McKayla's Miracle Ch. 03

Arching my back, I came down on her one more time, then my body seemed to burst with pleasure. I threw my head back, knowing McKayla liked to watch my face when the cum hit me.

My sex pulsed for a long time. The orgasm seemed to go on.

I continued to move my hips, trying desperately to prolong the bliss, until I finally fell into McKayla's embrace.

The room was still spinning. But as always, McKayla was there to catch me. Her comforting touch surrounded me, and I felt as safe as I always did with her.

Later that night, I made her faint. We drifted off to sleep, not wanting the morning to come. Not wanting to face the hard realities we woke up to every day.

***********************

We all stared at the CT scan images: McKayla, me and the doctor.

"It's about the size of a golf ball," he told us. "And based on what we found in your blood work, it's aggressive, too."

McKayla shook her head and let out a deep, bitter sigh. I tried not to break down right there. Things had been going so well lately.

She was taking part in a medical study that was testing not-yet-FDA-approved drugs and the shakes were almost completely gone. Her brain was showing no symptoms of memory loss and otherwise she was in good health. And now this.

The rest of the afternoon was a blur for me. I don't remember half of it. They didn't quite ask, "What have you had to eat in the last 24 hours?" but it was close to it.

A couple of days after that visit to the oncologist, McKayla had surgery to remove the lump from her pancreas and we prayed for a speedy recovery. She was put on an aggressive chemotherapy and it appeared to be working for a little while.

But after another month, they found more cancer. This time it had returned to her colon and was spreading. They tried everything: a different mix of chemo, radiation. We contemplated more surgery.

Finally, when her doctors found it in her spinal fluid and said the next stop was her brain, we knew her time was almost up. I pleaded with her to continue with the treatments, but McKayla firmly told me that she didn't want any more.

"If I go through all that—the surgery, the chemo, the radiation—what's that going to get me?" she asked through teary eyes. "Another month? Two? And for what? Feeling like shit after taking a handful of pills or throwing up for two days after the radiation. No, Amberle, I want to die with dignity. I just want to be comfortable and spend as much time as I can with you and our daughter."

The doctors had done all they could, and she resigned herself to the fact that this would mean her death.

I took her home. She was a shell of her former self. She had lost a lot of weight, and her glorious mane of raven-black hair was just now growing back. She seemed so frail, so weak. So unlike the vibrant woman I was used to seeing.

But her smile never changed. The look in her eyes told me how much she loved me.

For a while, she tried to function around the house, but she quickly got worse. As the cancer spread, so did the terrible pain. Her body was often hunched over and she had to fight to smile, something that used to come so naturally to her.

At first, we gave her drugs to numb her, but they made her sleepy and prone to blackouts. She said she didn't want to spend the last weeks of her life in an opium-like haze, so she had her doctor reduce the dosages. She was lucid, but every movement cut her like a knife. I don't know how she could tolerate it.

We put a hospital bed in our room and soon McKayla was spending more and more time in it, until she became too weak to get up. Four months had passed since they re-discovered her cancer.

Maureen took it well, I think. She kept a blog that we checked regularly. We talked all the time. I think she tried to put on a brave face for McKayla but it was tearing her apart inside. Just like it did to me.

One day, she came to me and said, "I want to do something for Mom."

"Anything," I told her.

So we spent the next few days meeting with a lawyer and trying to get our case expedited before McKayla died.

I was sitting in my chair next to McKayla when Maureen came in. My wife had the bed elevated, her legs were propped up in the most comfortable position possible. Maureen was holding an envelope.

She sat down on the bed, next to her mom and pulled out a stack of papers. She handed them to McKayla. Her eyes got wide and then teared up when she saw the court order.

"Maureen Rene Goin-Perry," McKayla whispered. After we got married, McKayla and I took each other's last names, but never changed Maureen's name. This she asked to do on her own.

"Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?" our daughter said.

"Yes, it does," my wife said softly. "I love you. I always will."

"I know, Mom. I love you, too," Maureen replied, slipping into the bed. I watched the two of them cuddle and had to choke back tears.

Why would You do this to her? I asked in my mind. Why would You take that little girl's mother away from her? Take me instead!

Of course, God didn't answer. He never does.

McKayla's condition deteriorated over the next few days. Father Stimson came to see us regularly and at McKayla's request, he heard a final confession and administered the last rites.

A couple of nights later, we were sitting up late at night. McKayla had been drifting in and out of consciousness. She looked so frail.

I was reading a book, thinking she was asleep.

"Amberle," her voice was barely more than a whisper. I looked up and saw her brown eyes open. Her lids were heavy, partly from the drugs, partly from exhaustion.

"Yes, my love?"

"I had a dream last night," she said, a slight smile coming to her lips. "It was about our first night together."

Reaching out, I took her hand in mine.

"I love you, Elven Princess," she told me.

All I could do was try to smile.

"Do you remember that night?" she asked.

"Like it was yesterday."

"Do you remember how it ended?"

"I do."

"You were in my arms. Your head was on my shoulder," her hand squeezed mine weakly. "Your breath felt so good on my skin. Your touch was so soft. I never wanted that night to end."

Tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks. Mine, too.

"You slept so peacefully that night," she continued.

"Only because I was with you, McKayla." I wiped her tears away.

