She slowly became aware of the background murmur of the hospital staff bustling around. It was a nice distraction from Stacy's room. The stab of guilt hit her immediately and she straightened up and took a deep breath, trying to make herself ready to go back in the room.
It had been two years of fighting her daughter's leukemia, and it had never felt more hopeless than today. "Fighting," she thought to herself. Everyone always talked about cancer like it's a fight. "Stacy and her parents are fighting leukemia" people would post on Facebook. But it never felt that way to her. It always felt like a robbery. A rape.
Chelsea and her husband Jared had done everything for Stacy over the last two years. Every treatment option had the same pattern - hopeful anticipation and then worsening dispair. Through this last round of stem cell transplants, Chelsea didn't even let her hopes get raised - they did it because it was the next thing to do, but all the while, she was bracing for the familiar answer.
Jared was talking to the doctor outside the room when Chelsea walked up. The doctor put her hand on Jared's shoulder and squeezed it before walking away, giving Stacy the look she had been bracing for since they started the latest treatment.
"What?" Chelsea said, needing to hear the answer, but knowing in her stomach what it was.
"You didn't want anything to eat?" Jared replied, with a quick glance.
"What did she say?"
"You really should eat something. It's..."
"Jared. What did the doctor say?"
He squatted down in the hallway and leaned his back against the wall. Chelsea did the same. Looking up at the fluorescent lights, he sighed a long and fragmented sigh.:
"Her vitals are crashing and with how weak she is, they can't risk any more treatment options. It's over Chels. Stacy has an hour left. Maybe two."
There was a long pause where neither spoke. Chelsea knew those words would come. It was a feeling she had from the first appointment and she had been running them through her mind for the last two years. "It's over."
So much of their story had been leading up to Stacy being here, and now she was being taken away. She was supposed to be their miracle child. They had tried and failed to conceive for years, each anticipation being met with disappointment. It began to fragment their marriage, but Jared said he had faith that it would happen at the right time. Finally, it did - and they were quickly thrown into a fight for their lives, only to lose again.
Somewhere along the way, Chelsea had realized that faith wasn't enough. Someone had to get up and actually do something.
"If that's the case, then let's spend that time with her, not out here. We can cry later, but right now, we have to be there for our daughter."
There was a coldness in how she spoke that she didn't intend, but Jared wasn't doing well, so she had to be the strong one again and get their family through it.
They both got up and went back into the room. Chelsea's sister had flown down from Minnesota the week before, and both sets of parents had made it, plus a few close family friends. The TV was on in the corner showing the local news station. The sound was off, but the subtitles showed along the bottom part of the screen. Chelsea shot a look at her father who was the most likely one to have turned it on, but his eyes were fixed on the TV and didn't see her come in. She looked at Jared, but his he was staring at it now too.
"Unbelievable," she thought to herself.
Chelsea went over to the bed and held Stacy's hand, but Jared and her dad stood watching the TV next to each other.
"Do you think it's all true?" Jared said quietly to his father in law, both still staring at the TV.
"Do you?" he replied with poorly veiled sarcasm.
"Yeah. I do" Jared said after a moment.
Jared quickly went over to the couch in the room and grabbed his keys out of the bag. He went to Stacy and kissed her on the forehead. "I'll be back. As fast as I can. I promise," he said to Chelsea and quickly went for the door.
"Where are you going?!" Chelsea said, almost yelling.
"I have to try. It's the only thing left." Jared said. His eyes showed the sleep he had lost over the many nights and he walked out the door.
"Did he just leave?" Chelsea's mother said in a low tone.
He knew that Stacy only had an hour or two left alive, and he just left. The attack on her daughter and now the retreat of her husband would have to be two separate fights. Even if he wouldn't be there for the family, she would.
---
Maggie sat in her wheelchair outside the hospital doors waiting for her sister to bring the car around. She was being sent back home again without any real progress being made. This most recent doctor did what all the rest had done - drew blood, asked questions, and gave no certain answers.
The thick August afternoon was heavy and damp. It had just rained, which made the smell of exhaust from the parking lot mix with the humidity and stick to her skin and hair.
"I need a shower," she thought to herself.
Over the last 12 years, she had answered far more questions for doctors than they had answered for her - and she just had one: Why won't I stop bleeding? Every new specialist came "very highly recommended" and had qualifiers around their titles and long resumes about where they were fellowship trained and what kind of certifications they had. But none of the specialists could answer it - they just drew blood, asked questions, and gave no answers.
Everything had been put on hold until this was answered. No serious relationship could possibly be started with this looming over her, threatening to put an end to it eventually. Something inside her had always told her that no one would want to date a girl who is always on her period.
"I need a better doctor," she muttered under her breath.
As she sat there, several people excitedly jogged by her into the hospital. Some had cameras, a few were excitedly talking on the phone and looking behind them. Then a few more. After a moment, what seemed to be a crowd of people were coming toward the hospital doors, loudly talking and all very close together.
