Chapter 40

I snapped a selfie in front of the welcome sign at Benioff Children’s Hospital as Sharon Kerns, the volunteer coordinator walked by. She stopped and smiled. “First shift, right? Are you excited?”

“Nervous,” I admitted.

“Don’t be. The kids, they’ll make it clear if they want company or not. They’re used to the volunteers. Sometimes they want you in there but don’t want to talk. Just follow their lead. You’re doing these parents a huge service. Don’t forget that.”

“I’ll try not to,” I said. I was a respite playmate, essentially, on call to keep any of the kids company so their parents could run down to the cafeteria or take a walk without having to worry about leaving their sick kid alone.

“You’re going to do great. But don’t forget that there are no photos allowed once you’re on the floor. Privacy laws.”

“I know, I promise. I just need to send a text and then I’ll put the phone away.”

“Sounds good. Let me know if you need anything,” she said with a short wave as she continued through the double doors leading to the patient rooms.

I stared at my screen, unsure what to say. I hadn’t texted Jack since the apology I sent after my disastrous trip up there. That had been a month ago, but I’d put my free time to good use, applying to the hospital’s volunteer program and finishing their orientation and training.

Hi, I started, then paused, trying to figure out what to say. I blamed everything on you. I’ve realized I have some growing to do. Just wanted you to know I’m trying. Then I attached the picture so he could see my volunteer badge.

It didn’t explain everything I wanted to tell him, but I wasn’t sure there was anything to say, really. Not when it came down to it. Even if I gained the insight and emotional capacity of Mother Theresa, we might as well be worlds apart as ten hours apart in terms of trying to keep a relationship alive long-distance. But I owed it to him to show him that I’d heard what he said on our last, awful morning together. He’d gotten through.

I turned off the phone, took a deep breath, and pushed through the double doors to do what I could for a dozen kids fighting a battle I could never understand.

All the training in the world couldn’t have prepared me for the next three hours. I sat with four different kids while their mom or dad stepped out for a quick dinner. They ranged in age from three to ten, three girls and one boy. Two of the girls, the youngest one and an eight-year-old, didn’t want any interaction. I quietly sat and watched TV with them until their parents returned. A four-year-old girl wanted me to work the same twenty-piece unicorn puzzle with her over and over but didn’t want to talk. We just put the pieces together then she’d dump them out and say, “Again,” and we’d start over.

The ten-year-old was a boy, and he was playing a video game when I stepped into his room. I smiled at his mom. “Hi. Sharon said you requested respite?”

She stood and stretched. “Yeah, thanks. This is Tate. I’m going to go get some dinner.” Her eyes flicked down to my name badge. “Emily is here to hang out with you until I get back, Tate. Why don’t you tell her about all the stuff you’re building?”

He was a skinny blond kid, pale like most of the kids on the ward, with big brown eyes. He flicked me a glance. “Do you like Minecraft?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” I said, settling into his mother’s chair as she slipped out of the room. “Would it be super annoying if I asked you to explain it to me?”

He heaved a tired sigh. “I guess I can do that.”

For the next forty minutes he explained all kinds of things like redstone and polished granite. I wasn’t much of a gamer, but I didn’t have to pretend to be interested. This wasn’t as much about shooting or winning stuff as it was about building. He’d made the world’s most imaginative superhero lair with cheerful digital cubes of stone, grass, and wood.

When his mom came back, she thanked me again as I left, but I said, “No, thank you,” and I meant it.

I turned my phone on as I left the hospital. When I saw a text alert from Jack, my fingers froze. I’d forgotten how it felt to see his name on my screen. It was like the moment when I opened one of my favorite books for a re-read and settled into the sweet comfort of the familiar opening lines.

Hey, Em.

It was as good as, “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much,” as far as happiness endorphins went.

You’re amazing. But it is HARD. Don’t put yourself through that. You don’t have to prove anything to me.

It felt like there should be more, but that was it. I don’t know what else I wanted there to be. He didn’t sound mad at me. I already knew I’d re-read the part where he called me amazing so many times it would imprint on my eyeballs. But the rest of it…

What was there for him to say, really? I could volunteer every night of the week, but it would change nothing about the fundamentals of our situation.

I tapped out the only reply I could. I think I’m doing this for me.

Tate was the only kid still on the floor when I went back the next week. Volunteers had to commit to a three-hour shift at the same time every week for six months, and I could only do Thursdays, so the coordinator had told us to expect to see a new crop of faces on every visit. Mostly that was a good thing. It usually meant that the kid had been released to go home because they’d stabilized enough or completed a round of treatment.

