. I dropped my feet from the corner of my desk to the floor.

  “Yes, that’s me. Who is this?”

  “My name is Emilia Roberts from the National Registry of Bone Marrow Donation. You came up in our database as an extremely good candidate for a male pediatric patient. There would be no travel involved if your records are accurate – he is in the same city as your last known address.”

  I didn’t say anything for a long minute. A male pediatrics patient… in my city… My thoughts immediately went to Luke and Annika, but that was impossible.

  “Mr. Kristofferson?”

  “Uh, yeah. Hold on. My boss is right here at my desk. Let me see if I can get the time off. When were you looking at doing this?”

  My boss raised his eyebrows at me and I shook my head in disbelief as I worked with Ms. Roberts and him right then and there to get the time off.

  Chapter Four

  Annika

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  Got a call today.

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  Oh, yeah? Was it good news?

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  For somebody out there. I matched on the registry with someone. A kid in my city.

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  Really? That’s so weird… my brother matched with someone today. You don’t think…?

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  Ha ha, no. The chances of that would be astronomical. Don’t you think?

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  Ha ha, yeah. It would be cool, though.

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  It really would be, wouldn’t it?

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  I mean, what would be the odds, right? That the stars would align, everything in the cosmos being just so for this crazy domino effect for two people on Reddit with similar but vastly different situations to have fate intervene like that?

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  Really ridiculous to even think that it could be a thing. I mean there’s coincidence and then there’s THAT. I couldn’t even fathom that.

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  Right? Well, I am sitting here with a flavored seltzer water and you can’t see it, but I am raising a toast. To good news all the way around today.

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  To good news. I hope your brother’s match steps up.

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  And to you, for stepping up and saving a life. Captain America has nothing on you.

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  I hope it just spares someone out there from going through what I went through.

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  Me, too.

  “Me, too, Brody. Me, too…” I sighed and leaned back in my desk chair and sighed, and not for the first time wondered at what Brody might look like. Wondering if he ever wondered about me. I was honestly too scared to ask. I mean, out of bounds, right? Just like the whole idea that he matched with my brother and we were both living in the same city this whole time.

  Chapter Five

  Brody

  “The family has requested to meet you, are you down for that?” I looked up from the final signature on the last of the paperwork to make this an actual thing and looked up to the admin lady in charge of setting this whole thing up.

  I felt weird being in a children’
s hospital, but she assured me they did this all the time.

  “Wait, they’re here? Right now?” I asked.

  “Just a few floors away.”

  “You mean right now?”

  She laughed a little and said, “I take it that means ‘no’?”

  “No! Not at all, that’s a total ‘yes!’” I declared. “I’d love to meet them.”

  “Okay, good! Hold on just a second.” She picked up the phone and looked at the top of her tablet and dialed an extension. It rang through and someone picked up on the other end.

  “Hello, yes, we’re downstairs in conference room one-twelve on the third floor. He’s agreed to meet you.” There was a pause while someone on the other end of the line spoke. “Okay, sure. You’ll be right down. See you soon. Just take a left off of the elevator, we should be five or six doors down on the left.” Another short pause. “Okay, bye-bye.”

  I was buzzing with nerves, but within a matter of three or four minutes there was a knock at the door. I stood up and stepped around the small table as Dyana, the administrator, opened the door.

  A woman in her forties, blond hair, mom jeans, and a nice peach sweater with a white blouse collar peeking out, bustled in, a younger dark-haired woman hanging back in the doorway.

  “Thank you so much!” the mother blurted, wrapping me in a desperately tight hug. I patted her back awkwardly as Dyana laughed nervously beside us and introduced us.

  “Mr. Kristofferson, this is Amanda Kern, the patient’s mother.”

  Amanda Kern let me go and stepped back wiping her eyes and said, “Thank you so much, you have no idea, really,” before she introduced the young woman behind her.

  “This is my daughter, Annika. She’s Lucas’s older sister.”

  The air was sucked out of the room as I stared at Annika, my Annika? and I said, “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Kern. Please, call me Brody.”

  Annika’s eyes widened, and her lips parted as she sucked in a sharp breath of recognition. She was beautiful, and absolutely nothing like I’d pictured her.

  Chapter Six

  Annika

  “I really don’t know what to say,” I told him later out in the hallway while my mom was sidelined by Dyana talking timelines and any extra paperwork.

  He wasn’t anything like I’d imagined. I mean, I don’t know what I’d imagined, but the reality was so much better.

  He had a kind smile that positively radiated out of his light eyes. He was terribly handsome in that quiet, mid-western boy sort of way. He was tall, over six foot but not by much and he was perfect, tee hugging his shoulders and chest, his body tapering in that wonderful way that a fit male physique had. I tried banishing those thoughts straight out of my head because totally out of bounds for so many reasons now.

  “Me either,” he said honestly, and his voice was rich and soothing at the same time. Like I would give anything right now to keep him talking because yikes – it was like a balm to my battered soul.

  “Funny, huh? We spend weeks talking endlessly off and on over the computer and now we’re face-to-face with nothing to say…”

  “I think we’re both in shock.”

  “Nobody in a million years would ever believe this.”

  He laughed slightly and nodded, his fists buried deep into his jeans pockets.

