“Mom,” Ethan once told me, laughing, “you don’t even know the rules.”
“I know cheating when I see it.”
Chris nearly choked on his chips.
Then Ethan’s cancer stopped responding to treatment.
One afternoon, his doctor asked Chris and me to step outside his hospital room.
I remember staring at the tiny cartoon football Ethan had taped to his door while the doctor talked.
“I’m truly sorry,” he said. “The treatment isn’t working the way we’d hoped.”
Chris asked every question.
Was there another trial?
Another medication?
Another hospital?
But I couldn’t move past one sentence.
“We may be looking at much less time than we’d hoped.”
When we went back into Ethan’s room, a football game was playing on television.
Chris sat beside him.
Their team scored.
For one second, Chris shot out of his chair.
“YES!”
Ethan burst out laughing.