As much as I wanted to see Tate’s new creation, it made me sad that he hadn’t been released yet. I poked my head in, and his mom gave me a tired smile. “Perfect. I’ll grab some dinner, if that’s okay.”

“That’s great,” I assured her. “You build any cool new worlds, Tate?”

“I’m making a spaceship out of grass. Want to see?” And I pulled up a chair while he walked me through it.

This time when his mom came back, I turned on my phone long enough to order an ebook about Minecraft basics before I stopped by the next room. I really hoped Tate wouldn’t still be there the next week, but if he was, I wanted to be prepared.

I read it, just to be safe. Tate wasn’t the only kid who liked Minecraft, I’d noticed. It might give me something to talk about with other patients too. But when I saw his name on the card outside his door again the following week, my heart sank. We weren’t supposed to ask about their diagnosis. If the parent or child wanted us to know, they’d tell us. Our job was just to provide a break, and often a big part of the break was not talking about why we were all in a hospital room together.

“Hi, Tate,” I said, stepping into the room.

“Hi, Emily,” he said. He was the first kid to know my name when I walked in, and it made me happy that he remembered but sad that he’d been here long enough to learn it.

“Dinner,” his mom said like she didn’t have the energy to speak a full sentence. I watched her slip out, her shoulders down before I forced a smile on my face and turned back to my patient.

“Hi. So I was thinking about your spaceship. What if you built a secret room with polished andesite?”

He’d been lying back against his pillows, but at this, he raised the back of his bed higher and studied me, a faint glint in his eye. “How do you know about andesite?”

“I’m smart like that. Want to show me how to do it?” And he did. When his mom returned an hour later, I smiled at him. “Thanks, dude. My nieces are going to be so impressed the next time I visit them.” I surrendered my seat to his mom and turned back at the doorway. “Hope I don’t see you next week, Tate.”

He grinned. “Hope I don’t see you either.”

But I stopped at the store on the way home and bought a Minecraft Lego set just in case. Ranée found me studying the pieces when she came home from a date with Paul.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Getting design ideas so I can help one of the kids at the hospital.” I picked up some dirt blocks and snapped them to a gray piece to study the effect. “Ironically, although I work for a software company, it turns out that I’m better at building imaginary stuff in analog.”

“You like volunteering, huh?”

“It puts things into perspective for sure. Like stuff at work is both less irritating, because I realize that problems I used to think were a big deal are definitely not a big deal, and more irritating, because I constantly want to choke people who are making it a big deal while I chant, ‘There are worse things, you idiot.’ So that’s been interesting.”

Ranée laughed. “I get it.”

“How was your date with Paul?”

“Fine.” She still wasn’t comfortable giving me details no matter how often I promised I didn’t care. “Speaking of dates…”

“Nothing to speak of,” I said. “Haven’t checked my app, don’t know when I’ll feel like it, and Jack hasn’t texted, and I don’t know if he will.”

“Here’s a new development. I’ve been keeping tabs on Jack through Sean, but Sean is moving out of Featherton.”

I set down my Legos. “He got the job?”

She grinned. “Yeah. He starts at the VA in two weeks. He wants to know if he can crash on the sofa until he finds an apartment.”

“That’s so great! Of course he can crash. Tell him congratulations for me.”

“I will. But now I won’t really have a Jack connection anymore.”

“It’s okay.” She’d passed on Sean’s reports about Jack, which amounted to “same old, same old” every time. “I’m sure if something big ever happens to Jack, Sean will let us know.” I’d miss getting a more personal account, but I still followed Jack’s Twitter feed as he posted his Photoshops, as funny and absurd as ever. Us falling apart hadn’t affected his sense of humor. Then again, there hadn’t been an “us” for long enough to think it should.

“I still think he’ll come around,” she said. “Maybe you should text him again?”

But I shook my head. It wasn’t pride that stopped me, or that it was his turn. It was something else I couldn’t explain. And even if I could understand and work through the feeling that held me back from texting again, I wouldn’t know what to say. I’d told him sorry the last time, but now after almost a month at the hospital, I could already sense how paltry that word was for the apology I owed him for not understanding. I wouldn’t know how to find the words that captured the realization that was growing in me with each shift I worked.

“I’m starting to get why he doesn’t have anything to say to me. It’s okay. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to play with my Legos.”

The next Thursday, I brought the kit with me. I figured I’d challenge Tate to a build-off, see who could make the coolest thing while his mom got her dinner, him digitally, me with my Legos. But when I got to his door, it wasn’t his name there anymore. My heart sank, until I realized it meant he’d been able to go home, and then I smiled. That’s exactly what he and his mom had both wanted. What was a bunch of dumb Minecraft Legos compared to that?

