Her eyes believed in mysteries
She would lay amongst the leaves of amber;
Her spirit wild, heart of a child,
Yet gentle still and quiet and mild and he loved her,
And he would say...
Promise me
When you see
A white rose, you'll think of me;
I love you so,
Never let go,
I will be...your ghost of a rose...

- "Ghost of a Rose", Blackmore's Night

We sang, we danced, I did magic tricks and summer-saults and the kids laughed and clapped and cheered and sang along, enthusiastic and cheery like kids everywhere –except for the fact most of them didn’t have any hair and did have needles poked into their arms…

We had leaped upon Christopher’s suggestion to have the Bedlam Players perform for the children at Mott Children’s hospital, and so a dozen of us had come to the huge, cheerful playroom on the 8th floor to perform our songs, our dances, our skits, and have an all in all silly, happy time. Auntie had made for me a splendid Jester’s costume, from bells on toes to the traditional multi-pointed cap, all bright reds and greens, and many a happy memory I had of mischief in Tree Girt Sea. It was one of Thomas’ favorite costumes of mine. It had not been worn since he had died, years ago, now. But it seemed an appropriate time and place to bring it back to life, here in the Children’s Ward, amongst kids braver than kids should have to be; and seeing the way they laughed and cheered at the tinkling of the bells, I was glad I did.

And Marianna letting the children try on her fairy wings; and Ricardo teaching the boys to play the doumbek; and Christopher, big huge, teddy-bear Christopher, giving the kids horsey rides and playfully being wrestled down; if ever I needed proof of how gentle a soul he had in his grizzly-bear body, I found all I needed here, as he begged mercy from a ferocious attack of five-year-old boys. I’m a naturally silly girl by instinct, and in such company, letting it all run free was easy, and hours passed in but a blink…

Yes, all too soon the nurses came up to take sleepy kids back down to the wards, and we did our farewell song and wished them all goodnight. And they came up to us for hugs and good-night kisses, and a frail little girl in a wheelchair asked, hopefully, if we could come back and play…

Of course we could, I said, with a lump in my throat, kneeling down to look her in the eye. Of course we’d be back, I promised. Next Tuesday? she asked, hopefully. Impulsively, I said yes. And so I was, that next Tuesday, and the one after, and the one after...

I hadn’t really planned on doing so, but I had found a new tradition, to add to all the others, along with dancing Thursdays and gaming Wednesdays and weekend events and everything else; playing with the kids, doing tricks, singing songs, reading stories, visiting them in their rooms, once it got into your blood, you wanted more. It came easily, I suppose, to someone who never grew up and never wanted to, to someone twenty-five going on eight, as Christopher gently suggested. (I liked that phrase so much I ended up making a button of it.) And it was in the course of volunteering with the kids that I met Professor Chu...

Professor Chu –Dr. Marcus to the kids—was one of the Heme/Onc physicans; and he was Christopher’s physican, taking over when Dr. Lawrence had retired. Christopher had a deep connection to the children’s cancer wards, for he himself had been a patient there, decades before. As a baby he had been diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer; Chris was one of the rare lucky few who had survived, although the course was difficult and long. Chris sometimes lightly joked that all that radiation accounted for his massive size. His experiences certainly explained the way he loved life. But that was long, long ago in the past, the only hold-overs from that dark chapter of his life the yearly visits he had to return to Mott’s for followup checkups that were, by now, pretty much formalities. When Dr. Lawrence had retired, Dr. Chu had taken over Christopher’s file. But that was not the only connection that he and I had, something I realized when Christopher had first introduced me to Dr. Chu on the floor, and among the colorful, cheerful pins and stickers adorning his coat and ID badge was a small circular button bearing the Dragon Coat of Arms of the Midrealm, our SCAdian home...

Yes, he laughed, he was a SCAdian –still considered himself one, although he had not been active for many years. He had joined during his graduate school days and had many merry adventures, and although his ward duties since had kept him away, in all the years of clerkships, residency, fellowship and now his service as faculty, he still had a fond place in his heart for the Dream and Dreamers. Combined with the bedside manner you’d expect for a pediatrician, naturally we hit it off grandly. :-)

And so the seasons passed, and every Tuesday afternoon and evening the kids and I would romp and play through the children’s wards, getting into all kinds of mischief; making popcorn strings and origami cranes, raucous games of tag on the 8th floor roof garden and sing-alongs to Disney cartoons, reading stories to them in their hospital rooms when they became too sick to come out to the playroom, especially for those unfortunate children with no parents or family to call their own. And too many times, saying goodbye.

