The following morning, I turned my head to look at Rachel and ask her how she felt. She looked dazed and did not seem to hear me. I tried raising my voice, but got no response. During rounds that morning the doctor and nurses were whispering something I could not make out. Then they put a screen around her bed. She remained behind the screen that day, and that evening, bed and occupant were wheeled out of the ward. No one told us what happened, but we knew only too well we would not be seeing her again. I wept that night for the year old girl who had just become an orphan.

Up to that point I had been too ill and disoriented to give much though to my own condition and that of my child–if there was to be any future for us. With Rachel gone and a new patient in her bed, I could hear a voice within me saying: “Get out of here! Do whatever it takes to lick this thing. There is too much to live for. Beat the statistics!”

When the nurse came to wash me, I told her I’d try to do it myself. She raised her eyebrows, said nothing and helped me sit up. When she removed my gown, I stared at myself, or rather what remained of my body I thought I knew so well, in disbelief. I could count all my ribs, and my legs were bones with knobby knees. All the horrors shown in concentration-camp newsreels flooded my mind. Is that how I really looked? Would I ever be my normal self again?

It was hard to be sitting up for the first time after weeks on my back. I dipped the washcloth into the water, and my wedding band slipped off my bony finger. As I was trying to fish it out of the water, I felt something stir inside me–a reminder that I was carrying a new life. I put the ring firmly back on my finger, lay back on my pillow and smiled for the first time in weeks: I knew then that I–WE–were going to make it!

(We did! Last Fall, we celebrated our son’s sixtieth birthday).