In the house, she put the mail down and called her husband at the store where he works to tell him what had just arrived. At first, he was speechless, trying awkwardly to collect his emotions and having some difficulty. She spoke softly and slowly, savoring each word. Fifteen months ago, they were living at Children's Hospital in Boston. His wife was a library clerk.
Cancer is the greediest of diseases.
It consumes the cells of a victim's body without discrimination. It has no conscience either, striking the very young and the very innocent as well as those a lot older who at least have managed to see and taste a larger slice of life. Day after day, both parents took turns at the hospital with their sick boy. The doctors and nurses were wonderful and heroic as they managed to evoke smiles and optimism from those so wounded by the bitter reality of their illness. And on those dreamy summer nights when the Olde Towne Team was home, the two of them would sit by a window on an upper floor in a hospital ward and listen to games on the radio as they looked at the lights of the ballpark off in the distance, washing across the July sky like some brilliant Milky Way all their own.