by Gary Parker
“Tess in bed?” Jenna asked.
“About thirty minutes ago.”
“She’s a brave girl,” Jenna said.
“She wants to help her brother,” Brenda said. “She’s not sure what everything means, but she knows Mickey is sick and her blood can help him.”
Jenna nodded. If they could raise the money for the transplant, Tess’s little body would provide the bone marrow for the procedure. Mickey would go into an isolation unit in the hospital at Duke University. The doctors would give him chemotherapy first, then radiation treatments. The chemo and radiation would reduce Mickey’s immune system to zero, putting him in danger of dying even as they prepared him for his only chance to live. If he lived through those treatments, they’d then transplant Tess’s stem cells into his body. If all went well, his body would accept her cells and they’d regenerate and create a new breed of compatible blood, a new immune system, and a healthy baby boy. The whole process would take at least two months, and Mickey would live in a sterile room without direct human contact the whole time. At best, he had less than a 50 percent chance of survival.
“How’s Mickey today?” Jenna asked.
“Weaker,” Brenda said. “His color is bad. I’m going back to the hospital in a few minutes. Tom’s with him now.”
Jenna nodded. She knew the routine from her frequent visits over the last two months. Tom worked at the school all day while Brenda—who had quit her job as a waitress when they’d discovered Mickey’s illness—stayed with the baby. When Tom got off, he took the watch at the hospital while Brenda spent time with Tess. Since they’d learned of Mickey’s sickness, they’d spent little time as a couple and almost none all together with Tess.
“We’re making progress,” Jenna said, trying to lift Brenda’s spirits. “Got in a couple of checks today, sold some pies at Turley’s Grocery. Have over forty thousand dollars now.”
Brenda sighed, and Jenna shared her sadness in spite of her efforts at cheerfulness. Forty thousand left them a long way short. Unless something changed, Mickey wouldn’t make it more than a few more weeks. Everybody knew it, even the most optimistic of those who’d tried to make this miracle happen.
A sense of failure rolled through Jenna, and she thought back to the events that had led to this point.
The Strack family had lived in Greensboro before moving to Hilltop in mid-June on the advice of an aunt who’d told Tom about the job at the school. Since his work with the school didn’t start until mid-August, Tom had taken a short-term position on the grounds crew of a golf course about five miles away, and Brenda had started as a waitress at Hilltop’s favorite diner, Bud’s Barbecue. That’s when Mickey showed up at Jenna’s day care.
“Aunt Martha can handle our six-year-old when she’s not in school,” Brenda told Jenna the day she brought Mickey by. “But she says she’s not up to handling a baby anymore.”
Jenna fell in love with Mickey the first time she saw him. Who wouldn’t? He grabbed her nose as she bent to hold him, his big brown eyes staring into hers like he knew her name. He smiled when she spoke to him, and two dimples as cute as any on a movie screen graced his chubby cheeks.
From the end of June to the first of August, Jenna met Brenda almost every morning as she delivered Mickey, and the cherubic boy quickly became her favorite baby. Perhaps it was because she liked Brenda and Tom so much. Or maybe it was because Mickey was the youngest child she had in the day care. Or maybe it was because she’d always figured to have a baby about his age of her own by now. At least that’s the way she’d always seen it unfolding. Get married at about twenty-five or so, spend three or four years getting to know her husband, give birth sometime before her thirtieth birthday. Mickey could have been her boy if her marriage plans hadn’t fallen apart when she least expected it. Why shouldn’t she love him like the baby boy she’d never had?
Mickey’s first symptoms showed up the first day of August. A high fever, congested cough, labored breathing. Brenda and Tom waited only a day to see if he’d get better, and when he didn’t they made an appointment with Dr. Will Russell, the town’s young pediatrician. Dr. Russell put Mickey on antibiotics and ordered some tests. At first the baby responded to the medicine and all seemed well. But then, less than two weeks later, he came down with another fever and even worse congestion. Dr. Russell diagnosed pneumonia and ordered more testing.
