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Being a mother is the best thing that can happen to you. On so many days, it exhausts her, challenges her nerves badly, keeps her up when she should be sleeping. With a seven-year-old daughter suffering from leukemia and a five-year-old son with too much energy, there is no space left in her life for anything else. She has absolutely no regrets. Never. Not generally. But then comes a day of that special kind like they belong to a mother’s life as well - a day when her heart gets shattered into pieces.
And little hands have no idea what they’re doing as they put the pieces back together.
She lets out a shaky breath when she’s told by Dr Geyer that Tara needs yet another blood transfusion. The last one lies a couple of years back, and they’ve been hoping not to have to go through this again. Not to have to put their little babies through it again.
It’s just blood though, so it could be worse, or at least that’s what she tells herself as she picks Theo up to lie him down on the hospital bed, but the little boy has his arms tightly wrapped around her neck, doesn’t want to let go.
“What’s happening, Mommy?” he asks.
“Your sister needs you to help her again, Theo,” she replies, her voice thick with the sound of tears. She hates this. She hates it so much, the shaking of his arms around her, the green eyes widened in fear, the panic on his little face when he catches sight of a needle.
They should have kept the needle hidden from him. At least for a moment longer.
“Mommy,” he cries, “is that for me?” He looks at it frantically, his hold on her tightening.
She wants to say no. She wants to take him out of this awful place and buy him ice-cream and make him forget that anybody ever asked any of this of him. She wants to bring him home and watch him play with his toy train, wants to kiss his little head while he’s too deep in his own world to notice.
For the last transfusion - Theo was only three at the time - they had to hold him down, his little hands and feet pressed into the mattress until he stopped thrashing around and moved on to heart-wrenching sobs and cries. She remembers his eyes on her, searching for the mercy to save him the pain, but she turned her head and looked at Tara, a pale face and a too skinny body, tubes in a tiny nose and death right around the corner, and she cried silently until it was finally over.
With all her heart and more, she loves Theo. He’s the sunshine in her life. He’s a little cheeky sometimes, likes to test the boundaries, hates to sit still. He has an incredible imagination, makes up entire universes for himself to play in. He’s smart and endlessly curious, listens to what grown-up talk about and asks questions that she doesn’t know how to answer towards a five-year-old. Theo is an angel of a child and sometimes that alone breaks her. Because Theo was never even meant to live at all.
Tara was only an infant when they diagnosed her with acute promyelocytic leukemia. She will never forget the day. It’s the worst thing that can happen to a mother, losing her child. And the losing was very much implied back then, especially since neither mother nor father nor any other living relative were compatible for the donations Tara’s life suddenly depended on.
They knew they were walking an ethically questionable path when they decided to have another child, to mix a perfect donor together in a dish in a lab to save their little daughter. She never thought it was fair to let a child be born under such circumstances, and she wouldn’t have done it of there had been any other way to keep Tara alive.
It’s just blood, after all. Blood and a little bone marrow here and there. It causes him pain, yes, incredible pain every time, and he’s afraid of it, but they all know he’s going to live, and as long as the same can’t be said about Tara, she can’t find it in her heart to regret the decision to have him.
Still, she feel awful. She feels like the worst mother on earth. Not only is she letting this happen to her baby boy, no, she’s the one lying him, holding him still, or at least she’s trying.
Theo is having a not so great day. It’s not about the transfusion, he’s been in a bad mood since his favorite spiderman-t-shirt was in the washing machine in the morning and so he had to pick another one to wear. Most of the time, reason works with Theo. He’s a smart kid. On that day, though, he keeps shaking his head and kicking his feet, smashes a vase standing too close to the bed she wants to put him in.
“No!” he keeps repeating. “Mommy! I don’t want to! Mommy, no!”
She can’t do this to him, she thinks. But she can’t not do it either, because she can’t do that to Tara. The world she lives in is so entirely unfair, so cruel to all of them, and she just wants it to end, wants the battle to be over, but not at the cost of her daughter’s life.
No mother is supposed to have favorites. Of course, she doesn’t. She loves both of her children more than she’s ever loved herself. But Tara is her first-born. Her baby girl. Her angel. They were close to giving it up when she finally got pregnant with her. Tara is the world and everything good in it. Soft, brown locks of hair and angel-like laughter. A weak spot for white chocolate and high-pitched lullabies.
She can take on the world, but she can not let Tara die.
She can’t let it happen, or the world is going to end.
And so she turns to her husband, although the pain on his face only increases her own. “Help me with Theo, would you?” she says, sounding a little too harsh, and she knows it.
Nothing helps. Two grown-ups pinning him down, the prospect of all the cake in the world, reminding of that Tara is counting on his help. Tara who isn't even conscious in the bed next to his. But Theo is five now, too big and too strong and with a will on his own.
