Devil's Choice

by Graham Wilson

  So the treatment may well kill her, even sooner than the cancer does. Having been so weakened by the cancer makes her far from an ideal patient on which to use this procedure. Some of my colleagues are saying I should advise you against trying it; the risks are too great in her condition. The chances of success would have been much higher if we had found a donor a month ago.

  You do not have to decide until all the results are in, so far the results are encouraging but we are still waiting on two further tests and only if they match as well is it definite that the procedure is indicated. So you need to weigh this all up over the next few hours so that when the results are in you can make this decision.

  Mathew and Catherine both paused, they wanted to say yes, to take hope, but they knew the they were deciding on whether their daughter lived or died, acting as if they were God. It seemed such a huge step to take. They took each other’s hands and looked at one another, neither wanting to speak first together trying to weigh it all.

  It was Lizzie who broke the silence. “Doctor, I am convinced Amelie would have died yesterday but for that transfusion, she hovered in that place of crossing over. Everyone said we were losing her. I could bear that when there was no hope.

  But we will lose her anyway, today or tomorrow or perhaps in a week or two if we do not try. We have tried everything else and this is the last chance to stop the cancer and save her life. She may well die even with the treatment, and I can live with that, bury her with love if I must. But I could not live with myself if we did not try.

  My daughter has been given the Devil’s choice, to beg the man who raped me all those years ago to save her daughter’s life. This she did yesterday and with that awful choice bought hope. I will not allow her to make another Devil’s choice today, to take it on herself to decide whether her daughter lives or dies.

  I will decide for her if I must, but I would like her husband, Mathew to decide. I say he must share the Devil’s choice.

  Lizzie walked over to Mathew and took his hands, pulling him to face her. I think we both know that Catherine has done enough; already she has made one impossible choice. I would like you to make this choice. I will choose if I must, but I think this choice now belongs to you. You must choose which path to take and with it take responsibility for whether your daughter lives or dies, it must rest on your shoulders.”

  Mathew looked at her and nodded then looked back at Catherine, she nodded too, as if to say it was now for him alone. He looked at his daughter, sitting on her bed in the far corner of the room, playing with a doll, seemingly unaware of what they were doing.

  Now he knew with clarity, he must take the hope brought at such a high price, he must accept his own Devil’s choice, regardless of whether his daughter lived or died from the choice.

  He turned to the Doctor and said, “I choose the chance of life, I choose the treatment.”

  Lizzie and Cathy both nodded. Suddenly his daughter turned to him and gave him a flashing smile. “Thank you Daddy, Sophie says you made the right choice.”

  Late in the Night

  It was after ten in the night when all the results of the matching were in. It was good but not really good enough. It was the best match they had found so far but still there were problems. The doctors were saying it was an even bet whether they should go ahead. Three of the four HLA genes were a good match, including the Melanesian one, but the other was only a partial match. It was not terrible but it was likely that any transplant would also need heavy doses of anti-rejection drugs and they came with significant side effects, they themselves harmed the immune system, which they were trying to rebuild with the transplant. It was a bitter disappointment when all had seemed so promising.

  However Amelie seemed much better, it was as if the white cells from William had some special property that was making Amelie better even if they were less than perfect as donor cells. William was being kept in a high security ward on the floor below at about half an hour after they got the news and were still deciding what they should do a request was made for Cathy to come and see him, he wanted to know about the match.

  She came into his room with a security escort. He was sitting on his bed, reading the paper and looking well if a little pale and tired. Despite her disappointment with the result she felt she still had hope, Amelie seemed much improved even if it was a temporary respite and he had done what he could.

  Catherine smile at him and he returned her smile, even if a bit unsure. He asked her what all the results were. She told him truthfully, that it was good but not perfect, the match was three and a half out of four, that they probably would still need to go ahead as it was the best option they had though they would really have liked to get a four out of four match score.

  William looked at Catherine intently. Perhaps there is one other thing you should know, I realise you will have been to visit Marilyn, Martin’s former wife, and I doubt that she would have been helpful.

  When her oldest daughter was little I saw her quite a lot, Martin and Dan and I were of course friends, after a fashion. So I was like an uncle to her almost, she called me Uncle Will, did Martika, the oldest girl. You have probably not met her but she is the image of you, so alike that anyone who saw you together would say you are sisters.

  There is a reason for that. In fact you are sisters, half sisters at any event. It happened when Martin was away setting up his new company. He and Dan were away together for a month and I was left in charge of the Newcastle operation. Evelyn and Martin were only recently married when he went away, and after a few days she started dropping in to the office where I was working. One day she stayed until late and then came home with me. After that for the next three weeks until the day before Martin came home every night she came to my place and stayed with me. She made me promise never to tell Martin. I think she knew that Martin could not keep his pants on when he went away and it was her way of getting her own back.

