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it looks that way. We’ll have the results of the biopsy as soon as we can. She has an infection that caused her collapse and we’re fighting it successfully at the moment, but it does seem the leukemia has returned. If it has, we’ll need to do a spinal tap to ascertain whether the cerebral spine fluid is under attack. If it is, then aggressive treatment will begin immediately. I’m terribly sorry.” The consultant covered Sarah’s hip back over with the sheet and made a note on a clipboard. “You mustn’t blame yourself, Dr Bailey. Relapses at this point can be hard to spot. Your daughter is still weakened by the months of chemotherapy. Parents get used to their child being frail. The parameters are different. The signs that originally rang alarm bells have become normal. The child often doesn’t report symptoms, unwilling to cause alarm and accustomed to a different level of wellness than other children. This is not your fault.”
    Simon stared right through him. “But I’m a doctor.” He sank into the institutional blue armchair in the corner of the room.
    “But you are a father first, Dr Bailey.” The consultant put his pen back in his suit breast pocket. “Sometimes we don't see things that are too close to our eyes.”
    Simon sat back against the familiar faux leather of the chair, ignoring the clammy stickiness as it pressed against his sopping wet shirt. Those plastic chair backs. He had sat in so many of them. The familiarity was matched by the fears and terrors as they rose to the surface. A machine bleeped, regurgitating dot matrix paper lined by violent peaks and valleys. A respirator wheezed and clunked, breathing for the troubled little girl as her lungs struggled under the attack of infection.
    As he watched her, statistics began to whirl once again in Simon’s mind, his medical knowledge as both a doctor and a parent of a seriously ill child spinning into action, computing data he had safely filed away. A figure popped up, an unwanted one. Relapse. Twenty five percent.
    A one in four chance of survival.

Chapter Five

    January passed and with February came snow. Not the attractive white drifts that drive even the most mature of men to manically to turn out the garage in search of the family sledge – it was the dirty grey slush that coats every pavement and road, melting into dog muck, causing accidents and delays, soaking through shoes and making the whole country irritable.
    The Baileys and the Halfords convened once again around Simon and Melissa’s kitchen table. The easy companionship of the previous months had been replaced again by the hushed conversations of a family on the edge.
    Barbara fiddled with her napkin. “But at least she’s coming out of ITU. That’s got to be good news hasn’t it?”
    Simon nodded vaguely. “She’s going back onto the Cancer Ward. The infection has passed and she’s stable but that doesn’t mean she isn’t a very poorly girl. The biopsy showed up blasts….”
    “What’s a blast?” Robert interrupted.
    “New cells, presumably leukemic. The spinal tap showed the cancer has been found in the brain lining. She’s on the strongest course of chemo they dare give her.”
    Porridge sighed heavily in his dog basket, aware of the heavy atmosphere. He missed his friend.
    “What happens after the chemo - radiation therapy? How about the bone marrow transplant? They can do that, can’t they?” Terry stared intently at his son. Of course they would do something for his only granddaughter. It was 2009, for God’s Sake. They could cure everything now.
    “The transplant is better carried out during a remission. The state of a patient’s disease at the time of the transplant can affect the likelihood of a good outcome. Sarah isn’t in remission anymore. Allogeneic transplant was discussed during her remission, but the prognosis was so good a chemotherapy course was considered the least dangerous option. Also, her best chance would be a matched sibling