The Ties That Bind

by Lexi Landsman

  ‘I didn’t know if I would find any answers,’ Courtney whispered. ‘I just knew that I would always hate myself if I sat by waiting, not knowing.’ She gazed in the direction of Matthew’s room. ‘I just feel so lucky that I found her.’

  When it came time for the transplant, there were no doctors yelling orders or nurses milling around, there were no bright lights or loud machines. There wasn’t a sense of urgency or panic. There wasn’t the kind of noise and commotion that seemed appropriate for a procedure that could save their son’s life.

  Instead, it was unnervingly quiet and there was a calmness that had a noise all of its own.

  David had always imagined the procedure would happen simultaneously: Jade and Matthew in a single hospital theatre, the stem cells immediately transferred. But it wasn’t like that at all. Jade was put under a general anaesthetic and bone marrow was removed from both sides of the back of her pelvic bone. Then it was bagged, prepped and ready to be transplanted.

  Courtney and David were in hospital gowns and gloves in order to be allowed to support Matthew during the transplant. Matthew sat anxiously in his room, staring at the bag being placed above his bed, wondering how something that looked like nothing more than blood was going to cure him of his illness. After everything he had been through, it seemed strangely anticlimactic.

  ‘Will the transplant hurt?’ Matthew asked the nurse.

  ‘No. You won’t feel anything at all. It’s infused through your central line. It’s very similar to receiving a blood transfusion.’

  ‘Sometimes when the other nurses have said it won’t hurt, it still hurts,’ he said, softly, as Courtney held his hand.

  The nurse kneeled down to his eye level and spoke calmly and delicately. ‘I know you’ve been through a lot of painful treatments, but this one’s different. You had to have those ones so we could rid your body of cancer cells so that this bag,’ she said pointing to it, ‘can go through your bloodstream into your bones so it can make healthy cells again.’ She smiled.

  He looked at her, his round eyes full of concern. ‘Was it sore for Jade?’

  She took his pulse, blood pressure and temperature. ‘They did it when she was asleep under anaesthetic, so she didn’t feel a thing.’

  Matthew fiddled nervously with the edges of his gown. He kept his eyes down and spoke in a soft voice. ‘What if it doesn’t make me better?’

  This time David replied. ‘It will,’ he said without a trace of doubt in his voice. Even though he couldn’t know the answer for sure, David felt every word right to his core. He saw no other option. ‘This is it,’ David said, smiling. ‘The beginning of your full recovery.’

  As the drip filtered into his bloodstream, Matthew gazed out the window at the world that seemed so out of reach. From his blood, the healthy cells would find their way into his bone-marrow cavities. The hope was that these stem cells would reproduce, creating new bone marrow that would initiate the normal growth of red blood cells, platelets and white blood cells. The doctors referred to this as ‘engraftment’ and said it would start to occur anywhere from ten days to four weeks after the stem-cell transplant, if it was successful.

  Until that happened, Matthew was at risk of fever, infection, bleeding, and anaemia, as well as damage to his heart, lungs, liver and kidneys. He would be pumped with a range of antibiotics to prevent infection, and a variety of other immunosuppressant medications to avoid succumbing to graft-versus-host disease or his body rejecting the new cells.

  Any infection would be life-threatening because his immune system was suppressed from the conditioning treatment. He would have to spend a hundred days in isolation in hospital after the transplant. In that time, they would anxiously wait, praying that the transplant would work and that their son would survive. Courtney and David knew they would have to keep Matthew’s spirits up and convince him that even though he was so dangerously close to death, he was so close to life.

  David watched the bag of stem cells travel through Matthew’s central line and into his body, knowing that this was the last chance his son had.

  It could kill him as much as it could save him.

  69

  Two years later

  COURTNEY walked through the empty halls of the gallery. The walls were bare and she ran a hand over the freshly painted veneer that covered the parts once marked with nails.