  “I almost still don’t believe it myself.”

  “I mean, you want to meet Lucas?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I absolutely do but we should probably wait for your mom on that one.”

  “Absolutely,” I agreed and cringed a little bit. “Sorry about the awkward greeting.”

  He shook his head and said, “It’s no problem. You guys have been going through a lot. Way more than just your brother being sick. I get it.”

  “Thank you,” I breathed. “For being so understanding.”

  “Not at all.” His voice was gentle and kind, sympathetic. No. Empathetic. He’d been here before, except not precisely here. His story wouldn’t and couldn’t have a happy ending.

  He studied my face, a slight but sad sort of little smile on his lips, and my heart went out to him. I wanted to hug him and console him all of a sudden, but wasn’t that what he’d been doing for me? Wasn’t that what he’d been doing for me all along?

  Chapter Seven

  Brody

  My parent’s smiling faces popped up through the Skype window. It was dark here, but bright as day on the other side of the world where they were vacationing. Of course, it was tomorrow where they were, and I couldn’t help but smile in return when I saw them.

  “Brody! What’s going on with you, Son?” my dad asked.

  “I wanted you to know,” I said, “I matched with someone on the bone marrow registry. A boy named Lucas, he’s ten and here in the city. I agreed to donate for him.”

  They both sat there stunned for a moment, and then absolute pride radiated from my mother’s face. My dad sat back slightly in his seat and beat her to saying anything when he said, “We’ll catch the first flight out.”

  I shook my head. “No, don’t do that. You just got there. I’m good. I’ll be good,” I said.

  “You’re sure?” my mom asked hesitantly, and she looked so torn, worrying the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth like Annika had in the hospital hallway earlier in the day.

  “I’m sure, Mom. Just stay there. I might not even be in overnight. Might just be a same day thing. If I am in overnight, it’s just going to be one night. No sense in disrupting your vacation for a one-day thing. Besides, I’ve already fired off an email to Maia’s parents. They said they’d come to the hospital and look in on me. We’ll be all good.”

  “This is kind of a big thing, Brody,” my dad said. “I’m proud of you, Son. I really feel like we should be there.”

  I shook my head again and smiled. “I appreciate that, Pops. But by the time you get back, it could already be done so don’t you worry about it.”

  “We’re your parents, Brody. Of course, we worry. We love you.”

  “You did good, Mom. I love and appreciate you guys. I just wanted you to know what I did.”

  We talked some more and finally I got them to agree to stay where they were at on the condition I message them as soon as I was with it enough after surgery to do so. I think they also planned to sort of be up Maia’s parents’ ass about their boy, and I had no doubt that Mr. and Mrs. Hollingsworth would be all for it. The four of them had sort of been joint-parenting us for years, and with Maia gone, I was as much their son and only child left. They were genuinely good people, and I still saw them on holidays and talked to them regularly.

  I switched over to Reddit as soon as my Skype call ended and stared for endless minutes at the blinking cursor at the end of mine and Annika’s private message exchange, wondering what to say. At a loss for words for the first time since, well, ever with her…

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  U there?

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  I’m here.

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  U okay?

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  I’m okay. How about you?

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  I still think I’m in shock, maybe? A little? I mean, is this really real? Did what just happened today really go down that way?

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  Yeah, Annika, it’s real. It really did, and I know I probably shouldn’t say it because things could still not work out but I want really badly to promise you everything will be okay and I have to say I just really have a strong feeling that everything will be.

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  Me too…

  A long silence. Nothing added, but those three trailing little dots bothered me. It was a pregnant pause, and finally, I couldn’t help myself. I had to poke at it, prod her a little, her reluctance radiating from my screen too powerful to ignore.

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  But…?

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  No! No �
��buts’ it’s just…

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  Isn’t ‘just’ just another way of saying ‘but’?

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  You can’t see it, but I’m rolling my eyes. Mostly because you’re right, I just want to say… but can I just say that you weren’t at all what I pictured in all the times we’ve sat here corresponding like this?

  I laughed out loud, genuinely and bowed and shook my head. I leaned back in my chair and read and reread her last message and with a sigh put my fingers back to the keys.

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  You weren’t at all what I expected either.

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  What DID you expect?

  God, that was hard. What did I expect? I didn’t know, but Annika Kern, the way she appeared in person hadn’t been it. In some ways, in my mind, I’d let her almost appear like Maia had, but different. I’d given her Maia’s strawberry blonde hair, only longer and with more wave to it. I’d pictured her eyes as blue, but not as light as Maia’s had been.

  The reality was, in essence, far better. Her hair long was a rich autumn chestnut. Whereas my wife had been vibrant and all summer flame, Annika was a cool, autumn evening. Soothing to the eye, the heart, and the soul. Her green eyes keen, her presence still and quiet the way things got just before the first patter of rain swept distant then closer. She soothed the raw ache and burn of Maia’s absence for the first time since I’d lost her when Annika looked up at me in that hallway.

  She was taller than Maia had been, yet where my wife had been athletic, Annika was willowy. Soft and slender in her jeans and leather boots, the tops of her thighs stained by ink and doodles, her black hoodie too big yet well-worn and comfortable for her frame over a simple ladies’ cut dark purple tee.