I went to deposit them in the playroom for any of the other kids on the floor who wanted to play. Usually the ones in there were the siblings of patients, but they could surely use some novelty too. I passed the nursing station on the way and smiled at the charge nurse, Shelley.

“I see that Tate got to go home. When was he discharged?”

She hesitated and shook her head. “He was released to hospice.”

“Oh.”

The words didn’t register at first.

I checked the respite request list and stopped at the first room, a little five-year-old with an oxygen canula and a woolen beanie over her bald scalp. Her father thanked me and stepped out for some food. The little girl didn’t want to talk, so I sat beside her and watched an animated dinosaur movie.

Hospice.

Hospice meant…

I didn’t want to think about it.

But when my patient’s dad came back, I stopped by Shelley’s desk again. “Hospice means they decided to stop treatment?”

“It means there was nothing else to do. And now the family can focus on making him comfortable in the time he has left.” Her eyes softened. “This is the first one you’ve lost?”

I nodded, my throat too tight to push words through.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It doesn’t get easier. But we appreciate you being willing to come in here and do this. It’s a godsend for these parents.”

I could only nod again, afraid that if the knot in my throat loosened it would flood out in tears, and I moved on to the next patient.

When I got home that night, I searched Facebook for Tate’s name and found a group his mom had set up to share his journey. I requested to join it, and the next morning before I went to work, I got a notification I’d been approved.

I scrolled through the group whenever I had a free moment at work, going all the way back to the first post where his mom had explained that they’d received a tough diagnosis for Tate, but he was a fighter and they were optimistic that with the love and prayers of the people who loved him and the elite team t Benioff, he was going to beat his illness. I could feel the sincerity and determination in every sentence and in the grinning photos she posted of him from his baseball team and with his little sister.

I checked it every single morning over breakfast before I left for work. Six days later, she posted a picture of Tate asleep in a hospital bed in what looked like a living room, a little girl, maybe three, napping beside him. It said, “Lucy won’t leave his side.”

I set my phone face down and stared at it.

Sean had arrived two days before, and now he sat down across from me with a toasted bagel in front of him.

“Want to go for a run later?”

His words barely registered as I stared at my phone.

“Whoa,” he said, concern creeping into his voice. “You okay?”

I opened the picture and handed it to him. He knew I was volunteering at the hospital because I’d put him down as a reference. “He went on hospice care.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, handing it back. “Did you work with him much?”

“Not really. Just a couple of times.” I made the screen go dark. “I can’t believe how bad this feels.”

He didn’t say anything.

“How did you do this?” I asked.

“That’s the thing. I couldn’t after a while. It never got easier.”

“I committed to a six-month volunteer term,” I said. “I don’t know how I’m going to do this for six months.”

“Ask for a transfer to a different department,” he said. “I’m not going to try to tell you to stick this out, and they’re used to it. They know oncology isn’t for everyone. They’ll understand.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I didn’t understand.” All I could see was the exhaustion on Tate’s mom’s face when she would slip out to grab a quick dinner, then the memory of the exhaustion on Jack’s during our last conversation. And his words. I hate that you can’t see it for what it is. I’d blithely told him that I did, proud of myself for coming up with such a good argument-ending comeback before I’d walked away from him.

His words played over and over in my head. He was right. I hadn’t seen his retreat for what it was: survival.

It hadn’t even been my job to save Tate, and now his name was carved into my heart. How would I feel if it had been my job to cure him? How would it feel if I carried dozens of names the way I would always carry his?

I didn’t sleep well, and the next night, when it was my shift at the hospital, I stopped and asked Shelley the question that I should have been asking Jack. “Shelley? How do you do this job when you keep losing kids?” How had Jack been able to do it for as long as he did?

She set down the tablet she’d been working on and gave me a resigned look. “Because sometimes we win. Not enough. But sometimes.”

I nodded. “Okay. Thanks.” I started down the hall to find the restroom and splash some cold water on my face before I found my next patient.

“Emily?” Shelley called.

I turned to see what she needed.

“You don’t have to do this. Most people can’t. Talk to the volunteer coordinator and let her know that you want to finish your volunteer term in a different department. It happens a lot. No one will think less of you for it.”

“I would,” I said quietly.

And I went to find my next patient.

I’d find Sharon later, not to request reassignment, but to thank her for her work in coordinating. But that wasn’t the only thing I needed to take care of.

I owed Jack another apology, a true apology now that I understood what I was apologizing for, even though there weren’t any words that could make it right.