It surprised them all when the bills for the tests started coming back with notations that they had no insurance to pay for them. That was one of the reasons Tom had wanted the school job in the first place—the state provided good benefits.
“Your insurance began once you started work,” the school administrator told Tom when he visited his office. “You brought Mickey to the doctor four days before that.”
“But my boy was already sick,” Tom said. “You expect me to wait till I start work to take him to a doctor?”
The administrator, a kind man who obviously wanted to help, made a couple of phone calls to the authorities in Asheville, but his efforts proved fruitless. “No exceptions,” he reported to Tom. “Policies have to be followed.” Although furious, Tom shook his head, thanked the administrator, and left his office.
The really bad news started coming in a few days later. Mickey’s platelet count, the clotting cells in his blood, numbered only sixty thousand, with normal levels at close to two hundred to three hundred thousand. Also, his white cell count—the cells that fight disease—were over four times higher than the normal of seven to ten thousand. It took almost a month to get all the test results back. Dr. Russell called Tom and Brenda into his office.
“Mickey’s real sick,” he said plainly.
“What do you mean?” Tom asked.
“Let me put it in layman’s terms,” Dr. Russell said. “Mickey’s got a blood condition that destroys his immune system. Diseases that most people never catch grab onto him like a dog on a bone. To have any chance at all, Mickey’s got to have a bone marrow transplant.”
Tom and Brenda sat openmouthed with shock.
“They can do it in Durham,” Dr. Russell continued. “I’ve already talked to some folks there. They’d like to see him as soon as possible.”
Tom found his voice. “It can’t be,” he said. “Why should something like this happen to us? What’s Mickey done to deserve it? He’s just a baby.”
Dr. Russell shrugged. “I’m not a preacher,” he said.
“What’ll all this cost?” Brenda asked.
“Close to two hundred fifty thousand,” Dr. Russell said. “Your insurance will cover it.”
Brenda shook her head. “There’s a problem with that. We’re trying to get it cleared up.”
“What’s the deal?” Dr. Russell asked.
“They’re saying our insurance didn’t start until Tom’s first day at the school. We brought Mickey in a few days before that.”
“I’m sure it’s some fouled-up paperwork, that’s all.”
“Hope so,” Tom said. “Otherwise we can’t pay you, the hospital either. Two hundred fifty thousand might as well be ten million.”
“Let me do some calling,” Dr. Russell said. “Maybe I can find some doctors who will work with you at a reduced rate.”
“But that won’t pay the hospital,” Brenda said.
“No,” Dr. Russell said. “It won’t. Check your insurance again. I’ll call Asheville for you.”
Tom and Brenda thanked him and left his office. Later that night, Brenda told Jenna of the visit with Dr. Russell and the staggering cost of the transplant.
“He says it’s Mickey’s only chance,” Brenda said, her eyes puffy from tears. “But if the insurance doesn’t pay, we have no way to come up with that money.”
To Tom and Brenda’s relief, Dr. Russell continued to treat Mickey in spite of their inability to pay him, and the administrator at the Hilltop hospital said he wouldn’t refuse treatments to a baby either, no matter how poor the family.
The telephone rang, jolting Jenna
back to the present. Brenda picked up the phone and left the room. Jenna stood and moved to one of the two square windows on the front of the house. Outside, the wind moved the bare branches of a large maple that fronted the house. Jenna shivered and again thought of the last few months.
Guided by Dr. Russell, Tom and Brenda had gotten in touch with Duke University Hospital, the nearest facility with the expertise to care for Mickey. Almost miraculously, testing showed that Tess’s blood antigens matched Mickey’s. Everyone rejoiced that the one-in-four chance of finding a sibling match had come through in Mickey’s only sibling. That had taken another month. Mickey’s health bounced up and down, sick one week, healthy the next.
