Biker Played With My Sick Son Every Day For A Year Before I Found Out Why
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“Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Wade. I volunteer here. Nurses said it was okay.”
I looked at the nurse’s station. A nurse nodded and mouthed “he’s fine.”
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That was day one. Wade came back every single day for a year.
He brought toy cars every time. Matchbox cars, Hot Wheels, little motorcycles. He’d sit on the cold floor for hours. Playing. Talking. Sometimes just sitting quietly when Eli was too sick to move.
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On bad days, when chemo made Eli too weak to lift his head, Wade would hold a toy car where Eli could see it. “Saving this one for when you’re ready,” he’d say.
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Eli started calling him “my friend Wade” and something would flash across Wade’s face. Pain. Deep, personal pain.
I asked the nurses about him. They said he’d been volunteering three years. Never missed a day.
“Does he have children?” I asked.
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The nurse hesitated. “You should ask him yourself.”
I never did. I was too grateful. Too tired. Wade became part of our survival. Part of Eli’s fight.
Then one night, eleven months in, I overheard two nurses talking at the station.
“Anniversary’s next week. Three years.”
“Does he still come every day?”
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“Every single day. Same ward. Same floor.”
“I don’t know how he does it. After what happened to his little girl.”
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I froze.
His little girl.
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The nurse saw me listening. Her face went pale.
“What happened to his little girl?” I asked.
And what she told me made me sit down on the floor and cry harder than I had since the day Eli was diagnosed.
The nurse’s name was Donna. She’d been on the children’s oncology ward for twenty years. She’d seen everything. But when she talked about Wade, her voice shook.
“His daughter’s name was Lily,” Donna said. “She was five years old. Diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Same type as Eli.”
Same type.
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