But nothing happened.
No calls. No texts. Just silence.
I told myself that probably meant they had found another donor. Maybe the doctors had started a different treatment. Maybe my husband was simply too busy at the hospital to deal with me.
I found plenty of explanations because the alternative was harder to face.
Two weeks passed before the guilt finally became too heavy to ignore.
I drove home one afternoon, telling myself I was only going to check in. I would see how things were going, talk to my husband, and leave if they didn't need me.
The moment I stepped through the front door, I knew something was different.
The living room walls were covered with drawings.
There were dozens of them, maybe more. Some were taped to the wall with strips of medical tape. Others had been placed on the furniture or tucked beneath picture frames. Crayon marks covered the pages in uneven lines.
I walked closer.
Most of the drawings showed the same three people.
A tall man.
A small boy.
And a woman with long hair.
The drawings were crude, the kind a child might make without worrying whether anyone else would understand them.
But I understood.
Above almost every picture was the same word.
Mom.
My throat tightened.
I moved from one drawing to the next. In one, the boy was holding the woman's hand. In another, the three of them stood in front of a house. One had a huge yellow sun in the corner, with all three figures standing underneath it.
Then I noticed my husband behind me.
“You came back,” he said quietly.
I turned around.
He looked exhausted. His eyes were sunken, his clothes wrinkled, and he had the tired expression of someone who had spent too many nights sleeping in hospital chairs.
“What is all this?” I asked.
He looked at the drawings.
“He's been making them.”
“Who?”
My husband stared at me for a moment.
Then he nodded toward the hallway.
“Come with me.”
I followed him to the small bedroom at the end of the hall.
The door was partly open.
Inside was a hospital bed.
For a second, I couldn't move.
There were machines beside it, tubes running beneath the blankets, and a small table crowded with medicine bottles and plastic cups.
And in the middle of it all was my stepson.
He looked nothing like the energetic nine-year-old I remembered.
His face was pale. His hair was gone. He had become so thin that the hospital blanket seemed too large for him.
I stood in the doorway, unable to speak.
On the table beside his bed was a plastic container filled with tiny folded paper stars.
My husband picked one up.
“He makes those when the pain gets bad,” he said.
I took the star from him.
It was made from a narrow strip of blue paper, folded over and over until it became a tiny, uneven shape.
“He says he's going to make a thousand.”
I looked at my husband.
“Why?”
He swallowed.
“He thinks that if he makes enough of them, you'll come back.”
I closed my eyes.
For two weeks, I had told myself that my absence meant nothing.
That they had found another solution.
That someone else was taking care of things.
That maybe I wasn't needed.
But this little boy had apparently been counting on me the entire time.
There was a quiet movement from the bed.
I looked up.
His eyes were open.
When he saw me, his face changed.
Not dramatically. Just a small smile.
“I knew you'd come,” he whispered.
I couldn't answer.
He looked at me for a moment.
“You always come back.”
The words hurt more than anything else could have.
Because I hadn't.
Not when he first became sick.
Not when we learned the leukemia was aggressive.
Not when the doctors told us that time mattered.
I had found reasons to stay away because staying away was easier than watching a child suffer.
I walked slowly to the bed and sat beside him.
When I took his hand, I was surprised by how small it felt.
“I'm sorry,” I whispered.
He didn't ask me why.
He didn't accuse me of anything.
He just held my hand.
I looked across the room at my husband.
“It's not too late, is it?”
He shook his head.
“No. But we can't wait much longer.”
I looked back at the boy.
“Then we won't.”
My husband didn't say anything.
“I'll do whatever they need,” I said. “Call the doctors. Find out what we have to do. Whatever the next step is, I'll be there.”
My stepson closed his eyes again.
His fingers tightened slightly around mine.
I stayed beside him.
For the first time in weeks, I wasn't thinking about how difficult the hospital was, or how frightened I was, or how much I wanted to escape the situation.
I was thinking about the little boy who had covered our living room walls with pictures of a family he was still hoping to have.
And about the tiny paper stars he'd been folding one by one.
I picked up another from the container and placed it carefully beside his pillow.
Then I held his hand and stayed.
I couldn't change the weeks I had already lost.
But I could be there for the next one.
And this time, when he opened his eyes, I wanted him to find me exactly where I had promised to be.