“But it isn’t now.” My voice didn’t rise with a question. “It isn’t imminent now.”
“No, not from this cancer, it is not.”
Jack and I had come to the orthopedic hospital for my monthly checkup, girded as always for the worst news. Jack, Warnie, and I had reached a grieving acceptance, but on that day we were granted a reprieve. We hoisted our hearts onto that life raft and held tight to each other. Jack bent over my wheelchair, his lips on mine, and a burst of laughter after the kiss. “Bloody good news.”
It was early evening in the common room when the truth flooded me—it was a miracle. “You took my pain,” I said to Jack in stunned realization, the truth taking my breath. “Your doc, Old Lord Florey, told you that you have a quite obscure case of osteoporosis, while now we discover that I’m healing.”
Not only had Peter Bide prayed over me, but also Jack, asking to be my substitute. Was there a greater love?
“What?” Jack was red-faced and groaning, strapping a body brace around his waist to support his back. I perched in my wheelchair with a bright metal caliper that held my leg fast in its straight position.
It had been six months since my diagnosis, three months since they’d sent me home to die. We had been told to prepare and pray. But one by one the accoutrements of illness had fallen away: first the pain pills were banished, and then the trapeze above my head gone, then the night nurse fired （she was dreadful as it was）。 After that, when Jack was at Cambridge, I began sitting to crochet and knit, to write letters and welcome visitors, perched on my bed with our poodle, Suzie, and old cat, Tom. Then came the day when I was able to sit in a wheelchair while Jack wheeled me outside. I’d wept with relief in the pure June air, the fragrance of the pine and spruce, the wet ground and fecund earth. Then eventually I had walked there, with a limp of course—my left leg now three inches shorter than my right.
In what seemed an additional miracle, or maybe just a relief that felt miraculous, Bill had ceased in his threats to take the boys to America. While I’d recovered, while I’d slept, Jack had written Bill the most scathing letter of his life, explaining to him that he would not return the boys, who were both frightened of him. Whose happiness would you foster by forcing them back to you now? Jack asked. Douglas also wrote to Bill, telling him of his need to stay in what was now his home. We didn’t prod Douglas or write the letter for him—this was of his own accord, my precious son whom Jack called “an absolute charmer full of just the right amount of mischief.” Whether it was Jack’s letter or Douglas’s appeal or my own dying pleas, I would never know.
Life again held promise. I touched Jack’s hand. “They gave me my death sentence and now I’ve grown bone. And you’ve lost bone. You’re in pain and in need of a brace, and I’m relieved of so much pain.” I stood shakily from the wheelchair, using a cane to bear my weight. “You shouldn’t have done that . . . you shouldn’t . . .” I gasped on the words. “I’m just now coming to understand what the doctor told us today. I’m getting stronger and you’re getting weaker. Or at least your bones are. Why did you do this?”
“I didn’t do anything, Joy. God granted my request, if that is what happened at all.” He smiled through the pain and then stood straight. “And look at that, I finally figured out the bloody straps.” He patted his waist where the brace held fast. “Now look at the youthful figure this gives me.”
Our laughter entwined and filled the room, and also seemed to fill the world.
We grabbed our individual canes. I wanted to be outside, to touch the greenest leaves of summer, to taste a tomato off the vine, to feel the sun run down my face like honey. I wanted every sensual experience in the world. I wanted to run my hands across Jack’s body, to dip my fingers into the cold pond, to inhale the summer air, to roll in the grass. Some were possible and some soon would be: I was alive! And in remission.
“Jack.” We took a few hobbling steps together down the hallway and through the front door to emerge into the sunshine.
“Yes, love?”
“Can’t you see? Honestly, can’t you see? It’s a miracle.”
“Miracles, my love, never break nature’s laws.”
“Jack! I’m growing bone. You are losing. You are my . . . substitution.”
“Let’s not get into the land of fancy.” He stopped in midstep. “But I thank God every minute I remember.”