The Ties That Bind

by Lexi Landsman

  Courtney dropped Jade back at her hotel at noon after having spent the morning together. She had urged Jade to stay with them but she had refused the offer, not wanting to intrude.

  ‘No matter what results come back, thank you for coming here,’ Courtney said. ‘It means more to me than you’ll ever know. Meeting you has been the only ray of light in the darkness of this whole ordeal.’

  Jade unbuckled her seatbelt and smiled gently. ‘My life has been defined by my mother’s mistakes,’ Jade said meditatively. ‘But not anymore. I’ll never make any of the choices she did.’

  The week after Jade’s arrival passed in a blur. A spring heatwave hit. The air was humid and sticky, perfumed with the smell of blossoms. They ate mangoes in the garden and took Jade on trips around the city. They went to South Beach so she could see its long stretch of white sand and the colourful art-deco buildings. They strolled down Lincoln Road and stayed until sunset, watching as the nightlife came alive. They drove over Rickenbacker Causeway and spent an afternoon on the small island of Key Biscayne, where they ate fresh seafood on the waterfront.

  Matthew joined them when he had the strength, but sometimes they just went for long drives so he could gaze out the window while they gave Jade the tour.

  They were still waiting for the results of Jade’s test but David wasn’t even toying with the possibility of good news. It would only give them false hope. If there was anything to be grateful for about Jade’s unexpected visit, it was the welcome distraction it gave them from Matthew’s impending phase of chemotherapy and the fact that he would enter into it without a stem-cell match.

  ‘Good morning,’ David said as he walked into his son’s room and opened a window to clear it of stuffy air.

  ‘Morning, Dad.’ Matthew looked weaker today. His face was ghostly white and beads of sweat glistened on his head and around his neck.

  David sat on the edge of his bed and wiped his forehead. ‘How are you feeling this morning?’

  ‘Tired,’ he replied, his voice hushed. ‘Like I could sleep forever.’

  His son’s choice of words caught in David’s throat, and suddenly he was desperate to cheer his son up. ‘Why don’t we play FIFA on the PlayStation?’ David offered, trying to think of something that was fun but not strenuous.

  Matthew shook his head. ‘Not today, Dad. Maybe tomorrow.’

  He never thought his son would ever say no to a PlayStation game, especially a soccer one. It was in that moment that the reality of Matthew’s condition hit him hard. What had happened to the boy who used to beg David to verse him in his latest video game? Who slept holding a soccer ball like a pillow? Who would do anything to get David into the garden for soccer practice? Who always wanted to arrive at the game an hour earlier than his team to warm up? Who would run onto the soccer field with a smile that radiated all the way to the stands? This boy on the bed – bald and weak, sad and depleted of any semblance of a smile – was not his son. It was not right. It was so damn unfair. He stood up and went to the window, pretending to be straightening the curtains when really he was hiding his face so his son wouldn’t see how easy it was now to reduce him to tears. ‘Okay, tomorrow then,’ David said softly, as if his words could be sealed in stone. Tomorrow his son would have his strength back. Tomorrow he would be himself again. More than anything, David had to keep telling himself that.

  ‘Dad, how can Jade be Mom’s half-sister?’

  David wiped his eyes discreetly and turned around, forcing his voice to remain unchanged. ‘Well, because Mom’s adopted, her birth mother had another child after her with a different dad.’ David wasn’t going to even attempt to tell the whole truth. That Courtney wasn’t really adopted; that Frank was actually her real father. It was so unfathomable that the lie was easier to digest than the truth.

  Matthew sat up and rubbed his eyes. ‘I like Jade. She’s fun. So, she’s my auntie?’

  ‘Yup,’ David said and smiled.

  Matthew gazed out the window. ‘When Mom went to Australia, is that where she found Jade?’

  ‘Yes,’ David said, wondering where his questions were leading.

  ‘Is that where Mom was born, then – in Australia?’

  David took some clothes out of the cupboard for Matthew to wear. ‘Yes.’