  Then a couple months later, she was pregnant and I was almost sure the child was mine. One day three months later, I ran into Evelyn alone and asked her. She admitted I was the father, but told me I must never tell Martin or Dan or she would be in terrible trouble. So I never did, but every time Martika, named for her father, called me Uncle William I knew I was really the father and Martin was really the Uncle. But I have kept Martika and Evelyn’s secret up until now. However now that it appears that you need a better donor than me I suggest you take this letter and arrange it be delivered to her mother. It simply gives the mother a choice, to willingly allow her daughter to be tested, and keep her secret or to have me tell the world and with the end result that her daughter will know the truth and may choose to be tested herself. When she was little she was a sweet and kind natured girl and I have been told she is still a sweet and kind natured person who would probably help if asked. I know it does not guarantee success, but if I was a betting man I would bet on Martika being the donor you need.

  The next day Julie arranged for a legal courier to deliver this letter to Evelyn. William had given her twenty four hours to decide before he acted.

  The following day the phone rang for Cathy when she was back at the hotel. It was the hospital saying they had a Martika in reception and she had heard a donor was needed for their daughter Amelie and wanted to be tested. This time the test match was four out of four.

  A Month Later

  A month passed, Catherine and Mathew finally had their little girl back from hospital. She was alive but painfully thin, her face and body not much more than angles and bones, hollow cheeks, stick arms and legs, hair a thin fuzz on her head of a faded fawn colour.

  Between one and two weeks after the treatment there had been many days when they had thought that she would not see the morrow, the drugs and radiation had made her so sick, giving her violent diarrhoea and vomiting of pitiful drops of bile coloured liquid; all her nutrition had come by drip.

  The doctors said it was not only the toxic effect of the drugs but also that her own body cells w
ere struggling to repair and that there were so many dead cancer cells in her body that also had to be broken down. So both these and the effects of the drugs on poisoning her body had to overcome but at the same time they feared that her body had lost its ability to recover. Fortunately she was small and Martika was big and so they had been able to keep transfusing her regularly with blood and white cells until gradually her body took over, a couple times the doctors had joked almost morbidly, that she was like a vampire being fed with his blood.

  But they had refused to give up hope, they had washed Amelie’s tiny body each day to keep it clean, they had stroked and cuddled and she had rewarded them when sufficiently aware with her delightful smiles, though sometimes it had felt she was closer to be an angel than a living person and each night when she had gone to sleep they had wondered whether she would still be breathing in the morning.

  But she had kept weeing copious amounts from all the fluids in the drip and she had not got jaundiced. The doctors said these were good signs that her kidneys and liver were still working and her heartbeat had remained strong, with so little else of her it reverberated through her body.

  In the third week she had started to be able to take small drinks and bland food, a little bit of mashed banana was the first thing she had kept down. By the end of that week they had taken the drip line out and stopped the fluids and blood transfusions.

  Last week she had become much brighter and more wakeful, starting to play with her dolls again, telling them stories about her and Sophie and what they were doing together, sometimes putting the rest of her family into the stories too. That week the first signs of new downy hair started to appear on her head, it was wonderful evidence that her own body was doing its own repair.

  Each day since she had become brighter and hungrier though there was little evidence all the food she was eating in her pitifully thin body. At the end of last week she had taken her first steps again on her own legs, after two months in a bed, and at first she had wobbled and held her Daddy’s hand but then she had walked about with confidence.

  Now they were sure her body was repairing itself, perhaps it would never be as big and strong as it once would have been; perhaps she would never have children of her own. But every day after that she was their own walking and talking miracle.

  They had watched anxiously as she started to become better for any signs of the tumours returning and each week they did a blood smear, though at first her blood was so full of all the donor cells that it was impossible to tell. But there were no lumps at all and on a chest X-Ray last week all the tumours in her chest were gone and her lungs were clear. Last week too there were new white and red cells in her blood which had definitely come from her, so it seemed that the bone marrow transplant had taken.

  Next week would be her two and a half birthday. It seemed like an eternity since that happy day by the harbour when she had turned two, a month ago it had seemed impossible that she would be here and smiling on this day. They had received so many cards and gifts from well-wishers that had taken this little girl to her heart that the following Sunday they were having a special birthday party for her in the hotel courtyard to allow staff and well-wishers to come along and as their way of saying thank you for all the support. Now they even could feel a possibility of a third birthday and others beyond though they were determined to only take one day at a time and live in each day.

  Tomorrow Lizzie was flying home for a month, she and Mathew had no words that could ever express their gratitude to her Mum, she and Robbie had put their lives on hold and barely been together since April when the relapse occurred, he keeping the business running in Broome and caring for her own brother and sister there, her Mum her almost constant companion and support.

  Then there was her Gran who had helped equally in her own way, taking over management of the hotel for her when Mathew had been taken away, managing the staff and doing the rosters, pouring beers when required and telling jokes with the customers to maintaining the happy pub atmosphere despite the turmoil swirling around her.