  Courtney savoured the rare days like this. She liked the stillness of the open spaces and the way the gallery itself was like a blank canvas waiting to take shape. Soon it would be transformed into something new entirely. They had dismantled the previous exhibition of still-life paintings from the 1970s photorealism movement and prepared each piece for shipping. Now they were making sure the gallery was ready for the next batch of artworks to arrive from Paris, ushering in a brand new exhibition. Courtney was curating and, this time, she knew she would see the exhibition to its end. She didn’t usually work on Saturdays but she wanted to make sure there would be no hiccups when the paintings arrived on Monday.

  It was good to be back at the gallery. Courtney didn’t think she would find the strength to ever resume a normal life, but time proved to be the best medicine.

  ‘See you on Monday, Amy!’ Courtney yelled as she took one last look at the main gallery foyer.

  ‘I’ll have some stories to tell, hopefully,’ Amy said, grinning. ‘I’m going speed dating this weekend.’

  ‘Have fun, but don’t get up to too much mischief,’ Courtney teased. ‘We have a big day on Monday.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Amy said with a wink.

  Courtney drove home, excited to make the finishing touches to the painting she had been working on. She was finally taking up oil painting and she spent her weekends in the garden with her easel, painting landscape after landscape.

  Her life over the past two-and-a-half years since the diagnosis had been unpredictable. It had been unforgiving, uncompromising, unexpected. She would always live with the memories of Matthew’s illness etched in the far reaches of her mind. It was part of their history now, a chapter they never wanted to revisit but one that would always remind them to be grateful for each day, and to love fiercely and unreservedly.

  Courtney opened the front door and heard laughter coming from the garden. Before Matthew got sick, she might have taken that sound for granted, but now she cherished it.

  She walked through the house, picking up fallen cushions and straightening vases. She saw them in the garden, matted with grass, the water in their hair twinkling like crystals. They were running back and forth over the garden sprinkler, water guns in hand.

  ‘Matthew!’ Courtney yelled over the noise. ‘No mess inside, okay.’

  ‘Mom, we filled our guns with bubble bath, look,’ Matthew said as he raced at Dean and his soccer buddy James, and shot them with a film of soapy bubbles. Dean flicked the foam off his face and chased after Matthew.

  ‘You boys better wash off before you come inside,’ she laughed.

  Courtney looked at her son. His hair had grown back, blond and thick, falling messily over his forehead. His face was sun-kissed and his legs looked strong and muscled at his calves, like his father’s. He’d even grown a few inches taller since he’d turned thirteen.

  Courtney went into the kitchen and sliced some oranges into quarters. ‘Here, boys!’ she yelled out the kitchen window. She passed the plate through the window so they didn’t bring mud into the house. The boys ate the orange slices, dropping the peels on the grass. They looked up and saw her still watching, and realised they’d been caught out, so they picked up the peels and plopped them on the plate and then ran back through the sprinkler, spraying mud on each other as they ran.

  Courtney looked at the clock on the wall. ‘Matthew and James, you better get cleaned up and dressed quickly or you’ll be late for your game!’ she shouted from the patio doors. ‘Matthew, where’s your father? He should have been watching the time.’

  ‘He’s upstairs!’ Matthew yelled as he ran b
ehind Dean and James and shot them with foam in the back.

  Courtney stood at the patio doors with three towels ready and placed an extra one on the floor for their grubby feet. Matthew had foam on his head and mud all over his face. ‘Come on, Matthew,’ she said, trying to suppress a smile, ‘get a move on.’

  ‘Can Dean come watch our game?’

  ‘If Dean’s mom says it’s okay, then of course he can,’ Courtney said, smiling. ‘You all have fifteen minutes to be at the front door.’

  Courtney went upstairs feeling content as she thought about the ordinariness of her life now. She found David in Matthew’s room taking down the galaxy from his ceiling. They didn’t care that they’d spent a fortune on his telescope for what had turned out to be a fleeting interest. To know that their son had a lifetime to pick up and drop interests was a gift in itself.

  It had taken them a long time to get over the trauma of Matthew’s illness, and Courtney didn’t think she would ever fully recover. They were extra paranoid if he got a headache, or had a temperature, if she felt a gland in his neck or noticed a lingering bruise. The battle to save their son had pushed her and David apart and then brought them closer together. Now they were like any other married couple that argued about mundane things.

