I nodded, doing my best to drink in long words and scary explanations.
Rick picked up his infernal pen again, clicking. “With multimodal treatment, you can still have years left, Ren. Don’t give up just because you’ve progressed. We all knew that would happen. Don’t let it get you down, okay?”
I forced a smile. “I’m not giving up, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wouldn’t dare think that. Out of any case I’ve seen, you have something unique tying you here that will prove to be better than any surgery or drug.”
“Oh?” I raised my eyebrow, coughing softly. “What’s that?”
“Love.” He smiled. “True love has its claws in you, and I doubt it will ever let go. Fight for that. Live for that. And we’ll make sure to buy you enough time to watch your son grow.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
DELLA
* * * * * *
2023
THAT FIRST YEAR with a new-born and a husband fighting the worst kind of unfairness, I couldn’t lie…it was the hardest year I’d ever endured.
After the initial wash of endorphins in the hospital with Ren and me kissing, watching baby Jacob as if he was the most fascinating thing we’d ever seen, and living in a cocoon of delight, life interrupted and sped up far too fast.
There was no time to tell Ren how shit-terrified I’d been when he’d collapsed.
No space to yell at him and tell him to take it slow.
He already knew he’d screwed up, and I didn’t need to drag yet more sadness into our tentative world.
So, we buckled down and fought.
God, we fought.
We fought so hard I don’t remember anything else.
All I remembered was the exhaustion from a baby thrust into a world of sad instability and eyes that were permanently swollen from all the tears I refused to shed.
While I nursed a grizzly baby, Ren had treatments every other week. One week, he’d be subjected to Keytruda—a drug I was fond of as it had helped him before. And one with chemo—a drug I was not fond of as it made him sick.
Even with the pills that Rick Mackenzie gave him to counteract the side effects, Ren had a rash where the chemicals entered his skin and complained of bone aches so bad, he submitted to taking painkillers on top of all the rest.
By the fourth session of chemo, his cheekbones were more defined and his body more sinew than muscle. He hadn’t lost weight exactly but tightened, somehow. The parts of him that made him so dependable and capable sucking deep within to fight.
By the second month of Jacob being home and the builders kindly racing to finish our house, even while we lived there, Ren became allergic to sunlight.
His eyes couldn’t handle the brightness, even with sunglasses. His skin burned instantly, even with sun cream. Whatever the doctors had injected into him had done something to his biological makeup, and it was hard not to smash apart everything in our newly finished house.
It was hard to stay strong for him when I was so helpless.
It was hard to keep Jacob happy when I didn’t know the meaning of the word myself anymore.
It was in those moments—those life-sucking, abyssal moments—that I carried my child to the willow grotto and sat amongst their fronds.
I’d allow myself to be sad, only for a moment.
I’d allow myself to talk to Jacob about things no baby should know about their terminally-ill father, piecing myself back together again to be brave.
Even dealing with so much, Ren never let me down.
We took turns bathing Jacob and putting him to bed. We’d tell stories together, finding laughter amongst so many heartaches when we relived our own tales of childhood.
John hired an out of town contractor to finish the baling and, on the days when the chemo hit Ren bad, Cassie became a godsend by babysitting Jacob while I held Ren on the bathroom floor as he shivered and vomited and apologised for ever letting me see him that way.
Like I said, that first year was the hardest I’d ever endured.
But even though our life was a sequence of tough and tougher moments, I never regretted for a moment having Jacob.
As he grew from toothless babe to inquisitive bright-eyed creature, I could see why Ren had both hated and loved me when I was young.
I hated not knowing what I was doing. Hated the lack of rest, the loud crying, the struggle to learn a language I didn’t know. But I loved, loved watching him develop a personality. I loved being responsible for his learning, growth, and the fact that he blossomed in weight, happiness, and joy even while his parents lost those things.
We’d been given the gift of life with our son, and the payment seemed to be the cost of his father’s soul. And as much as I loved Jacob, I honestly didn’t know if I could afford the price.