Hannah's Gift Read Online Free PDF

about to tell me the same thing. I knew these words were meant to comfort me, but I was finding it difficult to accept that what was happening to Hannah and our family was part of some benevolent God’s plan. I also suspected that when people said this, they were secretly comforting themselves, imagining that since they couldn’t handle what was happening to us, their God would never give it to them.
    “I have no choice!” I wanted to scream. I couldn’t wall myself off from pain and fear. To turn away from them would be to turn away from Hannah. No matter how bad things were, I wasn’t willing to do that.
    Laurajane cleared her throat and reached for another tissue.
    “I’m sorry,” she said softly, pausing to blow her nose, “but I can’t lie to you. I want more than anything to make sense of what is happening to you guys, but I can’t even begin to pretend that this is something I understand.
    “I became a minister because I loved and believed in God and wanted to help other people, but now, seeing what you are going through, I’m not sure I have what it takes. This whole scene doesn’t jibe with what I thought I knew about Him; it’s hard to believe that the God I love would let a child suffer like this.”
    I couldn’t decide whether to kiss her or fall on my knees. Laurajane’s humility and willingness to acknowledge outloud the unfairness and insanity I was feeling came as a profound relief. I realized then that what I needed most wasn’t for someone to make me feel better; I needed people like Laurajane who were willing to stand with me in the face of the raw truth.

A Deeper Silence
    CLAUDE AND I WERE SITTING ON FADED PLASTIC CHAIRS IN an old supply closet that was posing as a conference room. Dr. Kamalaker and his partner, Dr. Bekele, shuffled through folders and papers that were strewn on the table in front of them. They were pediatric oncologists who worked for the children’s clinic attached to the hospital and were now officially in charge of Hannah’s case. A nurse sat to one side with Jill, the clinic’s social worker, trying desperately but unsuccessfully to appear relaxed. Claude and I held hands and sat so close together that the legs of our chairs overlapped.
    Dr. Kamalaker lifted a long printed sheet from the pile in front of him.
    “We got the report from the lab in California,” he said softly, raising his head to look first at Claude and then at me.
    I felt very, very quiet; I knew the truth was coming in a way I had never known it before.
    Claude squeezed my hand tighter and leaned in to me until he was almost sitting on the edge of my chair. The nurse looked away. Jill crossed her legs.
    Something was happening. I could feel the weight of my body pressing my tailbone into the seat of the chair. I felt breath pouring in and out of my lungs, and my heart pounding in my chest, but my awareness had expanded beyond my body and thoughts. Although my eyes never left Dr. Kamalaker’s, I had a sense of being able to see the whole room, then Hannah in her room down the hall, and then the whole hospital block. Eventually I saw everyone I loved and everything else, until the whole universe was contained in one place.
    “The news is not as good as we had hoped. The tumor is cancerous; it’s called a Rhabdoid tumor of the kidney. It’s malignant, aggressive, and rare, but there’s still about a twenty-percent chance of remission. We’ve been in touch with a hospital in Washington State that has been treating a little girl who was diagnosed fifteen months ago. That’s good news, since most patients die within a year.”
    He paused. The room was still. Someone’s chair scraped across the floor. A throat cleared. Four pairs of eyes watched us. As the silence grew, the nurse turned her gaze politely, painfully away. Claude stared straight ahead and said nothing.
    As quiet as the room was, there was a deeper silence in me; my heart had jumped beyond the diagnosis, beyond the prognosis,