  Matthew got out of bed slowly and took the shorts from David, revealing his skinny legs, now robbed of muscle. ‘How come she never talks about it, then?’

  How would David ever begin to explain to his son the revelations his wife had discovered in her search to save him? ‘She didn’t know that was where she was born. Until she met Jade.’

  Matthew’s ribs seemed to be protruding as he pulled a T-shirt over his head. ‘I’m happy she found her,’ he said as he moved slowly to the window overlooking their garden below. ‘She can help Mom,’ he whispered. He opened his mouth to say something more and then closed it again. And David couldn’t help but see fear in his son’s eyes as if he had to stop himself from finishing the rest of his sentence – when I’m gone.

  Before David had a chance to respond, his mobile phone rang. ‘One second, buddy,’ he said as he stepped outside to answer it.

  ‘Mister Hamilton?’

  David recognised the voice immediately and braced himself for bad news. ‘Yes. Hi, Belinda,’ he answered.

  ‘I have some incredible news,’ she said, speaking quickly as if she couldn’t keep the elation out of her voice.

  David’s heart pounded in his chest. A vein in his forehead throbbed and his hands went clammy.

  ‘Jade is a perfect match.’

  67

  THE ODDS of winning the lottery are something like one in 175 million. For David, discovering that Jade was a perfect match for his son was like winning the lottery of life. Of all the millions and millions of possible HLA combinations people around the world had, Jade was the one whose numbers lined up with Matthew’s. Being Courtney’s half-sister played a part but it was still nothing short of a miracle.

  As a father, David was overwhelmed with relief that the transplant would give Matthew the greatest chance of survival. Yet as a doctor, he knew that those same stem cells that had the potential to save his son’s life could also end it. He could succumb to graft-versus-host disease, a condition where the donated cells might consider Matthew’s body foreign and attack it instead of help it. He could go into respiratory distress or suffer graft failure. A simple infection could kill him.

  But still, in the face of their options, this was the best one. The chance at life. And no matter how small that chance, they would take the risk if it meant they could have their boy back at the end of it.

  Matthew had to undergo a battery of pre-transplant tests to see if he was even well enough to receive the transplant. He then had to begin the conditioning process, which involved undergoing intense chemotherapy to destroy any remaining cancer cells and to make room in his bone marrow for the transplanted stem cells. It also suppressed his immune system to lessen the chance of graft rejection.

  The treatment made Matthew’s eyelids swollen. He developed painful mouth ulcers and had no appetite. He was nauseated and vomited often. He suffered from extreme fatigue and lost more weight. There were moments when he seemed so close to giving up the fight. He’d cried when they put a new central line into a large vein in his chest. Over and over again, Courtney reassured him that the pain was a means to an end. He would be a normal boy again soon.

  Matthew had an increased risk of developing an infection, so he had to spend two weeks in protective isolation. To minimise his exposure to germs, visitors weren’t allowed into his room, which was equipped with a special air filtration system that ensured no unclean air entered.

  So he wouldn’t feel so lonely, David gave Matthew his work laptop, which had an inbuilt camera. They would sit outside the room so he knew they were there and they would video call him a few times a day. Matthew and Dean video chatted for hours. Dean even organised their class to record Matthew a ‘get well’ vi
deo message. Matthew kept himself busy – watching movies and playing computer games – but mostly he slept.

  It was David who couldn’t sleep over the fourteen nights his son was there.

  Jade extended her trip, and Courtney and David convinced her to stay with them. So now their four-bedroom house was full, with David’s parents still staying there. Jade had been reluctant to impose but eventually agreed, and shortly after she moved in she asked if she could give them a hand with their neglected garden. She spent hours pulling out weeds, planting new flowers, adding minerals to the soil and rearranging the pebbles by the water feature they had built when Matthew was born. In just a few weeks, Jade had become part of their family. She was kind and good at heart, undemanding and unobtrusive. There had been a few funny moments too when David had noticed her similarities with Courtney. Jade would walk past a painting and straighten it, and she’d often run her fingers over her eyebrows to smooth them out, a habit Courtney shared. They both bit their lower lip when they were thinking and hated froth in their coffee.