  ‘You’re home early,’ he said, stepping off the ladder.

  ‘I didn’t want to be late for his first game of the season. Speaking of which, have you looked at the time?’

  ‘Yes, of course I was keeping track of the time.’ David grinned and Courtney knew from his expression that he clearly hadn’t been. She pulled out Matthew’s soccer kit and laid it on the bed so that he didn’t faff around when he got out of the shower.

  ‘How does the gallery look?’ David picked up the ladder and rested it against the door.

  ‘Empty,’ she said. ‘Ready for Monday’s delivery. How were the boys?’

  ‘You know, the usual – making a big mess.’ David smiled as he headed off to change.

  ‘I can see that,’ Courtney said as she gazed out the window to where the boys had left the sprinkler on. Looking into the garden, Courtney was struck with an image of the morning she’d seen Jade sitting there, cross-legged on the grass, beside Matthew.

  Jade had been her son’s saviour. She’d given him a second chance at life.

  Courtney called Jade every few weeks, and they sent regular emails. She knew that Jade had chosen to distance herself from Asha, so Courtney hoped to be a something of a mother figure to her, or at least the sister she hadn’t been given the opportunity to be until now. Courtney and David were planning a trip to Sydney in a few months. She wanted Jade to see Matthew as he was now, thanks to her – a healthy boy full of life and vitality. She’d told her son about Asha. Not the whole story, but enough to satisfy his curiosity.

  Asha wrote to Courtney every month. Frank pored over each letter, but the Alzheimer’s had worsened, so she would often find him rereading them again as if for the first time, the words moving him and then receding from his memory. It was better that way.

  David returned wearing a Miami Cubs hat. ‘Come on, my lady,’ he said, smiling. ‘Let’s go watch our son kick ass.’ He put his arm out and playfully led her down the stairs, stopping to kiss her when they reached the front door.

  ‘Yuck,’ Matthew said. ‘Public displays of affection are not cool.’

  Courtney laughed. Matthew had pulled his socks up to just below his knees. His shorts were a size too big but he didn’t look like he was drowning in them, he looked like he was growing into them. Matthew had made it into the Miami Cubs academy and they were bursting with pride. After everything their son had gone through, they couldn’t be happier that he was finally playing for his dream team.

  As Matthew, Dean and James sat in the back seat of the car, Courtney overheard their conversation.

  ‘Okay,’ Matthew whispered to James, ‘so, if I get a goal in the first ten minutes, I get your Amazing Spider-Man Xbox game. If you do, you get my Madden NFL game. Deal?’

  They shook on it. Courtney looked in the rear-view mirror and smiled to herself. It gave her such joy to see her son finally acting like a boy his age should. The few months after the transplant had been challenging – but he fought and he survived.

  He had been in remission now for two years and he was the energetic, vibrant boy he once was. He was wiser and more perceptive, but full of youth, full of life, full of aspirations for his future.

  When they got to the field, David, Courtney and Dean settled in the front row of the stands while Matthew ran onto the field with James and the rest of their teammates. A few moments later, Courtney looked up to see her father with his carer making his way to join them. Sally, his carer, greeted them and sat down beside Frank.

  ‘Dad, you made it,’ Courtney said, smiling.

  Frank put his glasses on and scanned the field for Matthew. ‘I’d never miss my favourite grandson’s big game.’

  ‘It’s the highlight of his week,’ Sally said.

  Frank’s eyes were fixed on the players and he smiled broadly when Matthew spotted him and waved.

  The coach rallied the team together and they watched Matthew take his position at right midfield. He wiped his palms on his shorts and focused on the ball. The whistle blew and David reached for Courtney’s hand, squeezing it tightly.

  ‘He’s got skill, that boy,’ David said, his eyes fixed on the field. ‘Just like his dad.’

