If it weren’t for the tubes in his nose and his arm, the lack of hair, the lack of color, the wheezing breath and sunken eyes, that smile would have made my heart sing.
“So,” Chase said, raising her head to look at me, “what’s happening now? Is Dr. Waters searching the donor bank again?”
I blinked. I’d forgotten Chase had no clue about Caden. “Actually . . .” I began.
Of course, that was the exact moment, Parker walked into Tanner’s room. With Caden.
“So that hurt,” Caden grinned, rubbing at the small round bandage on the inside of his right arm as he strolled over to the bed. “Hey.” He stopped and pointed at Tanner, who – I couldn’t help but notice – was pressing himself hard to Amanda. “You must be Tanner.”
Tanner stared at him, studying him.
Caden grinned wide. “I’ve got something for you,” he said, digging around in his back pocket before withdrawing his hand to show Tanner what he held.
It was a Caramello Koala, a distinctly Australian chocolate shaped like a cartoon koala and filled with caramel. They are delicious. I hadn’t eaten one since I was a kid. Caramel-filled chocolate is not, unfortunately, on my diet.
I could see this Caramello Koala, however, shouldn’t be on anyone’s diet. It was flat and clearly melted in the packet. Tanner frowned.
Caden frowned at it as well, a ludicrous frown of melodramatic proportions. “Well, bum,” he muttered with a comical pout.
A smile began to tug at Tanner’s lips. I glanced at Amanda. She was smiling down at him, the tears in her eyes threatening to fall.
“Wait a minute!” Caden held up a finger, grinning again. Tanner flinched at the sudden outburst and then started to giggle. With a crazy 180-degree twirl, Cade scanned the room. “Where’d you put my bag, cousin?” he asked. “Ah, there it is.” He swooped on it.
From Amanda’s lap, Tanner giggled more. After a few seconds of digging around in his bag, and with a dramatic flourish more suitable to a magician’s act, Caden leaped to his feet, spun around to Tanner and held out something completely different in his hand this time. No, not in his hand. On his hand.
Tanner stared at it. I stared at it. It was a koala sock puppet. A koala sock puppet with an un-melted Caramello Koala pinned to its felt hands.
“Oh my God.” Amanda burst out laughing. “That’s adorable. Where did you get it?”
Caden preened. “I made it. Waiting for the taxi that would take me to Sydney airport about” – he looked at his watch – “a billion hours ago. What time is it here, anyways?”
Tanner held out his arms, hands opening and closing, his focus locked on the sock puppet on Caden’s hand.
“A little after ten,” Parker answered.
I jumped. So did Amanda. I think we had both forgotten he was in the room.
Caden chuckled. “This jetlag thing isn’t anywhere near as glamorous as they make it sound in the movies.” He turned back to Tanner. For a second, a brief second, I saw him glance at Chase, as if only just noticing her. And then he was walking toward Tanner, sock puppet koala dancing ahead of him. “Here you go, Tanner,” he said, and then paused again, this time to look at Amanda. “Err . . . I probably should have asked if he can have it first. It’s been in a sealed plastic bag since I made it, if that helps. I can show you the bag. And the sock was clean. Brand new, in fact.”
Amanda’s smile was warm. And yet sad. “Sure,” she answered, brushing her hand over Tanner’s head once more. “What kid can’t have a sock puppet?”
A kid who has a dangerously low immune system. But even as the urge welled through me to snatch the puppet out of Caden’s hand before he could give it to my son, a wave of trust crushed it. I knew my cousin. He was smart. Very smart. And very aware of medical conditions. He’d fooled around with the idea of being a surgeon before choosing to study veterinary medicine. For all his perceived flippancy, Caden would know not to bring something into Tanner’s room that would cause him danger. If I asked, I bet I’d learn the sock was tumble-dried twice on extreme heat before even making it to its koala status. It was the kind of thing Caden would do. Hell, he’d thought to pack it in a sealed, plastic bag after all.
“Here you go, little person,” he said, sliding the sock from his hand.
“Hey,” Chase said, rising to her feet. “Hey hey, wait a damn minute.”
Amanda frowned at her sister. I did the same. Caden froze, half bent toward Tanner, his smile fading, his eyes on Chase. Without a word, Chase stomped around the bed, snatched the sock puppet from Caden’s hand and then turned to where her handbag sat on the table next to the crayons.
“Chase?” Amanda frowned. “What are you . . .”
Still without speaking, Chase pulled a small disinfectant spray bottle from her bag, held up the sock and depressed the button on the bottle. A fine mist of disinfectant coated the puppet.
Caden raised his eyebrows, his eyes still fixed on Chase. Ignoring us all, Chase pressed the button again, coating the other side of the sock.
“There.” She nodded, meeting Caden’s scrutiny. “Now you can give it to my nephew.”
His lips twitched and there was a flash of something in his eyes. “Well, as long as I can do it now,” he said, taking the puppet back from her.
She narrowed her eyes.
He grinned again, first at Chase and then at Tanner. “Now,” he said, crouching down until he was at eye-level with my son, “hold your hand up like this.”
He demonstrated what he wanted Tanner to do. Tanner, expression serious, did so. With gentle care, Caden slid the sock over Tanner’s small hand. “There you go.”
Tanner gazed at him, awestruck, and then looked at the puppet on his hand. “Sock.”
“Koala,” Caden said.
“Kala,” Tanner echoed. “Sock kala.”
Caden grinned. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“Well,” Parker said from the door. Once again, we all jumped. Even Caden this time. I saw him look at Chase again, the quickest of glances, and then he was straightening to face Tanner’s doctor. “I need to get back to work. Tanner, don’t go letting that koala eat too many eucalyptus leaves, okay?”
Tanner shook his head, patting the sock puppet’s head. “’Sokay. ’Sokay.”
Parker smiled. “It is okay, champ. It is.” He looked at Amanda, then at me. “It’s going to take a couple of hours.”
Amanda nodded. My gut clenched. It was easy to forget – during a moment of simple joy, such as the arrival of the sock puppet in Tanner’s life – that we were at the hospital because he was dying. The mind does that, I’ve realized. As a coping mechanism.
Or perhaps it was the optimist in me, looking for the good, the wonderful, the happy, in a sea of bleakness. Focusing on it, instead of the reality that would cripple us.
With a final grin at Tanner, Parker left. It wasn’t until he turned away from us that I saw how drained, how beaten, he looked. The happy grin he’d given Tanner slipped into a mask of bleak thought. His shoulders slumped. What did he know that I didn’t?
“Be right back,” I murmured against Amanda’s cheek.