According to the tracking app, both my husband and son were parked outside St. Anne’s Children’s Hospital.
I drove there half-awake in pajama pants and a sweatshirt, convinced somebody had been hurt and my husband panicked without waking me. But when I reached the pediatric oncology wing, I saw them immediately through the waiting room glass.
My eleven-year-old son was asleep against my husband’s shoulder holding a stuffed dinosaur I’d never seen before.
Across from them sat a little girl with no hair wrapped in a yellow hospital blanket.
The second my husband noticed me, his face dropped completely. He walked me toward the elevators while my son stayed behind with the girl watching cartoons on an iPad balanced across her knees. Before I could even ask questions, my husband quietly admitted the girl was named Ava and she was the daughter of his best friend from college.
The part that explained my son’s strange behavior came next.
Ava’s father died suddenly four months earlier, right after her leukemia returned. My husband started secretly taking our son to visit because the girl was terrified of hospitals and only relaxed around kids close to her age. They didn’t tell me because my husband knew I’d already been overwhelmed caring for my mother after her stroke, and he thought “one more painful thing” would push me too far emotionally.
My son apparently took the secret harder than anyone realized. He stopped inviting friends over because Ava couldn’t leave isolation rooms. He stayed awake texting her at night when chemo made her sick. Every time I asked what was wrong, he thought telling the truth would betray her.
Three weeks later, Ava died just before sunrise while my son sat beside her hospital bed reading Harry Potter out loud because she’d fallen asleep during the last chapter weeks earlier. Last Sunday I found my son in the garage quietly kicking a soccer ball against the wall by himself. The stuffed dinosaur from the hospital was sitting upright on the workbench beside him wearing one of Ava’s tiny friendship bracelets around its neck.