  She and Mathew had tried to thank them over the last month as they started to find time, but both had brushed this aside, they were family and that is what families did.

  Catherine also realised that accepting this all gratefully was part of life’s learning for her, she had been so independent and determined to do her own thing, and only when her own need had become overwhelming had there really been space for Mathew back in her life, it was like her need for him, more than anything else, had healed his mind.

  She had one really important thing that she now needed to do. She needed to find some way to thank this man who was her true biological father for his gift of life. He had been returned to jail the day after they had decided not to use his bone marrow and she had never seen him herself since that night when he told her the secret of Martika.

  Funnily enough Martika and Cathy were now the best of friends, and Martika had become friends with both Lizzie and Amelie too.

  She had given Amelie the gift of life from her own bone marrow after all and, despite Evelyn’s desire to keep it a secret from the world, this smart girl had done her own figuring out.

  Cathy had confirmed the truth of her own suspicions and Martika was pleased. She loved her Mum, despite her awful behaviour over Martin, but Martika herself had always had a soft spot for her Uncle William, liked him better than her own named father, truth be told. Now she understood why, she really was his daughter and preferred it this way.

  But now Cathy needed to see her own biological father and thank him. She thought perhaps she would take a photo of Amelie at next Sunday’s birthday party and bring it to him in jail, perhaps Amelie could also draw a little picture to go with it.

  She had rung the jail at the start of the third week when Amelie seemed to turned the corner and eaten her first solid food and she had rung again the day before they brought their daughter home and asked the warder to tell him the news with her thanks. But it was not enough, she needed to go and see him in person and give him her own thanks, just her again this next time even though both Lizzie and Mathew had offered to come. But it was too personal and private to share, she wanted to see this father again one more time just with her own eyes, to try and look deeper and see what made him what he was without others intruding.

  She had a sense that this was what she owed him, to try and understand without judging what he had done in his life, not just the one night when she had been conceived, but to try and get a value of his whole life

  Robbie was her real father, the man who had loved her as his own child and raised her. Nothing would ever take that away and she knew he understood that.

  But this man was a core part of her being, the other half of her genes, shared with her mother. So her biology required her to know who he was, perhaps to meet his own mother, her other unknown grandmother, or his sister. Even though as yet unknown to her they were an inextricable part of her family now.

  So she had decided, as soon as the birthday party was over, and she had a photo developed of her daughter, she would take this and go and visit William, ask him to tell her about himself and his own family. He would never be a saint, perhaps not even a good man, but she, his daughter needed to know him.

  Then perhaps when that was done, if Lizzie and Mathew and even Robbie and Gran wanted, they could come too and say their own thanks for his gift of life. Tomorrow she would ring the prison and make an arrangement for a visit at the end of next week.

  That night she and Mathew shared the duties of saying good night and tucking Amelie into bed. As they were both giving last kisses and hugs and preparing to leave Amelie turned to her father with great solemnity and said. “Daddy, I need to talk to Mummy alone, I hope you don’t mind, but I want you to come back in and give me one last kiss after I have finished.”

  It sounded so adult that he grinned and left, saying, “Of course my pet,” as he closed the door behind him.

  Amelie turned to look
at her mother now with those same big solemn eyes. “Mummy, I want to go and visit my other Grandpa in jail, Grandpa William, the one who gave me the blood and found Martika who gave the bone marrow that let me get better.

  “Sophie and I have both talked about it and we both agree I am well enough to go now and so I would like you to bring me to see him. Perhaps we could go tomorrow.”

  Catherine tried to suggest that they should wait a week, telling of her plans to take a picture at the birthday party and bring it in to him.

  Amelie looked at her mother seriously and said, “That is OK, you can visit him then if you want, but that is something for you to do. But I don’t want to wait until then, and he does not need a photo if he sees me, then he will have a picture inside his head of the real me. So please ring up in the morning and see if we can go and visit him tomorrow.”

  Catherine nodded, albeit reluctantly. “OK, I will ring tomorrow if that is what you want.”

  Yes, thank you Mummy, now you can tell Daddy to come back in, I want to tell him what I am going to do and give him his last goodnight kiss.

  Thank you from Amelie and Sophie

  It took two days until the visit could be arranged at ten o’clock in the morning. Amelie said that was OK, she could wait until then. That morning she chose her own dress, a pretty pale pink one with matching shoes. To bring with her Amelie carried a piece of paper folded over that she would not let Catherine or Mathew look at.

  They caught a taxi to Malabar, slowly making their way through the mid-morning traffic. At the jail they were led down a corridor and then another corridor, it was a different building to where they had been before. Catherine realised it was no longer the high security part and was glad. At the end of the second corridor they were brought to a door with a glass view pane and no bars in evidence. The warder opened the door and ushered them in, pointing toward two seats at a table opposite a sitting man.