Chapter 12: The Stamp

Vaughn carried my son to the car himself.

I sat in the back with Sam's head in my lap and my fingers on his neck.

His pulse was a thread.

"Faster," I said.

Vaughn ran two red lights.

In the emergency room I gave the triage nurse his counts before she asked.

She took him from my arms without a single question.

They put Sam on a bed that looked too big for him.

They put in a line, and drew blood, and hung a bag of antibiotics.

I stood against the wall and did my job.

I read the monitors, I told them his weight, and I told them which medicines he could not have.

It was the only way I could keep from screaming.

Vaughn stood beside me, in the shirt with the missing buttons.

He had not said a word since the car.

At four in the morning the fever broke.

Sam opened his eyes and asked for his bear.

I put my forehead on his bed rail and shook until my aunt pulled me into a chair.

The doctor with the gray braid came in at six.

"He's responding. But this infection tells us what waiting costs him."

"What do you mean?" Vaughn said.

"Each week his counts stay this low, the next fever may be worse. I want to move the transplant up. Thursday."

"That's three days," I said.

"If Mr. Alden agrees."

Vaughn did not hesitate.

"Where do I sign?"

On Thursday morning I stood at the glass outside the donor suite and watched them wheel Vaughn in.

He had asked me to be the last face he saw.

He lifted two fingers at me as they pushed him through the door.

It took two hours.

They took marrow from his hip under anesthesia.

A nurse carried the bag down the hall in a small cooler, and I walked beside her without being told to.

Sam lay in his bed on the fourth floor with the bear in the crook of his arm.

"Is that his?" he asked, looking at the bag.

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