The doctors at Duke scheduled the transplant for the second week in January, then sent Mickey and his family back to Hilltop. Tom appealed to the state for coverage of Mickey’s condition, and the local school board supported his action. Unfortunately, the authorities in Raleigh refused to change the decision in Asheville.
“A preexisting illness,” said the state report. “No exceptions to the policy.”
The first snow fell the first week of November, and Mickey’s white blood count, so steady for several weeks, worsened. He lay listless in his crib at the hospital.
For a couple of days, everybody walked around in a daze, not sure what to do next. Jenna went to see Tom and Brenda every day, her heart breaking for the young family. “We have to do something,” she kept saying. “We can’t just give up.”
“But what?” they always asked. “Our hospital can’t do this, and Duke won’t do it without somebody paying for it.”
Although not sure what she expected or even wanted from him, Jenna took the matter to her pastor before the week ended. Rev. Nelson Hart, a square-jawed fullback of a man no more than a few years older than her, listened intently as she spoke, his eyes bright, his thick body tense.
“Tom and Brenda are good folks,” he said after Jenna finished describing the situation. “I visited them a couple of times after they moved here.”
“I never saw them in church.”
“No, they never took me up on my invitations but didn’t seem opposed to it either. If Mickey hadn’t turned up sick, I expect they’d have come sooner or later.”
Jenna nodded. Brenda had seemed fairly interested when she’d invited her to church. But then Mickey became ill, and everything in Brenda’s life flipped upside down. Of course, Mickey’s condition gave Brenda and Tom even more need of a church family.
“We’ve had them on the prayer list,” Nelson said. “Maybe we should have a healing service for them.”
Jenna nodded but wasn’t satisfied. At this point not even a healing service seemed like enough. An idea came to her, and she opened her mouth to speak but then hesitated. Although a native of Hilltop, Nelson had become pastor of Hilltop Community barely two years ago, and a lot of people weren’t sure about him yet, weren’t comfortable with some of the changes he’d suggested since he replaced the aged, well-trusted Rev. Hamrick. Although Jenna liked most of what he’d done and found his wife, Julie, a delight, she knew that others weren’t so pleased with his leadership style, his willingness to try new things. He hardly ever wore a tie during the week, jogged through town almost every afternoon in basketball shorts, and sometimes preached from a Bible translation that wasn’t the King James Version. The first seminary-trained pastor in the history of the church, he didn’t shout as much as Rev. Hamrick had, and a few of the old-timers saw him as too smart for his own good, maybe theirs as well.
Not wanting to get Nelson in any trouble, Jenna closed her mouth.
“What?” Nelson asked, leaning closer. “What did you want to say?”
“Nothing,” Jenna said. “Don’t want to stir anything up.”
Nelson folded his arms across his chest. Jenna admired his easy way. He’d gone to Hilltop High a few years before her, then went off for his education and early ministry training. She wondered why he’d decided to come back. If she ever again got a chance to get out, she’d take it and never look back. Maybe someday . . .
“I’m good at stirring up,” the reverend said. “Or haven’t you heard?”
“I’ve heard.”
“So tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Okay, I’ve got an idea,” Jenna said. “But I’m not sure the church can help.”
Nelson placed his hands on his desk. “Try me,” he said.
Jenna raised an eyebrow. “What if we raise the money for Mickey Strack’s treatment?” she offered. “Make it a church project.”
Nelson’s eyes narrowed, and she thought she’d lost him.
“I know it’s unusual,” she quickly added. “But Mickey’s situation is unusual. What more loving thing could we do than to care for a child? Instead of sending our Christmas offering overseas this year, we could make this our Christmas mission.”
“We usually collect about ten thousand dollars,” the reverend said. “That’s a long way from what you need.”
Jenna nodded. About a hundred and fifty people a week attended their church. No way could they come up with all the money. She broadened her idea. “What if we invite everybody in town to help?” she asked. “The other churches, Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, all of them.”
