Chapter 5: Two Families
Ethan donated that spring.
I was there for all of it, and the doctors were right — my son was sore and tired for about a week, and then he was fourteen again, eating everything in the house, back to normal. I have never in my life watched anything as closely as I watched him those days. He kept telling me to stop hovering. I did not stop hovering.
And Lily lived.
It wasn’t instant, and it wasn’t easy, and there were frightening months. But Ethan’s cells did what her own could not, and slowly, Lily came back — her color, her strength, and eventually, under the wig my son’s hair had become, her own hair, growing in soft and new.
She wore the wig until she didn’t need it. Then she kept it in a box on her shelf, she told me once, “because Ethan grew it for me, and someday I’ll give it to the next kid who needs to feel like themselves.”
