“…we are writing to inform the parent/guardian of the identified potential donor, ETHAN, a minor, that confirmatory testing indicates a match…”
A match.
For Lily.
I looked up at my son, and finally he looked back at me, terrified, and the whole thing came out of him in a rush.
Lily hadn’t only lost her hair. The chemotherapy hadn’t been enough. What Lily needed — what the private, distant family across town had been quietly, desperately failing to find for months — was a bone marrow and stem cell transplant. And the one thing standing between Lily and that chance was a matching donor, which her family did not have. Her parents weren’t matches. The national registry had turned up nothing. The clock was running out, and everyone around Lily knew it except, apparently, me, because my son had carried it alone.
“There was a swab drive,” Ethan whispered. “At the Westbrook community center. For Lily. Anyone could get typed — you just swab your cheek. I went. I didn’t tell you because I was scared you’d say I was too young, or that you’d worry, and I just — I wanted to be her match so bad, Mom. I wanted it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
