Last Chance

Chapter 10:

Wyatt came the next day taking away the repaired computers and dropping off more to be fixed, I told him to warn the boss that I’d be taking vacation time in the next six months and he said he’d get the message to the scheduler and boss for me. I thanked him. He said he’d be back Monday to pick up more of the computers I’d fixed.

On Saturday, Sam arrived at 9:00 am, early for a weekend. He must have really liked Jamie to get up and come over that early. He seemed intimidated by me despite Joel being the one he probably had to worry about.

Jamie smiled brightly in Sam’s presence, they reminded me so much of me and Joel when we were young.

“Keep the door open,” Joel called after them as they went upstairs.

The smile on Joel’s face melted once they were gone. He had a throbbing headache when he woke up this morning and well the doctor hadn’t said to avoid medication, we’d learned in earlier trials in order to stay and get accurate results he couldn’t take anything before the start of a trial normally so he had to live with the headache until the doctors said otherwise.

Joel and I lay on the couch for another hour and a half. I ran my hand over his aching head trying to massage away the headache before we got up to prepare to leave. I brought the headache medication with us just in case he could take it. I brought a change of clothes for Joel in case he had to stay overnight. I brought our IDs and healthcare cards.

“Jamie, we’re leaving. You’re welcome to help yourselves to food if you get hungry. We’ll be back later tonight,” Joel calls up the stairs.

“Okay,” Jamie answers back. “See you.”

I help Joel out to the car and throw all the stuff we need into the backseat. We drive to the hospital and go up to the waiting room to be called by Joel’s doctor. I get Joel and I checked in and they hand us the standard paperwork and consent forms for the trial. Joel’s doctor, Dr. Keller emerges from the backroom with another doctor, the one most likely running the drug trial.

“Hello, Joel,” the other doctor introduces himself. “My name is Dr. Malcolm.”

He was tall, bald, mid-forties with thin rectangular glasses.

“Dr. Malcolm is the trial coordinator. He’ll administer the drug and monitor Joel’s reaction. There are several other patients here being tested as well,” Dr. Keller explains.

“Joel’s the most promising though since he has the most time, we will most likely need to do multiple treatments, once a week for the next three months with regular scans to track the progress of the tumour. After that we will do one last surgery to remove any remaining cancerous tumor left behind and hopefully this time it won’t come back, for good,” Dr. Malcolm continues.

We read over the risks, not too carefully because at this point he’s going to die regardless of the consequences of the drugs, things can only go uphill from here. Joel signs and the doctors lead us back to a room with several others in beds. They all have heart machines monitoring their heart rates and blood pressure and IVs going into their veins. Many have shaved clean heads; their ages range from about sixteen to forty years old. I look around. They said Joel had the most time, which means everyone in this room had less than a year to live and I thought I had little time with Joel.

I look over at the sixteen-year-old girl across the room from us. Her mom is beside her bed holding her hand. She has a brave face on. All these people are so unlucky, but none of them are as unlucky as that sixteen-year-old girl, she had her life ahead of her, she’s probably never been in love, and she’d never get to go to college or live out her dreams. At least Joel and I had or were doing that.

I took Joel’s hand and despite my atheism and his loss of faith, I bowed my head and closed my eyes and prayed at that moment that this would work. Not just for Joel’s sake but for this girl’s, too. I hoped her mother would never stop loving her if she got the second chance all these people desperately wanted.

Dr. Malcolm came back with another IV bag and went over to the girl and her mother.

“Are you ready to start, Sophie?” he asked.

She nodded and he switched out the IV bags and the drug started making its way through the tubing into her bloodstream. Dr. Malcolm recorded the time and moved on to the next patient.

Dr. Keller came into the room and glanced at Malcolm and then walked over to us.

“Joel’s parents are here,” he said, quietly.

How did they even know about the drug trial? Neither of us had said anything.

“Tell them to go away,” Joel stated.

Keller nods and exits the room.

Malcolm gets to us and asks Joel the same question he asked the girl. Joel answers the same and he starts administering the drugs. Keller comes back.

“They won’t leave,” he states quietly. “They’re quite angry.”

Keller knew Joel’s situation, he’d had questions about Joel’s family and why they were never present at any of his appointments or treatments when he was first diagnosed.

“Do you want me to call security?” Keller asks.

“I’ll probably just make it worse if I go out there and Joel has to stay here, right?” I reply.

Joel nods in reply to Keller’s question.

“Okay,” he replies.

Joel lays back and takes a deep breath trying to calm his slightly elevated heart rate. I keep hold of his hand.

“Ma’am, you cannot go back there, Joel expressed that he does not want to see you and he can’t be stressed out right now or the drug trial results will be skewed,” I hear Keller try to explain outside the room to Joel’s mother, I assume.

I hope they don’t come in here.

“Dr. Keller, you called?” I hear the deep voice of what I assume is the security guard.

“Yes, please escort this couple out,” he explains.

“That’s my son! I’m allowed to see him,” his mother exclaims.

“And normally I would allow you to, but he has expressed the fact that he doesn’t want you here, so I have to ask you to leave,” Keller explains.

“It was probably Luka, Joel probably let him talk him into keeping me out of there. It’s his fault he’s sick in the first place,” she exclaims.

“No offence ma’am but the cancerous brain tumour was not caused by Joel loving guys or Luka specifically,” Keller states. “It’s not scientifically possible.”

“Whatever,” she grumbles before the security guard probably leads her away as I don’t hear anything else from her.

Joel sighs in relief when the silence is evident. I kiss the top of his hand and smile at him gently.

“It’s cold in here,” Joel murmurs.

I look around to see if there are any blankets. I spot them on a chair nearby. I release his hand, get up and go get one. I bring it back over and hand it to him. He unfolds it and covers himself with it.

