The Drake Unwound Complete Collection (The Drake Series Book 9)(25)
"You and Chris look quite a lot alike. Dark hair, fair skin. He has hazel eyes, and yours are blue, but still. Liam could have been either of yours. I assumed," she said, her voice low. "I wanted to believe he was Chris's son. It wasn't until we needed a donor that I found out the truth."
"How long ago was this?"
"He's had leukemia for a year, but it wasn't until he didn't respond to chemo and had a relapse that we decided on stem cell transplantation. We tested everyone in the family and that's when we discovered Chris wasn't his father. As soon as I found out, I made an appointment with Krishnamurtha here at NYP Children's. I decided to come here, where I knew some of the nurses. NYP has one of the best pediatric oncology centers in the world. And of course, there's you. You're the same blood type. I thought you might be an HLA match."
"What's his diagnosis?"
"AML. M5. He has a rare 10:11 mutation and needs aggressive treatment. I should have known he was yours when I heard it, but I wasn't thinking about you."
"Christ," I said, rubbing my forehead. "How's he doing?"
"He's holding his own, but he needs a transplant. If you're a match, he'll be prepped for consolidation therapy. High dose chemo and radiation, followed by bone marrow or stem cell transplant. We looked for a donor but came up empty. If you're a match, will you agree to donate your marrow?"
I didn’t hesitate. "Of course. Anything."
"I know you're going to Africa, but I need you to do this."
"The semester doesn’t start until March so I have some time. I was going to help with their surgical slate for a while, help with backlogged cases, but that can wait."
Maureen covered her face with her hands and cried in front of us, her sobs silent, her shoulders shaking.
Despite my anger and shock, I had loved her once and she was the mother of my son, so I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. Maureen seemed to snap out of it and reached into her bag. She fished through its contents and removed a tissue, wiping her eyes as she struggled to gain control over herself.
"Thank you," she whispered.
I shrugged. "How could I say no? He's my son."
"I knew you didn't want kids, Drake. That's why I never tried to find out if he was yours or Chris's. I knew you probably wouldn't want him anyway, but Chris did want him. He wanted a family."
I nodded. "I never wanted to have kids because of the chance of passing on the gene. I never imagined being a father."
"You are, but Chris is his real father, Drake. A father isn't just a sperm donor. A father is the man who reads you stories at night, who plays soccer with you in the summer and who takes you fishing. A father is the one who sits by your bed when you're sick."
I shook my head, filled with a sense of bitterness. "I guess I never had a father, then."
She glared at me, an exasperated expression on her face. "Look, Drake. If you do this, I don’t want you trying to become involved in Liam's life. Leave things as they are," she said, her voice edged with warning. "It was hard enough telling Chris that Liam wasn't his. Liam doesn't have to know. It would break his heart to find out that Chris wasn’t his biological father. Maybe some day when he's grown and able to handle it, but now? I don't want him to know."
I didn’t say anything, biting back a nasty response about her morals but who was I to condemn her for being unhappy with me? I had been a self-absorbed bastard.
"Will you come up and see him now?" she said. "He's probably asleep, but you could look in on him." She turned to Kate. "You won't be able to go into the room. Only family is allowed inside."
Kate shook her head. "That's fine. I wouldn’t presume to intrude on your private family business."
"Kate can come along if she wants, and wait outside his room." I turned to her and took her hand, squeezing it. I needed her with me for she was the light in my life, and I would need a lot of light now.
Kate nodded. Maureen didn’t argue.
Maureen led the way to the elevator and down the hallways to the children’s ward. I asked Maureen about Liam's diagnosis and treatment and she ran down the sessions of chemo he’d already gone through and how he responded initially, but went out of remission. When they exhausted all the meds open to them, Liam’s oncologists decided on stem cell transplantation. I realized that Kate wasn’t up on all the terminology so I turned to her.
"He has acute myelogenous leukemia. It's a cancer of the white blood cell at a certain stage of development. He has a rare mutation that makes it very aggressive and so they have to treat it equally aggressively."
"Like your brother's?" she asked.
I nodded. "Liam was diagnosed when he was four and died when he was five." We pushed through double doors and into the pediatric oncology ward. "I never knew Liam," I said, thinking of my mother’s tiny shrine to him. "I was supposed to be the consolation baby, but apparently, I wasn't enough."
Kate took my hand and squeezed. I turned to her, and saw that her eyes were brimming. When I saw that, my heart warmed.
"Sweet sweet Kate," I whispered, leaning down to kiss her cheek.
We arrived at the pediatric oncology ward, walking past the playroom with brightly painted floors and walls in blues and yellows. I hadn’t spent a lot of time on the ward, for I dealt with neurosurgery patients, but every now and then I had a pediatric patient with a brain tumor and so I had been there before to visit.