It Starts

Across from us were three or four medical students, same number of nurses, and other support people whom we would get to know very well in the future. The doctor at the head of the table carried a heavy binder. This binder contained all the various protocols that patients follow in their treatment.

For what seems like forever, you sit there with eyes glued to the surroundings as the players get set. As they fidgeted about, we sat there hoping they would get things started. With a clinic named “Pediatric Hematology & Oncology,” things are not going to get better just yet. The silence is deafening. Finally, after the suspense began to feel like it was suffocating me, the doctor looks over and says the words “leukemia; your child has cancer.”

So how did this journey begin? I had toyed with the idea that I would try to hide the sex of the child as if I were some really great mystery writer. Then I thought that’s real silly. Parents hope for a boy or a girl when their kids are still in mommy’s tummy. Truth is that after the little tyke comes out, the only thing that you care about is that he or she has ten fingers and ten toes. All the other hopes and desires melt into the little miracle’s smile. My child just happened to be a thirteen-yearold boy named Joshua.
 Joshua Wanted A Cigar

We were called into The Room with the doctors again to discuss some test results. “God, I came to hate The Room.” As we sat there going over the last battery of tests and pondering Joshua’s future, I stated that I had a question for them. I was motioned to ask away, and I looked at them and asked, “Will a cigar interfere with any of the drugs or chemo he is taking?” They looked at me and said that they were not going to advise me to give a thirteen-year-old a cigar. I gazed back and told them I wasn’t asking them to, all I needed to know was would the cigar interfere with any of the medical protocols that he was following. Again, they stated that they were not going to advise a thirteen-year-old to have a cigar. This time I looked them right in the eye and stated very pointedly, “I didn’t ask your permission to give it to him; I just need to know if it will interfere with his treatment, that’s the question.” Then one doctor looked at me and said “No, but” I stopped her there. “Thank you!”
 That night I told Joshua we were going out onto the parking deck, it was a little after midnight. So I wrapped him up in a heavy winter coat, ski cap, and a scarf, and off we went. He was a sight. There he was in a heavy coat and all this other collateral stuff, pulling an IV pole with three pumps and at least 8 bags of IV fluids running into him. We set out to the parking deck facing French Street, New Brunswick, and there we stood with cigars in our hands. So as we were standing there I noticed Joshua flicking the ash off his cigar like it was a cigarette. I looked at him and I said, “The mark of a good cigar is that the tobacco burns even and the ash hangs at the end of the cigar.” That is the reason that you see guys smoking cigars with inches of ash hanging on the end.
 

So he looks at me and starts to say, “Yea, but don’t you know that they say...,” and he starts laughing. I looked at him and said, “Yea, and what’s so funny?”
He looks back at me with a silly grin and says, “They tell you if you smoke through the ash, you have a better chance of getting cancer.”
I looked over and just said, “Well, I guess that’s a moot point.”
“Yep” was his response, and we went on about smoking our cigars.
 Angel on a Bus

On this particular trip I was gone for three days. I jumped on a boat, a Carnival® ship, and I went to the Bahamas. I left on a Friday and would return that following Monday. I’ll never forget we had returned to Port Miami, gotten off the boat, and now I found myself sitting in the bus waiting to be driven to the airport. I was sitting by myself only for a few minutes when this rather large woman of color moved into the seat next to me. I found myself thinking I wished they had made these seats bigger. Ignoring her, I used my cell phone to call home to check on Joshua. I had my cell phone leaning against the window so I could get better reception because the signal wasn’t very strong. I called my wife and we were talking about all his blood work so while you could only hear my half of the conversation, it was obvious what we were talking about.
 The conversation concerned itself with numbers and positive and negative and abnormal cells and such. So even to someone who didn’t know anything about medicine, it was probably pretty obvious that we were talking about medical stuff. As with most conversations involving Joshua, I was emotional. You try to say to yourself that an emotional response here in a bus full of strangers is awkward at best, even though it didn’t really bother me as much as you might think. I’m pretty secure in who I am and where I am in life. I hung up the phone with eyes glazed over and feeling that I just wanted to melt into the chair, out of sight of all these strangers. At that moment the woman reached over and put her hand on my leg. She then looked me in the eye and said with a deep southern accent, “I wasn’t eavesdropping and I don’t mean to pry, but I take it that you have a child that’s sick?”

In a soft emotional voice I said, “Yes, that’s true.”
Without a hesitation she took her hand and put it over top of mine and said, “Just so you know, I said a little prayer for your child.” The sincerity and love in her words truly moved me. She then said, “Now I’m going to say a little prayer for you.” With that she turned away from me, closed her eyes, and with the gentleness of a butterfly moved her lips as she reached out to God for a stranger on a bus. I’ll never forget that woman. I don’t know her name; I only know that she was from South Carolina, but I will remember her reaching out to a total stranger and giving him comfort. I hope some day she reads this and knows in her heart that I’m talking about her. Some people believe that God places angels on earth disguised as people. If that’s true, this stranger from South Carolina was surely one of God’s special angels.


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