The Last Straw (The Jigsaw Files #4) - Sharon Sala Page 0,99
tests.
* * *
Lola Franklin, Bethie’s mother, knew her daughter had been eating better. She even let herself believe Bethie was getting a little color back in her complexion.
Her father, Bud, had always read to Bethie every night after they put her to bed, and often had to rub her legs to help her fall asleep, because she lived in constant pain.
But lately, she’d hadn’t cried about the pain, and was falling asleep without the rubs. So they were hopeful that maybe, just maybe, the cancer in her body was going into remission, and maybe the tumor in her head was shrinking enough to alleviate some of her pain. They knew they were grasping at straws, but hope was all they had left when they took her in.
The lab drew all of the usual blood work, and took all of the usual X-rays and scans, and then they sat out in the waiting room among other families just like them, and they were easy to pick out.
There was the pale, frail teenager, barely able to walk on her own, sitting beside her mother, waiting.
A baby in arms, lying limp and crying in a thin, breathless wail, while the parents sat huddled in hollow-eyed silence, waiting for a doctor to see them again.
There was a man sitting alone, staring at a picture on the wall that he’d seen a thousand times before, waiting to see if his second round of chemo had triggered a remission.
Bethie was playing a game on her mother’s phone, and Lola and Bud were carrying on a conversation about nothing that mattered, because discussing the elephant in the room was not done in front of Bethie, and had become too painful to discuss at all.
As they sat, one patient after another was called back, and still they waited.
An hour passed, and Bethie was getting tired and wanting something to eat, when a nurse stepped into the waiting room.
“Bethie Franklin.”
Thank God.
Bud and Lola jumped to their feet and took Bethie’s hand.
“That’s us, sweetie. Just a little visit to say hello to Doctor Welch, and we’ll go get some ice cream, okay?”
“Okay!” Bethie said and clutched her mother’s phone as they followed the nurse into an exam room.
“Hello, Bethie. You’re looking very pretty today. I love your shirt. It looks great with your cute jeans. Blue is my favorite color.”
“Mine, too,” Bethie said and climbed into her mother’s lap to wait for the doctor to come in.
His red hair was always a little bit awry as if he ran his fingers through it too often, and his stethoscope was hanging halfway out of the pocket of his lab coat, bouncing against his leg as he walked.
He came in, shut the door and then picked Bethie up and sat her on the exam table without saying a word.
He looked into her eyes.
He listened to her heart.
He had her breathe for him, and saw for himself the pink in her cheeks, and then he turned around.
His voice was shaking, and Bud and Lola grabbed each other’s hands, afraid of what he was about to say.
And then Welch held up his hands in a gesture of disbelief.
“I don’t know what happened. I have no explanation for it. But there is absolutely no sign of cancer anywhere in Bethie’s body, and the tumor in her head is gone. It’s just...not there.”
Bud and Lola jumped to their feet, crying. They hugged each other, hugged Doctor Welch, and then they picked Bethie up in their arms and began dancing around the room.
Bethie was laughing because they were laughing, but she didn’t quite get the gist of all that had been said.
“What’s happening, Mommy?” she asked.
They stopped, then Lola hugged her and put her down on the exam table again.
“A miracle happened, baby. You’re not sick anymore. Your cancer is gone, and the tumor that made your head hurt is gone, too. You’re well.”
“Will my hair grow back?” Bethie asked.
“I would certainly assume so,” Welch said. “There’s no need for more chemo, which is what made it fall out.”
Bethie touched her head, then leaned over and whispered in her doctor’s ear.
“My friend Jade rubbed my head and it quit hurting.”
Lola frowned. “Wait, who’s Jade? What are you—?” And then she looked at her husband and gasped. “Oh, my God! I had completely forgotten!” She cupped Bethie’s face. “What do you mean, she made it quit hurting? You never told us that.”
Bethie shrugged. “Well, she did. She made all the hurt go away.”