All the quiet exhilaration that had filled the air around us a moment before deflated like a slashed tire. Cancer always did that, in my experience. It always took the best among us, including my mom, and it was indiscriminate. Despot, doctor, humanitarian aid worker, mother. It can come for anyone.
And it had come for Johnny Lanford.
After a minute, I forced myself to take a deep breath and said, “How did you find out?”
Alexandra sat down in a chair next to me, and the others around us followed suit. “I noticed anomalous spots on some of the bones, places that looked like the bone had swollen somehow. Those abnormalities got me thinking, so I sent some bones to the pathology lab. The science is still pretty new here, but their biopsies of the bones confirm this man died of leukemia.”
