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Show 222 Max and Emily They are sitting on our couch and there is that hesitancy that exists between strangers meeting for the first time. They are husband and wife, new to the neighborhood and to our congregation, sent to us by our church to tend to our needs as they might occur. Every family has such monthly visitors assigned to them. Hy is assigned to other families as well, with this same task, but it somehow does not seem fair that anyone should have to assume the burden of our family, with such potential for unending crisis. "I have leukemia," Max is saying and I am suddenly listening with a renewed interest as he explains his recent bone-marrow transplant. He is going into detail about their hopes and fears and is explaining the treatments he has had and will have. Emily is nodding her agreement here and there and from time to time adds details Max did not know or has forgotten. Max is laughing as he calls one of his doctors "such a jerk" and is in the next minute sober as he recounts a different doctor's outlining potentially fatal treatment. I am feeling giddy inside and glance over at Hy, whose eyes are riveted on Max as he describes how it feels to be in isolation for so long while his own blood cells are systematically killed, day by day, by lethal chemicals, hoping all the while to live just long enough throughout the ordeal to receive the donor cells. The precious donor cells. We understand these people, I am thinking, in ways most will never do. And these people will understand us. |