Somewhere in the lead was a man whose face she recognized. That was Jesus. Maggie had been seeing videos of him in her newsfeed the past week or more. Even in just the last couple days, there had been cellphone footage circulating around of him curing someone who was entirely out of his mind - supposedly living in a graveyard and cutting himself for years. Other people had been posting and sharing photos and stories about how he had cured them just by touching them.
In that instant that Maggie sat there looking toward him, it was as if two realities were smashing into each other, and the reality of the last 12 years was about to crumble under the weight of what was about to happen.
He kept walking closer. She sat up straight and hoped he would see her and stop, but he wasn't looking at her. The crowd pressed in tightly to get through the automatic double doors of the hospital entrance, and she lost sight of him and he passed by.
She sat there in the haze of what just happened, her heart beating on her chest so loud she could hear it in her ears, her head, and in every extremity of her body.
"No," she said out loud.
She jumped out of her wheelchair and ran in after him. She pushed and shoved to get as close as she could, but the crowd was packed in so tightly in the waiting room it was hard to see or hear over the noise.
Suddenly, she realized he was only one row of people away. She reached over the sea of shoulders and stretched out her hand to touch him on the arm. "I just have to touch him and I know I'll be healed," she thought to herself.
As her hand touched his arm from behind, she felt something physically shift in her core and a tingling into the tips of her fingers and toes shot through her. She felt a rightness in her body - she knew that in one instant, the bleeding that had been with her for the last 12 years had stopped. She smiled wide, and looked around - no one around seemed to know what just happened. She wondered if even he knew...
"Hang on," a voice said. And the swell of the room came to a surging halt.
"Who just touched me?" Jesus said, looking around in the crowd.
Maggie's face went white and all the fullness and happiness she had just felt seemed balanced on the edge, about to fall over. She waited a moment to see if she would go unnoticed.
"What are you talking about?" one of the people nearby said. He seemed to be trying to pull Jesus forward. "Let's go! There's no time! There are tons of people here. It doesn't matter if someone bumped into you - we need to go!"
"No," he said. "Someone here touched me..."
Maggie saw his eyes scanning the crowd and knew he would find her. She pushed her way forward and raised her hand.
"It was me," she said, trembling. For some reason, she dropped down to her knees. Her head was down, staring at the floor. "I have had a condition for a long time, and when I saw you, I knew you could heal me if I could just touch you. I'm sorry, I had no other hope."
She sat there on the floor, her whole body shaking as she waited.
He knelt down and put his hands on her shoulders and helped her up back to her feet and smiled at her.
"Daughter," he said. The word caught her off guard. She kept her eyes locked on his. "It was your faith that healed you. You can go in peace now, and not suffer anymore."
"We have to go!" the man said again. He kept looking at his watch and trying to get the crowd to surge forward again, but everyone's eyes were on Maggie.
Someone pushed their way into the small circle that had formed around Jesus, and they went up to the man and spoke a low tone. Maggie was still close enough to Jesus and overheard them.
"Stacy is dead. You're too late. Just come upstairs and be with your family. Tell him he doesn't need to come anymore."
Jesus, with one hand still on Maggie, touched Jared's shoulder and smiled at him.
"Don't be afraid," he said to Jared, and smiling at Maggie, he said, "You just have to believe."
----
Chelsea sat in a chair by the bed, still holding Stacy's hand. It was cold. The last 10 minutes, she had felt beaten between the loss of her daughter and the loss of her husband - one with a body too weak to live and the other with a heart too weak to stay.
A nurse was removing Stacy's IV line from her other hand, but worked quietly. Her parents and sister were standing nearby crying. Jared's parents had left to go find him. She heard the door open and several people come inside. She heard her parents' cries get louder and knew Jared had returned - too late and with too little.
"Why are you all crying?" a voice said. She didn't recognize it, but the casualness of the tone was so out of place in this room - in Stacy's room - she got up and looked around. Jared stood there, his eyes wide and bright. A few people stood behind him that she also did not recognize. The man who spoke looked around the room, expecting an answer.
"She isn't dead. She's just asleep."
The nurse let out a small laugh at the absurdity of what he just said and shook her head as she left the room. Chelsea's parents and sister were ushered out of the room, too bewildered at what was happening to protest.
Jesus walked over to Stacy's bed and looked at her. There were tears in his eyes, but he was smiling a radiant smile as he looked at her.
"Sweetheart," he said softly. "It's time to wake up."
Stacy's eyes fluttered open and she looked up at Jesus and smiled.
"Hello!" she said in her bright, cheerful way.
"Hi," Jesus said, smiling back. "Are you hungry?"
Stacy nodded.
"Let's get you something to eat then."
He turned to Chelsea and said, "Isn't there a vending machine down the hall?"