  David thought a lot about nature and nurture as he heard them laughing in the kitchen, and he wished they hadn’t been separated from each other their whole lives.

  The closer they got to the transplant date, the more anxious they all became. But Matthew proved to be a trouper. He passed the transplant preparation treatment and time in isolation without contracting an infection.

  Now it was a matter of waiting for the transplant and hoping that Jade’s miraculous gift would give him a second chance at life.

  Jade woke in the middle of the night before the transplant, un able to sleep. She got out of bed and crept to Matthew’s telescope, which he had put in her room when he left for hospital.

  She opened the window and felt the night air twirl around her. Then she peered through the lens at the stars blinking in the cloudless, inky sky. It seemed like she could reach her hand up and touch them. She suddenly experienced a wave of homesickness and wished she were on the porch with her grandmother, who had told her as a child that stars were a cosmos of luminous eyes so we could see in the darkness, and their formations were guides to lead us when we got lost.

  She thought of her three dogs – the earthy scent and silky threads of their fur – and longed to feel them curled up next to her. She pictured her house as it was before the fires: the rose beds, her father’s shed, the olive groves, the alpacas resting behind the dam. She thought of the creek and the calls of the kookaburras and sulphur-crested cockatoos. The sound of stillness as she rested on the tractor in the groves. A hollow feeling settled within her and she realised that no matter how far she travelled, a part of her would always ache for home like a star disconnected from its constellation.

  Thinking about being so far from home, her thoughts turned to Matthew and how lonely he would be feeling in the isolated room. She felt guilty that she was here in his house looking through his most prized possession while he slept behind a glass partition, separated from the world.

  Without too much thought, Jade packed a bag with clothes and one of Courtney’s blank sketchpads, then left a note for Courtney and David, and got a taxi to the hospital. When she arrived, the hospital was quiet and still. The monitors hummed and the night nurses spoke in hushed tones.

  Matthew’s isolation room had floor-to-ceiling glass so the children didn’t feel scared when they were inside. He looked like he was asleep, so she pulled up a chair and sat outside his room, watching him. Suddenly, he turned and smiled at her, and she smiled back. She took out the sketchpad and a marker pen and drew a smiley face with the word ‘Hi’. Then she turned to the next blank page of the sketchpad and wrote, ‘I can’t sleep.’ He sat up, but he was too weak to stand to go to the glass partition. He was wearing a beanie and his soccer pyjamas, and he looked small beneath them.

  She saw Matthew reach to the side of his bed and grab the small whiteboard they had given him to communicate with. In large messy handwriting, he wrote ‘Me neither’ and held it up for her to read. He then rubbed it out again.

  ‘I used your telescope,’ Jade wrote.

  He looked pleased and then replied, ‘Did you see anything?’

  Jade turned to the next blank piece of sketch paper and drew a smiley face, and wrote, ‘I didn’t know what constellations I was looking at. You’ll have to teach me.’

  ‘After my transplant,’ Matthew wrote on his board.

  ‘I’d like that,’ Jade wrote and smiled again.

  Matthew gazed up at her and paused. His face was so pale it was stone grey. He looked down at his board, rubbed what he was writing out a few times and then finally wrote, slowly, cautiously.

  ‘I’m scared.’

  Jade felt a pang in her heart when she read his words. ‘We’re in this together,’ she wrote, feeling her eyes water. She quickly flicked to another sheet of paper and drew a picture of two stick figures holding hands and added a bubble above their heads that said ‘SCB4L – Stem Cell Buddies 4 Life’. She held it up to the window, hoping it would make him smile.

  It did. ‘You’re not a very good artist,’ he wrote on his board and grinned.

  She turned another page and wrote, ‘You should try to sleep.’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t want to be alone.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Jade sat on the floor and rested her head against the glass. She then turned the paper over and wrote, ‘See?’

