We had seen Jack and his friends on bouncy castles before. They would charge and dive, attempting somersaults and scissors kicks. This time they were all perfectly restrained. Martin Catalan chastely took Jack’s hands, as if they were at a barn dance, and they began to gently bounce up and down. Tony and Emil did the same, resisting the urge to charge into the walls or leap over the sides.
Anna and I stood next to the boys’ discarded shoes, drinking our hot chocolate and just for a second—like that moment on waking—I forgot why we were here. Because Jack was just like any other child enjoying the Christmas Fair. For a blissful moment, his world was not like an hourglass running out of sand.
After a while, the boys were starting to slow down and Martin’s brother couldn’t hold off the waiting children anymore. Martin, Tony and Emil helped Jack down onto the mat, fussing over him, helping him put on his shoes.
Before they parted ways, they hugged, formerly, as if they were consoling each other. The dignity of old men who had seen it all. Martin Catalan was the last to embrace Jack. They held each other for a little while, Jack leaning on Martin’s shoulder, Martin’s hand cupped protectively over the side of Jack’s head, the side where his tumor was.
* * *
I printed off a few more articles about Dr. Sladkovsky and put them in the folder I was preparing for Anna. It was just the way she would like it: methodical, neatly bound together.
I read another interview with the doctor about what had driven his research when he was a young oncologist at a provincial Czechoslovakian hospital. It was the outliers that fascinated him the most, the patients whose responses defied explanations. The miracles. Why did they get better when others didn’t? Study the outliers, Dr. Sladkovsky surmised, those rare cases of remission, and you might find a cure.
I read through more discussions about Dr. Sladkovsky and immuno-engineering on Hope’s Place. There were more skeptics than believers. The treatments were unproven and offered no more guarantees than traditional chemotherapy. A snake pit, a money suck, they said.
But what about Josh? That was what I kept coming back to. If it worked for him, it could work for Jack. I remembered a comment that Dr. Flanagan had once made. She said that what doctors understood about cancer was just the tip of the iceberg. There was so much more they didn’t know, she said.
She had meant it, I think, as a kind of salve, a way of telling us that Jack’s disease was so fiendishly complex that there really was nothing we could do. But I took heart from what she said. What if Jack possessed a certain genetic mutation, one that was unexplored, uncharted by medical science? And what if that mutation enabled him to respond to certain treatments, just like Josh had?
I was normally the first to sneer at homeopathy and iridology and all that rubbish. I was a programmer. I lived by data and dreamed in code. I was always banging on to Anna about the dangers of bad science. But every time I told myself to forget it, that the Sladkovsky skeptics were probably right, that Nev was just some crank, I thought of those testimonials. I thought of Kirsty’s and Ash’s mother and James and Robson and the little girl called Marie who had a brain tumor at the age of eleven and was now going to the prom on her daddy’s arm. These children were not a data point in a clinical trial, they were flesh and blood.
I checked online the flights to Prague. There were more than ten a day, and we could be door to door in about five hours. I was researching hotels near the clinic when my email pinged.
Subject: Re: Jack
Sent: Tue Dec 2, 2014 12:05 am
From: Nev
To: Rob
Hi Rob,
Got some great news from the hospital today. Another clean set of scans for Josh.
No signs of cancer and all tumor markers are at the lowest level since diagnosis. Of course, we do have to make sure he gets tested over the next few months and years, but every clean scan is another big step in the right direction.
We took him for his treat after the scans and went to see Star Wars in the cinema. (They’re showing all the old ones in our local.) He absolutely loved it and it was so amazing to see him enjoy it like I did as a kid all those years ago.
I wondered whether I should tell you this as I know you’re going through a hard time right now and didn’t want to be insensitive or nothing. Anyway, mate, I’ll sign off now.
There is hope, Rob. Never give up, my friend.
Nev
PS Jack’s probably a bit young for Minecraft but Josh is really into it at the moment. He’s just built this castle and said he wanted to send it to Jack to cheer him up. (I told him Jack was poorly.) I’m sending you a screenshot. Hope it comes through okay and Jack likes it.
I clicked on the Minecraft screenshot, an 8-bit block with turrets and a flagpole and a sign that said Jack’s Castle. Looking at that castle made me cry, but not because I was thinking about Jack. It reminded me of when I started programming, writing little scripts on the old laptop my dad picked up from a garage sale.
I looked at the castle again. I could imagine Jack playing Minecraft when he was older, constructing houses, planting trees, climbing mountains that led to new worlds. Sometimes, I let myself daydream like that. The things I would do with Jack, when he was older, better. Saturday afternoons in the cinema, Jack in little jeans, trainers with wheels, carrying a vat of popcorn bigger than
