A Taylor-Made Life by Kary Rader Page B

wasn’t going through the
torture of Interferon again with no better odds.” He dropped her
hand and rubbed his face. “The trial failed, although it slowed
down the spread. Now, I wait.”
    “Did the doctors give you…a
timeline?”
    “Pinning them down for a definitive
answer is like trying to catch a fish with your bare hand. My
oncologist, Dr. Monroe, gives his best guess. They do what they
can.” Not that he particularly wanted to know the exact date and
time. It numbed him to think about it. “Six months to two years.
But they don’t know.”
    Her voice was soft and full of
emotion. “I’m sorry. I hate it. Cancer is the ugliest thing in this
world.”
    He couldn’t disagree with that. “How
about you?”
    “I collapsed while I was on a date
with Matt and was rushed to the hospital. I thought, at first, I’d
overexerted myself at cheerleading practice.”
    He grinned at the thought of her in a
short little skirt with pompoms in her hands.
    “But when they took my blood, they
found my white counts were really high. They ran more tests and
diagnosed me with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. A week later I had my
spleen removed and, at the demand of my mother, started four weeks
hormone therapy where they harvested six of my eggs. Then I got the
first of forty-four weeks of chemo cocktail split into three
phases. The funny thing is—AML is rare in people under forty and
much more common in men than women. So I guess my blood cells think
I'm an old man.”
    An old man? I don't think so. A
small laugh spilt from him as he allowed his gaze to wander down
the outline of her body against the darkness. Her skin glowed in
the moonlight and his breath caught in his throat with the desire
to nuzzle his nose at her neck.
    She propped her chin up with her fist,
her elbow resting on her knee. “I lost my hair and all my friends,
including Matt. High school kids are like herds grazing in the
flatlands. When a predator comes, they run, but once the danger’s
gone, they go back to living their lives like nothing’s happened.
Even if the lion is eating their best friend a few yards
away.”
    She picked at a thread on the blanket.
“But by the end of the treatment I was in remission.”
    The very scenario she’d described was
the whole fucking reason he didn’t have friends, and to think of
her in the hospital, scared and abandoned, made him want to break
something. No one knew better than him how cruel kids could be. He
took a deep breath. “How long were you in remission?”
    “Five and a half months. When they
found the cancer again, I immediately started a new twenty-two
weeks of chemo, and the doctors began searching for a bone marrow
match.”
    His chest tightened. Through the dark
he focused on her face for any inkling she knew he was a transplant
match. She didn’t appear to. Was he a selfish bastard like her
friends? He sure felt like one, but he kept his mouth
closed.
    “After they’d done a boatload of tests
and my chemo was completed, they sent me home. That was three weeks
ago. Right now, if you drew my blood, I’d have no cancer cells, but
in three to six months, I will. The timelines are wonky for sure.
The doctors can’t give answers; they can only guess. But they’re
pretty sure without a transplant I won’t make it to my nineteenth
birthday.”
    They sat in silence.
    He wanted to comfort her, take away
the pain.
    Taylor laid her hands on her legs with
a clap. “Well, aren’t we a bundle of good cheer? I bet I can sleep
peacefully now.”
    Her sarcasm caused a grin to spread
over his face, and the heaviness of the moment lifted a little. The
lines of right and wrong blurred in his mind. If he could give her
a little comfort, then he needed to. He scooted over and raised the
covers. “Here, get in.”
    Even in the dark, he could see her jaw
fall open and eyes round. “Really? You don’t think
it’s….”
    He raised his eyebrows with unspoken
concern. “Probably.”
    She slipped in next to him