He Left Me Pregnant at Her Funeral, Now His Son Needs Him novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Five Years Later

Sam's fifth birthday ends in a hospital room, and the doctor says his father's blood is his best chance.

Five years later, my son turned five in my grandmother's backyard with frosting on his eyebrow.

"I'm bigger than the whole fence now," Sam said.

"You're bigger than the bottom half of the fence," my aunt said.

"That's most of it."

He grinned at her with his whole face.

He had his father's gray eyes and a cowlick at the left temple that no comb in the house could flatten.

I looked at that cowlick every morning, and every morning I said nothing about it.

Eleven kids from his class were running through the sprinkler.

I stood at the grill flipping hot dogs for a crowd that had not been in my life five years ago.

I worked now as the only nurse at the lake clinic.

The town had taken me in with casseroles and nosy questions.

It had a very good opinion of anyone who stayed.

Nobody had asked me about his father in two years.

Sam asked me every few weeks.

"Why doesn't my dad come to my birthday?"

I had given him the same answer since he could talk.

"He doesn't know you're born yet, baby."

"Can we tell him?"

"We'll see."

Today he asked in front of the cake.

"Did my dad ever see a cake?"

"He's seen plenty of cake."

"Does he like chocolate?"

I looked at the candles melting in the frosting.

"He likes chocolate," I said. "He picks the corner pieces."

Sam nodded, pleased to have something real at last.

"Me too," he said.

The sprinkler hissed.

A little girl screamed with joy.

Then Sam put down his fork, and said very calmly, "Mama, my nose is wet."

I turned.

A line of blood ran from his nostril to his lip.

I knelt and pinched the bridge of his nose.

It would not stop.

"Lean forward, baby. Look at me."

"It's on my shirt."

"I know. It's okay."

It was not okay.

Under my fingers his skin was white.

I turned his arm over, and the inside of his elbow was covered in tiny purple dots.

I had seen those dots on charts.

I stopped breathing.

"Aunt," I said, in a voice I did not recognize. "Get the car."

He had been tired for weeks, and I had called it a growth spurt.

He had been bruising on his shins, and I had called it a boy.

I had been a nurse for ten years.

I had looked at my own son every day and told myself a story.

We drove forty minutes to the children's hospital with Sam asleep against my side and a towel pressed to his nose.

I held his wrist the whole way, feeling for his pulse.

It was too fast.

They took blood from him in a room with fish painted on the walls.

He was brave about it.

He asked the technician whether the fish had names.

I sat in the hall with my head against the wall and my son's blood on my sleeve.

At two in the morning a doctor came out, a woman with gray in her braid.

She held a folder in both hands.

She sat down beside me instead of standing.

That was how I knew.

"Ms. Haskell. Sam's bone marrow has almost stopped making blood cells."

"It's aplastic anemia," I said.

"Yes. It's severe."

"What's the treatment?"

"The best chance is a bone marrow transplant, and the sooner the better."

"I'll do it. Test me."

"We already did a screening on your blood while he was in the scan."

She turned a page.

"You're a close match on paper."

"But Sam has built up antibodies against your cells. It happens sometimes."

"His body would reject yours."

My hands went cold.

"What about the registry?"

"We've started the search. There is no perfect match in the registry yet."

"A stranger's marrow carries more risk. There may not be time."

"There has to be someone."

"There is one person we'd want to test right away."

She waited.

"His father," she said.

"He shares half of Sam's genes, and Sam has no antibodies against him. If he's healthy, he is Sam's best chance."

The corridor went very quiet.

Somewhere a monitor beeped.

"His father doesn't know about him," I said.

"Can you reach him?"

I thought of an envelope in blue block capitals.

I thought of a funeral, a truck door, a text from a lawyer.

I thought of Sam asking about chocolate.

"Yes," I said.

"How soon?"

"Tomorrow."

She closed the folder.

"Ms. Haskell," she said, kindly. "Don't wait on the registry. I would start with him."

I went into the room where my son slept under a blanket with fish on it.

I smoothed the cowlick at his temple.

For five years I had made a promise to a sticky note.

I took the promise off the wall in my head and folded it up small.

I was going back to Chicago to ask the man who refused my letter to save the child he had never met.

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