The trial in Texas had a name, a pill, and a coin flip, and I wouldn’t get to choose which side of it I landed on.
Thursday morning, we were back at the hospital, and this time the nurse didn’t have to ask who was coming into the consultation. Dad, Pops, Stetson, Chandler, and me. Uncle Jake had offered to come too, but somebody had to be at work, and he’d made us promise to call him afterward.
Stetson had declared the appointment a family meeting and therefore insisted he was attending, whether anybody had remembered to invite him or not. Now he stood beside Chandler near the door because we’d run out of chairs. They had their arms folded in exactly the same way. Neither seemed to notice, and I intended to keep that information for future blackmail.
Dr. Giacherio came in carrying a folder thick enough to qualify as a weapon. He took in the crowd, then pulled his stool over to face me. “Full house.”
“You said family,” Pops reminded him, settling back in his chair.
“I did.” Dr. Giacherio rested the folder on his knees. “Before we get into Bayview Shore, one thing. This is a possibility, not a place. The team in Texas would have to review your records and screen you before anyone offers you anything. And you’d have to want it.”
I nodded, although I’d spent the last two days looking at palm trees on Dad’s laptop and imagining myself in a hospital I’d never seen. I’d already skipped several steps.
Dr. Giacherio opened the folder. The study was called LANTERN, a Children’s Oncology Group trial for teenagers with Ewing sarcoma, and the closest hospital running it was Gulf Coast Children’s Cancer Institute in Bayview Shore. Everyone on it kept getting the same chemotherapy I’d been getting all year. Half of them also took a daily pill called FLX-204. There’d be more blood draws, more heart scans, and an MRI and CT every couple of months. Nothing about it sounded like a vacation, despite the brochure’s aggressive commitment to palm trees.
“Half?” I asked.
“A computer decides,” he said. “It’s essentially a coin flip. One group gets standard chemotherapy. The other gets standard chemotherapy plus FLX-204. You’d know right away which one you were in.”
“So if I got the pill and it worked,” I said slowly, “I’d never know whether the pill was the reason.”
“Not for you personally. That’s what the study is for. They follow everyone for three years to find out.”
Three years. I tried to imagine being nineteen and still having scans on a calendar, and gave up.
“What about surgery?” I asked, shifting in my wheelchair. That was the word I’d been carrying around since Dad first turned the laptop toward me.
“Still on the table,” Dr. Giacherio said. “Radiation makes healing harder, so if we operate, it would most likely mean replacing the damaged section of your femur with an internal prosthesis. Nobody’s scheduling anything yet. The trial doesn’t replace surgery, and it doesn’t force one either. The Texas team would look at your scans alongside ours.”
I glanced at my left leg, supported where the wheelchair footrest held it. Months of treatment, and it could still make the rules for the rest of my life. I adjusted the edge of the blanket over my knee and looked back at him.
Pops leaned forward. “What makes this worth considering over continuing treatment here?”
“It gives her something we can’t offer here,” Dr. Giacherio said. “The early results are promising enough that they want to study it. Promising isn’t a guarantee. Staying in Colorado is a legitimate option, too. I want you to understand both.”
Part of me wanted him to stop explaining the options and tell us which one was right, but he wasn’t going to do that. Having people with medical degrees make most of my decisions for months had spoiled me.
“How long would we have to be there?” Dad asked, writing something in the margin of his legal pad.
“Months, at least. Longer if she has surgery there. The Texas team would give you a real schedule.”
Beside the door, Stetson shifted his weight. Chandler hadn’t moved, and I couldn’t tell whether that meant he was calm or trying very hard to look calm. He caught me looking at him and gave me a small smile, but his hands were clasped tight.
“And if I don’t go?” I asked, turning back to Dr. Giacherio.
He faced me, resting his hands on the folder. “Then we keep taking care of you here. We monitor your scans, talk about maintenance treatment, and keep the surgery conversation going. Staying is not giving up, Sloane.”
I looked at Dad, who’d stopped writing long enough to listen, then at Pops. I’d spent the last two days wondering whether turning down Texas would mean I wasn’t trying hard enough. Hearing Dr. Giacherio say otherwise helped, even if I still had no idea what I wanted.
“Do they even have room for me?” I asked, eyeing the folder on his lap.
“They might have a spot in September. If you want to try, I send your records in August. If they think you might qualify, they bring you down for screening. Even then, you’d get the final say.” He slid a packet across the table. “Read it. Ask me questions. You don’t have to decide in this room.”