Every “No!” is a dagger in her heart, every “Mommy, please!” tears another piece out of her very soul. She knows she's not supposed to cry, knows that her tears only make him more afraid, but she can't stop herself.
“Here,” Dr. Geyer says as he steps around the bed, leaving Tara to her tubes and reaching out for little Theo, “let me.”
She lets go of her son quicker than feels right, but she's completely helpless, and if the oncologist isn't, then she sure as hell is going to let him try instead.
“Listen, Theo,” he says, sitting down on the bed next to the boy, his voice low and soft. She listens closely to the words meant for her son, knowing that they will soothe her just as well.
“I'll need you to help me today, okay?” the man begins, a serious look on his face. “Sometimes, when people are really sick, one doctor isn't enough, you know?”
Theo looks up at him curiously, the sobs have stopped, with clumsy little hands, he wipes away the tears from his face. His mother knows what's happening. He's intrigued. Theo has a very interested little mind.
“I think that today, I could use a colleague,” the doctor continues. He shrugs off his white coat and drapes it over Theo's skinny shoulders. “What do you say? Will you lend me a hand?”
Out of all the hospital's personnel, Theo admires Dr. Geyer the most. He sniffles. “Yes,” he then nods.
“Very good,” Dr. Geyer says, and in that moment, she seeing him in a shirt and jeans, talking to her little boy, she remembers that he's a father, too. Remembers the little kid with the blue eyes (and usually a chocolate-covered face) running around at the pediatric oncology all the time. The kid who sat with Tara after her first chemotherapy.
“Look, we're working on a tough case today,” the man explains to Theo. “The patient is Tara Raeken. 7 years old. Blood and bone marrow cancer. In urgent need of a blood transfusion. What is your suggested treatment, Dr. Raeken?”
Theo laughs at the made up title before he turns serious. “I hear she has a brother who can give her blood,” he finally says.
“And do we think her brother wants to do that for her? Remember that this is a life-or-death-situation.”
Theo looks straight ahead for a few moments, clearly thinking about it. “Life or death?” he asks.
“Life or death,” Dr. Geyer responds.
“Okay,” Theo nods, pushing up the endless sleeve around his little arm, presenting his veins. “Let's save the patient.”
She wants to cry. She wants to smother him in kisses, wants to tell him how brave he is, what a hero. She doesn't dare touch him or talk to him, afraid to break the moment. She focuses on her daughter instead, on the rosy color returning to her cheeks as blood flows through a tube from Theo's arm to Tara's.
“See,” the doctor says with a finger pointed at Tara. “It's working.”
A single tear escapes Theo's eye. “Then when am I going to die?”
Everything is silent except the machine pumping the blood.
“Honey, no,” she says, barely able to speak at all. “You're not dying. Nobody's dying.”
Her son looks at her, confusion in his damp face. “But… you said life or death.” He turns to Dr. Geyer for confirmation. “You said I had to save Tara.”
“I'm so sorry,” the doctor replied, the shock visible on his face. “Theo, you lovely boy, that's not what I meant.” His big hand ruffles the hazel brown locks of Theo's hair in a caring gesture. “I only meant that Tara could have died without you. Life with your help or death without it. But you are safe, Theo. You're healthy. And nobody's ever going to ask you to give your life for hers.”
“Oh,” Theo makes before he lies back down calmly and shrugs. “That's better. I still haven't finished my christmas wish list.”
And that's the moment when she breaks down. They wanted to force him. They were ready to hold him down to get what they need from him. Like they only created him to take things they need from him. And yet he was ready to give his entire life for his sister.
She can not believe the hero that is her son. She can not believe how brave, how selfless a five-year-old can be. She can not believe that a boy like him has to be tortured with needles and pain. She can not believe how lucky they all are.
Nobody saw a child in him when they made the decision to have him. Above all, he was the solution to Tara's suffering. A method of treatment. A tool in a doctor's hand. A desperate last try.
But she has a son. A boy who's so alive that it hurts sometimes. A boy who has way more to offer than his blood and bone marrow and cells and tissue. A boy with a soul as pure as nothing she's ever seen in the world.
“Thank you,” Tara whispers as soon as she's strong enough.
Theo smiles and reaches out his hand. Their little fingers intertwined, they lie in silence.
She wants to tell him that he's the greatest hero of all times. She wants him to know that she will love him until all eternity for everything he has given in so few years of a life. He teaches her something new about love every day.
“That boy is a special one,” Dr. Geyer later tells them.
“He is,” she nods.
“I sincerely hope he's getting his sister back soon,” the doctor adds with a genuine smile. “I promise you, I'll do my best not to let that damn cancer come between them.”
Both Theo and Tara are fast asleep as they talk, their hands holding each other. In that moment, for the first time since Tara's diagnosis, she feels like there's something that scares her more than the thought of losing her baby girl, and that something is for life to separate Theo from Tara.
Not on this day, though. Not today.