  He smiled and held up his board to reveal a drawing – the same picture Jade had drawn, except in his both stick figures had hair. He held it up in front of his face for a moment and then took it down again and scribbled the words, ‘Thank you.’

  Jade looked up at Matthew, who lay back in his bed. She watched his eyes closing as he drifted to sleep, clasping something tightly in his hand. When he fell asleep and his hand released its firm grasp, she saw that he was holding the agate stone she had given him the day she arrived.

  Jade knew how miraculous it was that she was a match. She’d never believed in flimsy things like fate, but as she rested against the glass wall of his hospital room, she couldn’t help but feel as though her YiaYia had been right about the stars. Maybe they were there to illuminate the right path.

  68

  DAVID and Courtney didn’t sleep the night before the transplant. At 4 am, after tossing and turning, and trying everything to will their bodies to sleep, they gave up. It was still dark outside and the window frames rattled from the wind. Courtney walked quietly to Jade’s room to see if her lights were on and if she too was having a sleepless night. Though it was their son’s life that hung in the balance, it was Jade who was going under general anaesthetic; she was the one who would wake up in pain after the procedure.

  When Courtney got to Jade’s room the door was slightly open, which was unusual. Courtney crept closer and stuck her head in to check that everything was okay.

  Suddenly she felt as if her lungs had caved in. Jade wasn’t in her room. In those first few seconds, Courtney couldn’t help but think that her worst fear had materialised … Jade had left. She had been spooked by the idea of the procedure and run off.

  Courtney raced back to the bedroom. ‘David, Jade’s gone!’ she said, her breath short and uneven.

  David sat up in the bed. ‘What do you mean she’s gone? Just calm down. What’s going on?’

  ‘She’s not in her room,’ Courtney wheezed.

  ‘Well, did you look around the rest of the house?’

  Courtney shook her head.

  ‘For God’s sake, Courtney, she could be downstairs having tea or watching TV,’ David snapped. ‘You don’t have to always jump to the worst-case scenario.’

  She checked the living room, dining room and kitchen, which were all empty. The garden doors were closed. Panic took hold now and she yelled, ‘She’s gone, David! She’s not here. She’s gone!’

  David was down the stairs in a heartbeat.

  Courtney flicked on the lights to the living room and kitchen, which was when
she saw a note tacked to the fridge.

  Couldn’t sleep, so I went to the hospital. I’ll see you there in the morning.

  David exhaled with relief as Courtney pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. ‘I just want today to be over already.’

  David looked at the clock on the wall. ‘Not long to go now,’ he said.

  Courtney sat down on a bar stool in the kitchen and ran her hands through her hair. ‘I feel so bad. I can’t believe I thought Jade would do something like that. Especially now that I know where she went. She chose to be by Matthew’s side on a night when she had her own fears to contend with.’

  Two hours later, they arrived at the hospital and found Jade asleep against the glass wall of Matthew’s room. Courtney’s heart ached at the sight. Jade had been covered by a blanket and her head was on a pillow, her hair coming free of her plait, surrounded by pieces of sketch paper. David picked them up and handed one to Courtney. We’re in this together.

  Courtney put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying aloud. They read the pages silently.

  Courtney held the last sheet of paper. It was a picture of two stick figures holding hands and the words SCB4L – Stem Cell Buddies 4 Life.

  She then looked into Matthew’s room. He was fast asleep. On the floor, his writing board lay propped up against his bed. Following her gaze, David moved closer to the glass so they could both read it. Matthew had drawn what appeared to be a duplicate of Jade’s, except that he had added the detail of short, spiky hair to the stick figure of the boy and had written the words, Thank you.

  Courtney sniffed and wiped her eyes. They stepped quietly out of the corridor and into the children’s play area, where David pulled his wife close to him. ‘I know it’s too late for apologies, but I’m sorry I blamed you for leaving to go on your search. If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here right now, with Jade, and with hope that the transplant might save Matthew. It’s a miracle.’