I looked at the packet, then at the people who’d come with me. Stetson was watching me instead of the doctor. Chandler’s arms were no longer folded, and Dad was already writing again because Dad could probably take notes during an earthquake. Pops reached over and squeezed my shoulder.
“All right,” I said, looking back at the packet. “I think I need to read all of that before I know what else to ask.”
Dr. Giacherio told us how to reach him if more questions came up. Dad collected the paperwork while Pops helped me get my blanket situated.
On the way to the parking garage, Stetson pushed my wheelchair while Dad called Uncle Jake. Only Dad’s half of the conversation reached me, mostly the words promising, screening, and not decided. That sounded about right. Everything was promising, and nothing was decided.
Chandler walked next to me. At the elevator, his hand brushed mine, and I hooked one finger around his. He looked down, then curled his finger around mine as we waited for the doors to open.
By dinner, the kitchen island had disappeared under paper. The packet from Dr. Giacherio lay open beside Dad’s legal pad. Pops had pulled up the institute’s website, a map of the area, and a page about family housing. There were notes about insurance coverage, school, work, transportation, and questions nobody had answered yet. The glossy brochure kept ending up on top, no matter how many times Dad moved it out of his way.
Bernard sat beneath the island in case the paperwork turned out to be edible. He’d already stolen a pen, and Dad was now guarding the remaining one like it contained classified information.
Stetson leaned against the counter with a sports drink. I sat in my wheelchair at the end of the island, close enough to read but far enough away that nobody could accidentally bury me in forms. Pops had set a glass of water beside me, and I moved it farther from the paperwork before somebody knocked it over.
“All right,” Dad said, opening his legal pad to a fresh page. “Let’s start with what we know and what we don’t.”
“That’s going to be a long list,” I told him, glancing at the stacks spread across the counter.
“It usually is.” He wrote Work at the top of the page. “I can’t leave the firm for an indefinite amount of time. I can ask about remote work, and there may be arrangements with the Houston office, but I need actual answers before I promise anything.”
Pops had already opened another tab. “And I can ask about a reassignment or leave. There’s a Navy installation in Corpus Christi, but that doesn’t mean there’s an available position for me or that anyone can approve a transfer on our schedule.”
“You’ve looked?” Dad asked, turning toward him.
“I’ve started looking. That’s different from packing my uniforms.” Pops nudged the laptop toward him. “I know the difference.”
Dad made a note, and I caught the tiniest shift at the corner of his mouth. They were both trying to solve the same problem from opposite directions. It was basically their love language, except with spreadsheets.
“The house?” Dad asked, turning to the next page.
“We keep it,” Pops said immediately. “Even if we go for a while, this is home. We can figure out whether somebody needs to check on it or stay here. We don’t have to decide that tonight.”
Stetson tipped his bottle toward the ceiling. “Thank you. I was worried you’d put Bernard in charge of the mortgage.”
Bernard thumped his tail beneath the island, accepting the promotion. I looked down at him and shook my head, which only made his tail move faster.
Dad ignored both of them and moved to insurance. Pops read off his list of questions for TRICARE and the hospital. Nobody pretended the bills would disappear just because we’d made a list.
Then came school. If we went, Stetson and I would both enroll at the same high school in Bayview Shore, him full-time and me whenever treatment allowed. Stetson wanted to know what transferring at the start of junior year would do to soccer. Dad said they’d need to speak with the school and the athletic association rather than assume anything. Noelle’s name didn’t come up, but Stetson turned his phone face down when Pops mentioned how long we might be away.
“And Bernard?” Dad asked, looking down at the enormous white dog occupying most of the space beneath the island.
Pops looked offended. “Bernard comes if we’re relocating. We’re not leaving him behind for a year.”
“How?” I asked. “Because he’s not exactly a carry-on.”
“We’d find a safe way to get him there,” Pops said. “Probably drive. We have time to plan it.”
Under the island, Bernard gave another hopeful thump, as if Texas were a place that served dinner twice. I reached down to scratch his head, and he immediately tried to lick my fingers.
Dad finally set down his pen. He took off his reading glasses, folded them, and turned toward me. “Fiorellina, all of these are things we can investigate. None of them decides what you want.”
I looked at the blue sky on the brochure. I hated how pretty it was. If it had been an ugly building with a broken parking meter out front, maybe I’d have felt less guilty about wanting to go.
In October, I would’ve told them to stay. I would’ve made it sound practical. Dad had his firm. Pops had the Navy. Stetson had soccer and Noelle and a life that didn’t revolve around scans. I could’ve added up every sacrifice until there was no room left for what I wanted.