Malcolm comes back over.

“Chills?” he asks.

Joel nods and huddles under the blanket.

“Is that bad?” I ask.

“No, that’s one of the common side effects. We’ll monitor his temperature and makes sure it stays normal,” he replies well writing on Joel’s chart.

Keller comes back into the room.

“Hopefully, they won’t be coming back. Do you know why they’d show up now? I thought you said you hadn’t had contact with them much for the past two years and that they were blaming your sickness on Luka, no offence,” he replies looking at me.

“It’s fine,” I reply.

“We’ve taken in my cousin since I got out of the hospital. His mother’s not exactly the happiest in the world with us right now. She thinks we're a bad influence and all that. They might be here thinking he is and trying to get him to come home. Even if he was here it’s his choice to go home and we already know he doesn’t want to,” Joel explains to Keller.

“It’s ridiculous at this point, what they’re doing,” he mutters.

“We tried to make peace with them, but they didn’t want to accept it so they get to live without us,” Joel continues.

“In more ways than one,” he replies. “I’ll be back later to check you out.”

Joel nods and Keller leaves. Malcolm continues to make his rounds and monitor his patients and their side effects. Joel rolls onto his side and keeps hold of my hand. He closes his eyes and rests.

I look up and around. The sixteen-year-old girl’s mother notices me and smiles. Her own daughter is resting. She gets up and comes and sits down next to me.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Luka,” I reply.

“Marie, and him?” she asks nodding to Joel.

“Joel,” I reply quietly.

“What does he have?” she asks quietly.

“Brain tumour,” I reply running my thumb across the top of Joel’s knuckles.

“Her?” I asked nodding to her daughter.

“Blood cancer,” she replies. “This treatment is our last hope. She has six months.”

“I think this is a lot of people’s last hope. Joel only has a year,” I reply.

“Why didn’t you guys allow his parents in?” she asks quietly.

“They’re not the most accepting of our relationship,” I explain quickly and quietly looking around.

“They think I’m the reason he’s sick,” I continue quietly.

“You can’t mutate his cells,” she exclaims.

I shrug.

“All we wanted was a life together, we accepted that they weren’t going to be there for us and then this happens and at the point, they should be there at the most they don’t even show up and then two years later when he’s got a year left to live they finally showed up here after I tried to get them to come to the appointments and the chemo, I did everything and they think they can show up after everything?” I continue bitterly.

“Maybe they realized their mistake?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“I was at their house a few days ago to tell them Joel had a year left. They didn’t care then, I highly doubt after taking in another kid they just kicked out they’d change their mind,” I explain.

“Joel’s also sick of the way they treat us, he’s done with them. He wants his last year to be happy and peaceful. He wants to get married and go on our honeymoon without his parents ruining it. I don’t blame him, they’ve been like this for eleven years, ever since we got together. It’s not like this is something new, or an irrational decision. We love each other. But that doesn’t seem to matter to them,” I continue.

“I’m sorry, that they can’t get past simply who their son loves even if they are good. Maybe they’ll change when he’s gone. I know that’s worse but if they do, you should help them grieve. They’ll be heartbroken, that not only did they exile their son but missed out on the last eleven years of his life and the person who was the biggest part of it, loved him and cared for him through everything. Be the bigger person, even if it seems too late for them,” she whispers looking back at her daughter probably reminded of something that happened between them.

“Okay, everyone.” Malcolm claps to get our attention waking Joel and Marie’s daughter.

“The first drug trial should almost be done. We’re going to disconnect you from the IVs soon and if you have no other side effects within the next hour you can all go home.”

I smile at Joel as Marie moves back to her daughter.

“How are you feeling?” I ask him.

“Fine, I guess,” he replies not appreciating being woken up.

Malcolm goes around and starts disconnecting IVs and bandaging the spots where the needles were. He sets the IV drip and stands aside in a corner for the nurses to clear away and dispose of. He’s checking everyone’s temperature, Joel’s never dropped below 94 degrees. So, it was low but not severely, and now it was back to normal. All of this was recorded and the next appointment time was given to us on Sunday of the next week. I hoped they’d stay on the weekends so we didn’t have to worry about whether or not Jamie was in school.

We waited out the hour and since nothing else occurred Keller came back to check us out. I waved goodbye to Marie as Joel put his coat and sweater back on. Security escorted us to our car in case Joel’s parents had decided to scope it out and ambush us there but luckily, they hadn’t. We drove home in peace. I parked the car in the garage and helped Joel inside.

I set him on the couch and went and got some food for him since he couldn’t have food during the trial he was starving and so was I. The house looked intact and Sam’s shoes were still here so at least Jamie hadn’t trashed our house well we were gone.

I brought Joel some soup, I set it on the table in front of him and he wasted no time. The drug trial seemed to have brought back his appetite or made the nausea go away. It made me hopeful which was a bit scary. There was still a chance this wouldn’t work. Having hope on the first day because the results were good so far was hard. I was still waiting for things to go south as my life had made me walk a middle line between good and bad with my luck. I found Joel but his parents weren’t approving of me or him liking boys in general for example.

After we ate I helped Joel upstairs, I noticed Jamie's door was open a c***k. We peeked in. Sam was sitting on the bed; Jamie’s head was in his lap as they watched a movie. I and Joel smiled at them. They were like us in so many ways. I didn’t want Jamie to never see his parents again, or for them never to attend his wedding even if it didn’t end up being with Sam specifically, it would most likely never be to a person or more specifically, (a girl), like they wanted. He deserved better but some people are doomed to repeat history, especially those who don’t learn and that seems to be what Joel’s family was, the type of people who didn’t learn from their mistakes.