I won’t pretend it was easy. Such things never are. But in a sense, it was perhaps a bit of karmic payback; for so many had given to me when I had suffered terrible loss, it seemed my place to try to give back. And I was hardly alone in volunteering with the kids; Erin came many a time, and so did Christopher, and the Bedlam Players, and so many others; Cynnabar, in part, adopted these kids as their own. If I came more regularly or more often, ‘tis simply was my pleasure. And it gave me extra inspiration for the PhD work that I did. If their parents and their doctors and the children themselves could find the courage to face their diseases...then to be a jester was the very least I could do.

Through the passing of the years, I came to know the valiant staff on Mott 7 West, the nurses and the faculty; and most of all Dr. Chu, with whom I helped coordinate much mischief, and in return dragged him out to an event or two. Most of the friends with whom he had helped found the Barony with had long passed on to other things –or in a few cases, sadly passed on altogether. But to a new generation he regaled of tales of ancient days, and he still remembered a dance step or two. To get him away from the pressures of administrata, of malpractice lawsuits, of paperwork and phone tag with penny-pinching insurance companies –it did him good, and Erin and Chris and I were glad to be able to kidnap him now and then.

And then in the last year of my graduate work at Michigan, everything was swept up into a malestrom that would change our lives forever...

It was the last year of our PhDs. Christopher was writing up his thesis, and so was I; and we were considering options for post-doctorate and beyond. With both our academic records, many options were available. There was an unspoken understanding that whatever was going to happen next, we were going to do it together.

That spring brought again the Midrealm Crown Tournament, and Christopher was fighting for me. All year he had prepared, and this year something must have clicked, because it all came together into the most inspired show of fighting Chris had ever achieved. His size and strengh had always given him an advantage, but now he had speed and technique could match. His opponents fell before him like grass before a tempest; he dispatched some of the Kindgom’s finest almost without breaking a sweat. Now, against one of the Kingdom’s foremost Dukes he was going hammer and tongs, rattan sword beating on heavy shield, blow met with blow, point met with point, one more victory and the Dragon Throne would be his. It was an honor that he very much deserved, and the crowd clearly was hoping for Christopher as King, for many friends he had made over the years. (Christopher told me that everyone really just wanted to see me as Princess and Queen, but I’d hardly put credit in that!) Back and forth across the listfield the two armored fighters struck, no quarter given, no blows pulled, and then suddenly Christopher’s right leg gave way for no apparent reason and he went down hard.

Chris hadn’t even been struck. There was no obvious cause. One moment he was preparing to charge and the next he was clutching his upper thigh in obvious pain –pain that must have been excruciating, given Christopher’s reputation as a man of legendary toughness, a man who fellow fighters joked didn’t * need * armor. The Chiurgeons were on him instantly, and swiftly we were on our way to the hospital...

Confusion and chaos gave way to endless waiting. But as frightening as the episode was, the thought that it was anything worse than a freak injury didn’t occur to me. A leg break was bad enough. I hadn’t even thought about cancer.

But cancer was precisely what it was.

The doctors in Rivenstar had been extremely worried by what they saw. Worried enough they transfered him immediately back to Michigan, where Chris was seen right away. We could tell something was very wrong by the battery of tests they did on him; we were familiar enough with what our young friends on the cancer service went through to know there was something very much to worry about. And we knew exactly what Dr. Chu was going to say when he brought us both into an examination room off the main lobby and, as gently as he could, broke the bad news.

Chris had always known it was a risk of the drugs and the radiation, the crude therapies that had been used to save his life as a baby. He had never forgotten that he lived on borrowed time, that at any time a second generation cancer could arise as a consequence of defeating the first. He had always taken seriously the yearly exams to look for recurrances. But none of those things helped with facing the shock of actually staring a new tumor right in the face. It was a dangerous, vicious cancer, one that had was already widespread and had chosen to announce itself by the weakening of bone. It had been invisible just eight months earlier, lying quiet for almost three decades, before roaring to life. Shock, yes, on all our parts. But Chris had always been a fighter, and I was his Lady, and we would face this opponent like we did every other. Chris had faced Death once and won. And the medicines and therapies available now were far better than anything available back then, and Dr. Chu was one of the leaders and best. And so Chris began the biggest fight of his life...