But I’d done that before. I’d decided for Chandler what he should give up and then punished him for not agreeing with me. I wasn’t going to do it to my whole family, too.
“I want to send my records,” I said, looking at Dad. “I want to find out if they’ll screen me.”
Dad didn’t reach for his pen. Pops stayed still, and even Stetson stopped peeling the label off his bottle. I glanced at each of them, waiting for somebody to start explaining why this was going to be complicated.
“I know it might not work,” I continued. “I know they might say no before we even get there.” My throat tightened, and I reached for my water. “But I want to find out if it’s an option. And if it is, I think I want to try.”
I took a breath, looking down at the brochure before forcing myself to meet Dad’s eyes again. The next part was harder because I knew exactly how much I was asking, even if none of us knew what it would involve yet.
“If they ask me to come, I don’t want to go alone. I know you have jobs and school and everything else. I know you can’t promise me all the answers tonight. But I want you with me. I need you with me.”
Dad reached across the island and took my hand. “Then we’ll look into how to do that.”
“Together,” Pops added. He came around to my side of the counter, rested a hand on my shoulder, and squeezed. “We can’t promise the trial will take you. We can promise you won’t have to sort through this by yourself.”
Stetson snorted. “You think I’m letting you move to Texas and become a completely different person without supervision?”
I laughed, which made the tears I’d been trying to hold back much harder to manage. “You’re going to miss Noelle.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking down at the bottle in his hand. For once, he didn’t make a joke out of it. “I am. We’ll figure out what that means if it happens.”
He reached across the counter and nudged the brochure away from my elbow. “But you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
I looked at the papers spread across the island. Dad still had work calls to make, Pops had to find out whether the Navy could do anything, and Stetson would have to talk to Noelle. We didn’t even know whether a hospital in Texas wanted me, but nobody was telling me I was asking too much.
Dad picked up his pen again and wrote Referral at the top of a fresh page. He underlined it, then started a list of the things we needed to ask Dr. Giacherio before sending anything.
Later, after Dad had sorted the papers into piles and Pops had made popcorn because medical uncertainty required snacks, I sat with my phone in my lap. There was someone else I wanted in the conversation. Two people, really.
My first instinct was to leave Chandler out of it. He’d already changed his soccer schedule once because of me, and we’d spent too long trying to recover from the idea that love meant one person making all the decisions for the other. I could almost hear my old arguments lining up, ready to explain why I shouldn’t even ask. But asking wasn’t the same thing as deciding for him.
I turned the phone over in my hands, thinking about Uncle Jake. Chandler wasn’t the only person whose life might change. Uncle Jake had raised him on his own, and I knew enough about their family to understand that a move across the country wasn’t something Chandler could promise without talking to his dad. Especially when all we had right now was a referral packet. I opened our messages.
Me: can you come over? i need to talk to you about texas. bring your dad, please. i want both of you here.
The typing dots appeared almost immediately.
Chandler: We’re on our way.
“Should I make myself scarce?” Stetson asked from the other side of the island, where he was stealing popcorn straight from the bowl.
“No,” I told him, putting my phone down. “You live here.”
“Just checking.” He tossed a kernel to Bernard, who caught it without bothering to stand up. “For the record, I’m on your side.”
“I know.”
“Good. Because I’m not giving the popcorn back.”
Pops pulled up a chair beside me. “What are you going to ask them, Sunshine?”
I turned my phone over in my hands. “I don’t know exactly. I want Chandler to know I want him there. But I don’t want him to hear that as me telling him he has to move. We don’t even know whether I’ll be invited to screen.”
“Then say that.” Pops brushed a few popcorn crumbs off the island. “Give him room to answer. And give Jake room, too.”
I nodded, although that sounded easier when he said it. I’d spent most of the year trying to protect people by making decisions they hadn’t asked me to make, and I was still tempted to do it.
When the front door finally opened, Dash came through first, nails skittering on the floor. Bernard abandoned his position beneath the island to meet him, and the two dogs immediately started circling each other like they’d been separated for a decade instead of a day.
Chandler appeared in the kitchen doorway wearing a faded soccer practice shirt, with Uncle Jake behind him in his work polo. Jake still had his keys in one hand. Both of them looked from the stacks of paperwork to the brochure on the island, then to me.
“Well, baby girl,” Uncle Jake said, “you rang.”
I swallowed and reached for Chandler’s hand when he came over to my chair. I hadn’t figured out exactly how to ask, and looking at Uncle Jake’s face wasn’t making it any easier. But they’d come because I asked them to, and this time I was going to give them the chance to decide for themselves.