She’d thrown up. Her skin had peeled. She’d had sores down her GI tract and had a feeding tube placed because she couldn’t keep anything down. But as soon as she’d finished that course of treatment and the stem cells had been transplanted, she bounced right back. She was astonishing on every level that a little girl could be.
I couldn’t say I was happy, not with Maisie still fighting for her life, but we’d passed the year mark in November, and she was still here. She’d had another birthday, another Christmas. Colt was taking snowboarding lessons. Solitude was booked solid through the ski season and summer, and Hailey had moved out a few months ago, knowing I could depend on Beckett, who had taken shifts between Telluride and Denver, to be wherever he was needed most.
Everything came back to Beckett. He took the worst days and made them bearable. Took the good days and made them exquisite. He picked up the kids, took Colt to school, took Maisie to local appointments, made dinner on nights I couldn’t get away from the main house—there was nothing he wouldn’t do.
So maybe I couldn’t say that I was happy, but I was content, and that was more than enough.
Chaos would have been proud.
It had been almost fourteen months since I’d lost him and Ryan, and I still had no clue why. That was part of Beckett’s past I had a nearly impossible time accepting. Only nearly, because I heard him scream Ryan’s name in the middle of a nightmare a few months ago. That scream told me he wasn’t anywhere near ready to talk.
Ryan and Chaos were gone.
Beckett was alive and in my arms, and that meant I had all the time in the world to wait until he was ready.
We pulled into the hospital parking lot, and Beckett carried Maisie through the slush-filled lot as I followed in his footsteps, thankful I’d worn boots.
Maisie was quiet through check-in and vitals, and dead silent as she had her blood drawn and went through the CT scan.
By the time we were put into an exam room to wait for Dr. Hughes, she was almost a statue.
“What are you thinking about?” Beckett asked her as he sat on the exam table.
She shrugged, kicking her feet under the chair. They’d made a deal after the second MIBG treatment—she wasn’t sitting on exam tables any more than necessary. She said they made her feel like she was a sick kid, and she wanted to believe that she was getting better. So Beckett would sit on the table until the doc came in, and then they would trade places.
“Me, too,” he said, mirroring her shrug.
“Me, three,” I added.
That earned us a little smile.
Dr. Hughes knocked and opened the door. “Hi there, Maisie!” she said to Beckett.
“Busted,” he stage-whispered.
Maisie grinned and jumped up to take his spot as he took her chair and then my hand.
“How are you feeling?” Dr. Hughes asked, doing the usual physical checks.
“Good. Strong.” She nodded to emphasize her point.
“I believe you. You know why?”
My hand tightened on Beckett’s. As steady as I tried to appear to Maisie, I was terrified of what she was going to say. It seemed so unfair to put a little girl through so much and not have it work.
“Why?” Maisie whispered, her arms crushing Colt’s teddy bear.
“Because your tests look great, just like you. Good and strong.” She tapped Maisie on the nose with her finger. “You are a rock star, Maisie.”
Maisie looked back over her shoulder at us, a smile as wide as the state of Colorado.
“What exactly does that mean?” I asked.
“We’re looking at less than 5 percent on her bone marrow. No change since you left the hospital last month. And no new tumors. Your girl is stable, and in partial remission.”
That word tripped something in my brain, and it short-circuited just like it had the first time they’d said cancer, except this time it was in the joy end of disbelief.
“Say it again,” I begged.
Dr. Hughes smiled. “She’s in partial remission. It means no new treatments for the time being. I’ll probably want to do a session of radiation in a couple months to mop up any of the microscopic cells, but as long as her scans are coming back clean, I think we can give her a little break.”
Everything went blurry, and Beckett’s hands wiped at my cheeks.
I laughed when I realized I was crying.
We listened to Dr. Hughes explain that it wasn’t a full remission. She had made significant progress but hadn’t been cured. She was hopeful that the radiation treatment would wipe out the rest, and then we could schedule immunotherapy.
Then she reiterated that over half of all kids with aggressive neuroblastoma relapsed after they’d been declared in full remission, that this wasn’t a guarantee but a much-needed break. Her weekly scans could even be done locally in Telluride, and she’d review them in Denver, no need to drive to Montrose.
I wrote down everything I could process in her binder, hoping I could make sense of it all later. Then Maisie hopped down from the table, and we walked to the car. Maisie and Beckett chattered and laughed, joking about how much ice cream she was going to eat while she had a couple of months off treatment. She declared she was going to eat an entire Easter basket full of chocolate and peanut butter cups.
Beckett hoisted Maisie into the truck, and she buckled in. Then he shut the door and caught my hand as he walked me to my side of the truck.
All at once, it hit me. Maisie had been talking about Easter, which was two months away. My vision swam, and I covered my face with my hands.
“Ella,” Beckett whispered, pulling me against his chest.
I gripped the edges of his coat and sobbed, the sound ugly and raw and real. “Easter. She’s going to be here for Easter.”
“Yeah, she is,” he promised, running his hand down my back in sweeping motions. “It’s okay to plan, you know. To look ahead to what life will be like for the four of us once she’s healthy. It’s okay to believe in good things.”
“I’ve been stuck for so long. Just living scan to scan, chemo to MIBG. We didn’t even buy presents until the week before Christmas because I couldn’t see that far into the future. And now I can see a couple of months out.” Sure, there were weekly scans, but a couple of months felt like an eternity, a gift of the one thing we’d been denied—time.
“We’ll just enjoy it and take advantage of every minute she feels great.”
“Right,” I agreed with a nod, but with the word “remission” being tossed around like a beach ball at a concert, I felt the gut-wrenching longing for more. I’d always pushed thoughts of Maisie dying to the side, but I also hadn’t thought about her living. My world had narrowed to the fight. My infinity existed within the confines of her treatment, never looking too far ahead for fear it took my eyes off the battle of the moment. “I think I’m getting greedy.”
“Ella, you’re the least greedy person I know.” His arms tightened, grounding me.
“I am. Because I’ve been begging for weeks, and now I see months and I want years. How many other NB kids have died while she fought? Three from Denver? And here I am seeing this light at the end of the tunnel and praying it’s not a freight train coming our way. That’s greedy.”
“Then I’m greedy, too. Because I’d give up anything for her to have the time. For you to have it.”
We headed home with Maisie singing along to Beckett’s playlist. Her earlier worries shoved aside for another day and another test.
My worries lingered. Wanting something that was so out of reach had been a distant thought, and now that it was a real possibility, that want was a screaming need that shoved everything else aside and demanded to be heard.
I didn’t just want these few months.
I wanted a lifetime.
For the first time since Maisie was diagnosed, I had real hope. Which meant I had something to lose.
…
Two weeks later, my back hit the wall in my bedroom, and I barely noticed. My legs were around Beckett’s waist, my shirt lost somewhere between the front door and the stairs. His fell somewhere between the stairs and the bedroom.
His tongue was in my mouth, my hands were in his hair, and we were on fire.
“How long do we have?” he asked, his breath hot against my ear before he trailed kisses down my neck, lingering on the spot that always brought chills to my skin and fever to my blood.