The routine he and I knew too well, from his own personal experience and the lives of the kids we were a part of on Mott 7 West; while Chris was far older than your average patient, because of the nature of his disease and his history Dr. Chu took lead on his care. We came for the weekly infusions and the assessments and the tests, sorted piles of pills into schedules, plotted his blood counts on large charts. Chris managed to wrap up and defend his Thesis, was able to march in Graduation with me, resplendent in his extra-large robe with the blue hood and the velvet Chevrons on the side. Then he got sicker. He started to lose his hair. He started to bruise extremely easily. He lost weight. He was hospitalized once, and then twice, and then again. He stopped being able to eat solid food. And then he lost the ability to take food at all. Soon, he was too tired to get up out of bed. And then he started sleeping most of the day.

All this time, our many, many friends stepped in to help. How I would have survived with Erin, Erin to drive me around errands, keep up the apartment, keep track of the bills, and the bagillion other things life requires –I wouldn’t have survived. That simple. And when things got worse, Auntie moving in with us to help out was a Godsend. And all of Chris’s friends and my friends helping in a thousand little ways, by a thousand little gestures, countless things, big and small, from fundraisers to help pay Chris’s bills to just surprising me by taking me out for a night on the town so I could have a night off from being by Chris’ side.

And the kids helped, too. They gave back to me more than I could possibly have ever given to them. They helped cheer me up and tried to make me happy, every time I visited them. The playroom on Mott 8th became almost as much a second home to me as Chris’ hospital room in Main Hospital, all those long endless hours that Chris was in procedure, and the brightness of the children’s spirits helped keep mine up as well.

And there were the nurses, the residents, the medical students coming and going on their rotations; so many people who cared. And, of course, Dr. Chu, who despite having a dozen patients of his own, always had time to see not only how Chris was doing, but how I was doing. Many talks we’d have, looking out the window at the end of the hall, overlooking the lights of Central Campus, late at night when there was noone else around. Long, rambling talks about many things. He was our physican; but he was also our friend. And I hope that maybe I was able to give him at least a little of the strength that he gave to me...
There were literally countless people rooting for Chris, praying for Chris, trying to help us in ways big and little. I still look back in amazement and awe at all so many people gave. Thanks I could never give to everyone who deserved them. But it all wasn’t enough. Not enough to save Chris.

I knew from the progression of the drugs, the lack of response in the counts; I didn’t have to ask Dr. Chu to know, not with a PhD in cancer biology of my own. I knew what was * supposed * to happen and knew it wasn’t happening. I knew we were in trouble when the drugs being tried began to have only code numbers, not names; I could tell from the haunted frustration in Dr. Chu’s eyes. He didn’t want to admit to me he was running out of weapons. He didn’t have have to. I knew.

With his family dead these many years after the devastating accident that took his Trueheart too, Chris had long ago asked me to assume the role of power of attorney for him. And so it was I that Dr. Chu finally, one stormy autumn evening, laid all the cards on the table before. Chris had levels of drugs in his system that would kill most lesser men –and if they went any higher, it would certainly kill Chris. Yet the cancer continued to advance, almost without halt. There were literally no further drugs left to try. No novel strategies to employ. The status quo wasn’t helping, and if they went even the slightest bit higher, Chris would die. In other words, Dr. Chu had run out of ways to try to stop Christopher’s cancer. Christopher was doomed to die.

But there was one last thing that could be done. While the cancer would certainly kill him, there was still a little bit of time left. Christopher could be weaned off the drugs, given other therapies to make him stronger, make him fitter, even make him almost a whole man again, while letting the cancer run free. The cancer was going to win, anyway. Nothing we were going to do was going to help. At least this way, we’d have a few weeks, or maybe even months, out there instead of in a hospital ward.

“It is all I have left to give, my Lady,” Dr. Chu said, for a moment no longer the academic physican and instead simply a fighter to the Lady he had failed. His eyes begged for a forgiveness that he did not need to ask for. He had done his best. He had nothing to be ashamed of. I told him so, in the gentlest terms I could. And then we hugged, and then I signed the papers authorizing the cessation of Chris’s treatment and the beginning of terminal hospice care.

It was amazing how fast Chris bounced back once they took the scarring drugs out of his system and stopped the radiation. Chris had always been a fast healer. And except for the cancers that had begun and now would end his life, he had never been ill. It was like his vitality was rallying for one last hurrah. Within a week he was awake again; a few more days, he could actually sit up in bed. Many friends came to visit. Most had already guessed at what we did not tell them, but brave faces they put up. And it was one of his visitors, a brother in his fighting household, the Knight who had been mentor when Chris was a squire, who snuck in to Christopher the emerald ring. It was for me.

“I love you Abbie,” Christopher had said, simply, as I gasped, speechless, at the small box he had pulled out from under his pillow. “And what little time I have left...I want to spend with you.”

There was only one possible answer.