Hannah’s Gift: Lessons from a Life Fully Lived

“Yes, of course,” he answered. He stepped closer, reaching for his stethoscope. As he did, the two residents next to him moved in, and then those in the hall entered and formed a semicircle around the bed.

“Stop!” Hannah yelled, holding out her arm like a policeman in traffic. The resident with the stethoscope froze. Hannah turned to me.

“Mommy, please ask these people to leave. They aren’t my friends; they didn’t even tell me their names!”

I paused. The residents were looking at me. I knew they were counting on me to tell Hannah to be a good little girl and let them do what they needed to do. I remembered the Michigan doctor’s diagnosis: manipulative, overindulged two-year-old. I realized these doctors might think the same thing. I didn’t care; if any person in this world deserved respect, it was Hannah. I looked at the guy with the stethoscope.

“She’s right,” I told him.

The resident frowned and tapped a finger absently on his clipboard. The other residents shifted their gaze to him.

“I have to examine you, Hannah,” he said finally. “Will you let me do it if I tell you my name?”

Hannah narrowed her eyes and looked first at him and then at me.

“Okay,” she said finally, “but all those other people have to leave.”

He nodded. The others turned and filed out of the room. When the last person had left, the resident raised his stethoscope and leaned over Hannah. She stopped him.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Dr. Fiorelli,” he said, smiling.

“No, your real name,” she said, totally exasperated.

“Tony,” he replied, grinning now from ear to ear.

“Oh, Dr. Tony,” she said, settling back on the pillows. “That’s a nice name.”

Dr. Tony must have spread the word. From that day on, no more than three or four residents entered Hannah’s room at a time, and everyone who did introduced themselves to her using their real names.

Dr. Markoff’s Rule (#ulink_ebd34753-ba6e-5578-8d04-ba2713be4b15)

DR. MARKOFF CLEARED HIS THROAT AND ADJUSTED HIS glasses. He was Dr. Edman’s partner, one of Hannah’s pediatricians. He was sitting on the edge of his chair across from Claude and me. His shoulders were stooped, his face gaunt and strained. His wiry hair was disheveled, two-day-old creases wrinkled his trousers, and his shirt was missing one of its buttons. He didn’t seem to notice or care.

“I’m speaking to you as a father, not as a pediatrician,” he began, leaning forward so his elbows rested on his knees. He cleared his throat again; I studied him more carefully. He looked as if he was about to cry.

Claude and I exchanged glances.

“My daughter Danielle was diagnosed with leukemia last year. She’s two years old. My wife is with her now at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where she’s getting a stem cell transplant. We’re trying to save her life.”

In one breath we went from a gathering of two parents and a doctor to two fathers and a mother who belonged to a club no one wanted to be in.

“You are going to have to make thousands of decisions from now on that no one but the two of you can make; some of them may make a difference whether Hannah lives or dies. The best advice I can give you is this.”

He looked directly at Claude and me.

“Make the best decision you can with the information you have at that time.” He leaned back and ran his fingers through his hair.

“‘At that time’ is the critical part. You’ll see what I mean. You can drive yourself crazy saying, ‘If only we had known this, if only we had known that.’ The point is, you didn’t know, so just keep telling yourselves, ‘We did the best we could with what we knew. We did the best we could with what we knew.’”

I could hear a deep truth in his words. As I let them seep into my heart, something softened in me and fell away. I realized that Dr. Markoff’s rule applied not only to the decisions we had to make about Hannah’s treatment, but to every other area of my life as well. My fear of making mistakes could no longer paralyze me; from now on, it would be enough to do the best I could with what I knew.

Truth: A Special Medicine (#ulink_92125b64-1f0b-5da2-a252-6c7c0893e7f1)

WILL WAS CURLED UP ON MY LAP, OUR ARMCHAIR touching the side of Hannah’s bed. His blond crew cut tickled the bottom of my chin. His body had been long and solid from the day he was born, but it was his soft green eyes that most people noticed first and remembered.

Hannah was watching us from the bed, propped against a pile of pillows. A plastic line ran from her arm to an IV pole. She had spread her pink blanket over her legs and was wearing a rhinestone crown and her pink-flowered “robe j’s.”

I cleared my throat. The weight of the moment crushed against my chest.

“Hannah, the doctors have figured out why you are feeling so sick. There is a lump in your tummy called a tumor. A tumor happens sometimes when a few of the cells in a person’s body grow the wrong way and don’t do what they’re supposed to do. The doctors are going to take it out, and then give you medicines to try to make sure the bad cells don’t come back.”

“Is it going to hurt?” Hannah asked, her brow wrinkled and her lips pursed into a worried pout. I paused. In the past, I had often coped with difficult situations by glossing over them, trying to find something good in them, praying that if I could avoid the truth long enough, it would go away. This time, though, I wanted Will and Hannah to be able to trust me. I couldn’t start lying to them now.

“Yes, Hannah, it probably will hurt, but the doctors and nurses are going to do everything they can to make it hurt as little as possible. They have special medicines that will make you sleep while they take the lump out, and other medicines that will help your body rest while it gets better.”

“I don’t want to sleep. I’m not tired!!” Hannah protested.

“You don’t have to sleep now,” Will said gently, “only when they take the lump out. Right, Mom?” he asked, turning to me.

I smiled and nodded.

“Oh. That’s okay.” Hannah sighed, sounding relieved.

“Mom.” Will was still looking at me, his eyes filling with tears. “Is a tumor the same thing as cancer?”

“We don’t know yet, Will,” I said, starting to cry. “The doctors can’t be sure until they take it out and look at the cells under a microscope.”

Hannah was watching us silently.

“If it’s bad news you’ll tell us, right, Mom?” Will asked.

Hannah sat straight up and looked into my eyes without blinking. I took a breath. I couldn’t help wishing that Claude had been able to be here with me, but he had told me he didn’t trust himself to know what to say. I appreciated his honesty, and I also knew that if ever there was a time when the two of us had to respect our differences, this was it. We were like two people in a one-man life raft in the middle of a dark ocean.

Will and Hannah were still waiting for my answer.

“Yes, Will,” I said. “Even if it’s bad news, I’ll tell you the truth.”

Hannah smiled and leaned back into her pillows.

“Thanks, Mom,” Will said, flinging his arms around my neck.

“Mommy, I love you,” Hannah said.

“I love you both,” was all I could say.

Love in the Dark (#ulink_a25c58f4-62e0-5b69-88d8-018267032088)