Chapter 2
Conleigh
With my windows open, I swayed to the music that was coming from my hot flash-inducing, voice stammering, knees quaking, gorgeous, rugged man that was my next-door neighbor.
The first time I laid eyes on him, he had been shirtless. Carrying boxes in his house from the bed of a truck. He had others helping him move in. Sure, the other men were handsome, but that man, Gage, he was beautiful.
Normally, I wouldn’t use the word beautiful to describe a man, but Gage, yeah, I would use that term.
He had shoulder-length blonde hair that when I always saw him, half of his hair pulled back. Normally, I didn’t like a man with long hair, preferring them to have shorter hair and maybe a five o’clock shadow, definitely not a beard.
But on Gage, yeah, he rocked it all. But when I had seen him getting pissed off at the bike and heard him cursing out the bolt for all he was worth, I just hadn’t been able to help myself.
And I knew the reason why - it was his eyes. Those deep mocha-colored eyes. Eyes that you could stare into and know that there was no safer place in the world than there in his arms while he rocked his hard body into yours. Oh, to finally have a man do that to me.
And now every night once a week when I hear motorcycles pulling up the drive, I raise the window in my kitchen while I am doing dishes. Yes, I know, I was a rarity. I still wash my dishes by hand.
It wasn’t that I didn’t own a dishwasher, I just didn’t think that they didn’t get the dishes clean as they should be.
The song that was being played now sounded so much better acoustic and I never thought that I would say that…
‘She's got a smile that itseems to me, reminds me of childhood memories, where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky. Now and then when I see her face, she takes me away to that special place and if I stared too long, I’d probably break down and cry.’
That was when I heard my daughter ask, “Mom, what is that song? You always play it, but I never asked what it was called.”
Smiling, I turned my head to look down at her, answering her question while also noticing that her face was pale. Slowly I said, “That’sGuns N’ Roses, Sweet Child of Mine.”
“Okay.” Something in her tone caused my body to tense up. Add that with the paleness...
“Are you feeling okay?” I asked her with concern in my tone.
That was when she placed her hand above her ear on the right side of her head when she said, “My head hurts, Mommy.”
Grabbing a hand towel, I wiped my hands and turned to her. Placed the back of my hand on her forehead. It was pretty warm, too warm.
Reaching above the stove where I kept the medicine cabinet, I grabbed a thermometer, then placed it underneath Collins’s tongue.
When it beeped, I pulled it out of her mouth and checked. It read one oh two point two.
Immediately, I grabbed the bottle of chewable Tylenol that I had in the medicine cabinet above the stove and handed two of the little pills over to her. While she chewed them, I cleaned off the thermometer with alcohol so it would be disinfected and I could use it again.
“Go lay down on the couch, baby. Let the Tylenol work.” Seeing that she did just that without arguing, I popped in one of her favorite movies.The Little Mermaid.
Leaving the window open, I finished the dishes, dried them, and put them away.
As the songs continued, I rechecked her temperature forty-five minutes later, and when the Tylenol didn’t work, because her temperature had gone up, I closed the window immediately.
This wasn’t the first time Collins had a fever like this, but normally the Tylenol worked. And now I was scared.
I grabbed my bag and hauled her into my arms, locked the door, loaded her into the car, and drove straight to the hospital.
Seven hours later, I sat in a yellow plastic chair in the children’s ward and heard the news that no one wanted to hear. Least of all a parent.
News that undoubtedly changed the course of my life.
We had given them her symptoms. Fever. Headaches. Lethargy sometimes was uncommon for a little girl. And when I told them she could barely graze her arm or leg on something, and she would have a deep purple bruise?
At that moment… at almost seven years old, my sweet daughter, one that was like a ray of freaking sunshine, was diagnosed with leukemia. However, the best news, if it was considered the best news, was that it was detected ahead of time.