Chapter 1
AUSTIN
I’m dead asleep after pitching a shutout against the Mariners when my phone rings with the tone I assigned to my parents. They’d never call me at this hour unless something was up with Everly, so I pull myself out of a deep sleep to reach for the phone on my bedside table.
“Hey.” As I move to get more comfortable, the ice pack on my shoulder falls off, making a squishing sound as it lands on the bed. My arm aches like it always does after I pitch.
“I’m so sorry to wake you, Austin.” Mom sounds frazzled. “But Ev has a fever. We’re at urgent care now, and I thought you’d want to know.”
I sit up, now wide awake. “What’s her temp?”
“One-oh-three.”
“Seriously? How long has she had it?”
“About eight hours now.” Which means they waited to call until after my start, knowing worries about Everly would mess with my concentration. “We were giving her medicine, but nothing was working, so we brought her in.”
“I’ll come home.” I’m required to travel with the team, even between starts, but exceptions can be made. The team’s management knows I’m a single father and are accommodating—to a point. Since I have four days until my next start, it shouldn’t be a problem to fly back to Baltimore.
“We’re so sorry to have to call with this news, but we thought you’d want to know.”
“You did the right thing. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” I end the call with my mom and place another to my manager, Mick Danvers.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” he asks, his voice gravelly with sleep.
“Sorry to bother you, Coach, but I’ve got a situation at home. My little girl has a high fever and is in the ER. I need to go home, and I’m hoping you won’t mind if I catch up to you in Oakland.” It’ll be a bitch to add two cross-country flights to my week, but I don’t care about that. Not when Ev is sick and needs me.
“Of course. Do what you’ve got to do. Let us know how she is.”
“I will.” I release a deep sigh of relief. Mick is fair but tough, so I wasn’t sure if he’d let me go.
“Hell of a start tonight, AJ. Everyone is very pleased.”
“Thanks, Coach.”
“Keep me posted.”
“I will.” My next call is to book a flight home as quickly as possible.
Seven of the longest hours of my life later, my flight—on a plane without freaking WiFi— touches down at BWI. I fire up my phone to a string of new messages from my mother, each more frantic than the last. They’ve admitted Everly. Something isn’t right with her blood.
My chest is so tight, I wonder if I’m having a heart attack as I run through the airport and grab the first cab I see, completely jumping the line. I don’t care. I need to get to my baby girl. She’s my whole world, and the possibility of anything being wrong with my angel is too horrifying to bear.
The thirty-minute ride to the hospital feels almost as endless as the flight did. By the time I join my parents in the pediatric ICU waiting room, I’m fairly certain I’m on the verge of a medical crisis of my own. How did she go from a fever to the pediatric ICU at Hopkins in the span of a few hours? My mother bursts into tears when I walk in. I drop my bag inside the door so I can hug her and my dad, who seems equally undone.
“Thank God you’re here, son,” Dad says.
As I look at them, I realize they know something I don’t, and judging by their expressions, whatever it is will rock my world.
“Austin,” Mom says tearfully, “Everly has leukemia.”
MARIA
Fifteen months later…
I force myself to endure Sunday brunch with my boisterous extended family without checking my phone. I grocery-shop afterward and do a number of other necessary workweek preparation errands, while still ignoring my phone. Never has avoiding my phone been more painful than it is today, as months of anticipation have led to this day. I’m elated, excited, nervous and worried that the connection between myself and Mr. A, as I know him, won’t be the same once we’re no longer anonymous.
Just over a year ago, I donated bone marrow to save the life of a two-year-old girl who was battling leukemia in Baltimore. At the time, I knew nothing else about her or her father, except that my transplant saved her life.
As of six months ago, I know he loves her more than anything in his world, the child’s mother isn’t in the picture, and he’s thankful to me for giving his little girl a second chance. The child has since turned three, and her remission is holding, which is the most important part of this story.
But that’s not the whole story.
It began with a call on a Tuesday night from Be the Match, an organization that’d done a registry drive at the clinic where I work in Little Havana more than three years earlier. Honestly, I’d forgotten all about having my cheek swabbed until I got the call that I was a match for a child battling leukemia. Would I be willing to undergo further testing?
Of course I was willing, and the testing was scheduled.
That call from Be the Match turned my life upside down for a few weeks. My parents had freaked out about me going under general anesthesia to donate bone marrow to a stranger. What if something goes wrong? they’d asked. Thankfully, Nona intervened with them, after seeing how hell-bent I was on saving the life of a child I’d never met.
“Maria is a nurse,” Nona said. “This is what she does. You must trust her and have faith in her judgment.”
I’ve always adored my Nona, but never more so than I did then. She dealt with my parents, which gave me the space I needed to mentally and physically prepare for the procedure. After we attended information sessions and my parents learned there was very little risk to the donor, they came around to supporting my determination to donate.
My cousin Carmen, who along with my sister, Dee, is my closest friend, accompanied me to the hospital and kept the rest of the family informed throughout the day.
Nona and Abuela, Carmen’s grandmother and a third grandmother to me, cooked enough food to feed ten people and delivered it when we got home from the hospital. Really, it was more about confirming for themselves that I was truly fine than it was about food, but I appreciated their concern. Carmen spent two nights at my place, making sure I was okay before she went home.
I was stiff and sore for a couple of weeks after but went back to work a week later. I considered the entire thing a small price to pay to save a child’s life.
Six months after the procedure, I received an anonymous email from the child’s grateful father, through channels provided by Be the Match.
Dear Ms. M,
You saved my daughter’s life. There’s no way I can possibly tell you in mere words what you mean to my family and me or how much we appreciate what you did for us. I want to tell you about my daughter, E. She’s a little spitfire with blond curls and big blue eyes. She loves to dance and play dress-up. I’m a single dad, and she’s my whole world. When the doctors first told us she had leukemia, I thought I’d die myself from the idea of my precious love suffering in any way.
The next few months were pure hell. That’s the only word I can think of to describe it. They tried everything but couldn’t get her into remission. That’s when they decided she needed a bone marrow transplant.