“We don’t usually do much with the mainline churches,” Nelson said. “Not sure our crowd will go for that.”
“I know,” Jenna agreed.
Nelson stood and looked out his window. “I’m not against this,” he said. “I want you to know that. But it’ll take some study, some prayer. Give me a couple of days to study it.”
She agreed to do that, and less than a week later Nelson called her and told her he’d do what he could. They’d need to make it a community effort, he said. He’d already talked to some folks at the bank. They could set up an account there and invite anyone who wanted to make a donation. An accountant from the Methodist church had agreed to handle the fund to give people confidence the money would be properly managed.
“I’ve talked to some elders too,” he told her. “I think we can get our Christmas mission money to go toward this, at least half of it.”
Now, just over forty thousand dollars later, here she sat, right before Christmas and a long way from their goal. Brenda appeared back in the room, the phone in her hand. Jenna pushed back her hair.
“That was the bank,” Brenda said. “We got three pretty good checks today. Up to forty-eight thousand dollars.”
Jenna smiled, but her energy suddenly ebbed to almost nothing. Although she didn’t want to give up, they’d been at this since the second week of November, and in spite of great effort from hundreds of people, they were nowhere near their goal. If, as Dr. Russell had indicated more than once in the last few days, Mickey had less than a couple of months to live without the transplant, their time was fast running out.
“That’s good,” Jenna said. “We’re making progress.”
Brenda moved to her. “It’s all because of you,” she said.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” Jenna cautioned.
“We can make it though, can’t we?” Her eyes looked hopeful and yet afraid at the same time, and Jenna knew the young woman had come to depend heavily on her. How could she tell her what she really felt? That she didn’t trust that they’d make it. That she feared she’d fail like she had so many times before, like with her parents when they were going through their hard times, how she couldn’t hold them together in spite of her best efforts. Then later, Carl, the man she figured she’d marry. She’d come up empty there too. But how could she say any of that to Brenda?
“My church will give five thousand or so,” she said, pushing down her distress. “That’ll put us over fifty.”
“You’ve told me to have faith,” Brenda said. “I’m doing that. I’m having faith.”
Jenna stood and took Brenda’s hands in hers. She felt so old all of a sudden, like a woman with more miles on her body than she deserved. She wanted to speak the truth t
o Brenda and tell her that unless a true miracle happened, they had no more chance than a possum in the middle of the racetrack at the Charlotte 600. But how could she do that and destroy what little hope Brenda had left?
“We’ll all have faith,” she finally said. “That’s what it’s going to take.”
Brenda smiled, and Jenna hugged her and told her she’d see her the next day. Then she left the house, her body weary and her soul discouraged. After climbing into her car, she leaned back and tried to pray but got no spark for it. Right now her faith felt as tattered as a worn-out dishrag, and she didn’t know how to mend it. All this effort had accomplished nothing. She felt so helpless, so useless, so guilty. Add up everything in her life, and what did you get? One big flop of a person. Yet she’d pretended to Brenda that they could still make it. Not only had she failed to raise the money they needed, but she’d also misled a distraught mom. What kind of person did that kind of thing?
She thought of Mickey and wanted to cry. Without a bolt-from-the-blue miracle, Mickey Strack would almost surely die, and since Jenna didn’t really expect to see one of those, she felt absolutely helpless to stop his dying.
4
The snow that had threatened the night before failed to fall, and by ten o’clock the next day a bright sun had peeked out instead, its face strong in spite of the cold in the air. After a quick bite of brunch—two eggs, three pancakes, and some bacon his dad fried—Rem made a couple of short phone calls, then changed into his bike clothes for a ride.
“You going out like that?” Roscoe asked, pointing to the skin-tight pants and shirt Rem wore as he stepped back into the kitchen before leaving.
“Sure, I’m ripped and proud of it.”
“Real men don’t wear spandex.”
Rem slipped on his helmet and gloves. “I won’t tell anybody I’m kin to you,” he said.