  Courtney glanced at her husband, who was beaming with pride. She then looked over at her father, who was transfixed on the game. As they watched Matthew play, Courtney felt like she was smiling from the inside. The fear she had carried in her chest during Matthew’s illness had finally dissipated. In its place, she felt overwhelming love for her son, for her husband, for her father. For the life she had.

  After everything Matthew had gone through, he was finally like any other thirteen-year-old kid. He was no longer the child who’d had cancer. He was just a boy who played soccer, a boy who dreamed of becoming a professional player one day. A boy who could dream of his future. And change his mind a million times over.

  He was their perfect son. Their gift.

  70

  THE HUMID air seeped into Jade’s skin like a hot bath. She breathed in its familiar notes – dry wood, moss, lemon peel. She looked up at the watercolour sky, the clouds layered on top of each other like a painting.

  Adam gripped her hand tightly, and she smiled, grateful to have him with her. ‘Are you ready?’ he said. She paused at the fence, touching the soft vine tendrils that had wrapped around the trellis. She admired the plump purple grape clusters hanging from the brown stems. They’d grown well.

  Adam pushed the wooden gate open.

  She looked at the house she’d constructed and the land she’d shaped. The overhanging roof wrapping around the verandah, the blue shutters her grandmother had wanted to remind her of Greece, the expansive windows, the climbing roses arching over the arbour.

  ‘Everything has flowered,’ Adam said, smiling. Jade felt a bubble in her chest. The plants would not have survived on their own. They needed to be cared for, loved, nurtured. Someone had looked after them.

  As they drew closer, Jade braced herself. They were there because impending death had called her back. If it wasn’t for her grandmother, Jade wouldn’t have been able to make the trip.

  Adam knocked.

  ‘Jade,’ her father said in shock when he opened the door. His hands trembled and in an instant he became misty-eyed. ‘You came back.’ He smiled as he leaned forward and hugged her. He had aged. His hair was peppered with thick grey strands all the way along the front and sides. Yet, there was a youthfulness about him, an energy she couldn’t quite place. He was tanned and his hands were callused; he’d obviously been working hard in the olive groves.

  He looked at her, smiling, without the expression of shame that had defined his face for so long when he had been locked in his own inner turmoil. This was the father she had m
issed.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Jade,’ he said softly, his words full of weight. For what part? she wanted to say. Why had it taken her father and mother a lifetime to realise they had forgotten her?

  He stared at her, waiting for a reply, but she said nothing. Instead she smiled faintly and hugged him again. ‘It’s all in the past now, Dad,’ she said gently.

  She didn’t feel anger towards him. Instead, she felt pity. After all these years, he’d been worn down by depression from her mother’s toxic lie. Jade hadn’t spoken to him about her mother’s confessions. Only Asha could right her wrongs; Jade wondered if she’d finally told him the truth.

  ‘Come inside,’ he said.

  The house had been an empty shell when Jade left; she was almost afraid to see what had become of it. She walked inside and left her father and Adam standing by the door. She went to the kitchen first and marvelled at the sight before her. In the centre was the large marble bench top her grandmother had wanted, the butler’s sink, pots hanging on the back wall. The bay window overlooked the dam and the groves in the distance. In the pantry, shelves were lined with pickled jars of peppers and cured olives. After everything, her grandmother finally had the cooking space she’d always wanted.

  Jade walked through the rooms, touching the walls and the spaces that had been empty when she left. Flowers were in vases everywhere she turned – sunflowers on the windowsills, lavender on the table, a single peach rose in a glass jar. They had a rustic, farmhouse table and wooden chairs with handmade cushions in different fabrics in the dining room.

  Her father watched her take it all in. ‘You did such a wonderful job rebuilding the house. I never did get to thank you. All those days you spent here while I lay in bed in that dark cabin.’

  ‘The house looks lovely,’ Jade said, surprised to hear her father speak so openly.

  ‘It’s just perfect, Jadey,’ he said, smiling. He stepped forward as if he wanted to hug her but instead he stood awkwardly with his hands uneasily at his sides. ‘I can’t believe sometimes that you led the building of the house on your own. I’m so proud of you.’