The Weight

I was sitting in my office at the medical center.

Some days I would walk through the hem/onc wing and watch a child life specialist coax a laugh out of a child who hadn't smiled in weeks. Once, I watched a mother run down the hallway, tears streaming down her face, searching for her husband because their child had laughed. She wanted him to see it too.

Other days, I walked through the PICU because sometimes you needed to touch the mission before returning to your office. The monitors. The silence between alarms.

One afternoon, the front desk called.

Someone was asking for me.

I walked down the long wooden staircase of an old Victorian that had become foundation offices. A man stood at the front door.

Black hair. Brown eyes. Jeans. A light blue jacket.

He looked nervous.

I invited him into my office. We sat across from one another.

His son had leukemia.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The kind with good odds.

He looked at me and said, "I don't have much, but I want to thank you for saving my son's life."

He reached down and picked up a plastic Shaw's bag.

It was filled with coins.

His friends had added what they could. Quarters. Dimes. Loose change collected from more than one pocket.

He placed the bag in my hands.

It was heavier than I expected.