"Will you hold me now?" her voice was strained.

"Of course," I reclined the bed a little and then slipped in under the sheets. I took her in my arms and cradled her to me.

"I'm glad I'm not going to forget you," McKayla whispered. "That was the worst part for me. Knowing that one day I was going to forget how much I loved you."

I kissed her forehead and pulled her in. "I love you, McKayla."

She put her arm around me. "And I will always love you, Elven Princess. You mean the world to me. You and Maureen. Tell her that every day for me."

"You can tell her in the morning before she goes to school," I said, trying not to let her hear my voice break.

McKayla fell asleep in my arms not too much later. I held her and drifted off myself.

Sometime around three, I got up and went to get a drink of water. When I came back, McKayla's breathing was shallow. I sat down on the edge of the bed and felt her pulse. It was weak.

She took a string of three or four short breaths, then she inhaled sharply.

Her chest rose one final time and then slowly deflated.

For the first time in months, all of the muscles in her body relaxed. The pain all went away. She had a slight smile. Her eyes were closed. Her head fell to the side.

McKayla looked like she was finally at peace. Unmarred by the diseases and demons which had chased her for all these years, she looked so beautiful.

I leaned over and kissed her still-warm lips one more time.

"Good-bye, my love."

***********************

"Are you sure you don't need anything else, Amberle?" Suzie asked.

I shook my head. "No, you guys have been wonderful."

The week after McKayla died was one big blank spot in my life with only a couple of memories in between. Maureen said I handled everything well. In truth, there wasn't much I had to do.

Before she died, my wife had pretty much planned out her memorial service and had made all the arrangements. I think she knew there were so many things that were out of her hands, she wanted to take control of the things she could.

All of our family came in. Most had been in before McKayla died, but everyone came for the funeral. She wanted to be cremated and we did so before the service. She said she didn't want people to see her body as it was after the cancer was through with her.

The church was packed with the people who loved her: family and friends.

I was grateful for the way the parish reached out to me. Over the years, I found out that even though the official stance of the Roman Catholic Church opposed homosexuality, the congregation we were in did not. They included us as they did anyone else, and the way they supported McKayla and I was not lost on us.

The one thing I remember about the service was that people laughed a lot. Don told a handful of funny stories about McKayla from her childhood. Father Stimson shared a slide show he and McKayla had put together about herself and some of the other people in the audience. The service truly was about celebrating her life, not mourning her death.

Maureen spoke, too. I couldn't believe that for someone who was just shy of thirteen, she could be so wise. And I could see so much of her mother in her. I was so proud of my little girl. She was so strong, so eloquent. I knew that even though McKayla was gone, her spirit lived on in our daughter, whom she had raised to be her own.

Ander and Brin stayed for a couple of days.

Don and Suzie for a bit longer. The three of us sat at the kitchen table. Maureen had just left for school.

The worst part for me was coming up. The past week had been filled with visitors and people whose shoulders I could lean (and cry) on. There were things for me to do, places to go, stuff to take care of. Now it would just be me and my daughter, alone for the first time.

Her parents had brought some of McKayla's things with them. Things they said we should have. Pictures, old dolls, that sort of stuff.

"I don't think you really know how much you meant to McKayla," Suzie said.

All I could do was force a smile. People had been saying stuff like that to me for a week.

"No, really, Amberle, you saved her life," she said.

"I wish I could have," I replied blankly. "I wish all this had happened to me, not her. I wish there had been some miracle for her . . ."

Suzie squeezed my hand sympathetically. "There was a miracle."

I looked up at her blankly.

"Did you know that when she was in college, McKayla tried to kill herself once?"

Blinking in surprise, I shook my head.

"She had just 'come out' and I think she was feeling lonely and depressed. Somehow she got her hands on some pills and took a handful. Her RA found her; they pumped her stomach and saved her," Suzie looked over at Don, who had a dark look on his face. "McKayla was miserable for so long. She was looking for acceptance, for love. I think that's why she had so many one-night stands. . . . Yes, we knew. . . . She wanted someone to love her and maybe confused that with sex . . ."

"She was also afraid of relationships because she knew she might have the same disease as her dad," Don said, picking up where his wife left off. "We never told her, but I think she knew this: her dad didn't die in a hunting accident. He went out in the woods and shot himself right after he started getting the first symptoms. He saw how his mother had suffered and didn't want to go through the same thing."

I stared at him in disbelief. McKayla had never told me this.

"Some of his friends found him a little while later and one of them was a deputy sheriff who got the coroner to declare it an accident, not a suicide," he continued. "We told her that she might have the disease but she never wanted to know. I think she avoided commitment because she didn't want to break anyone's heart."

Then why me? I wondered inwardly.

"When you two started seeing each other," Suzie continued. "She was so happy. She told us that you were the best thing that ever happened to her. And she was so excited about the baby . . ."

I smiled unconsciously, remembering those first happy months we had together.

"But she knew there was this cloud hanging over her, something she needed to find out. And so she did. I think she was afraid to tell you about it and thought you'd leave her." Suzie reached out to Don, needing his support.

"When she came home that night, the night she left you, we prayed," Suzie continued. "That was the only time we ever prayed directly for a miracle. We prayed for healing. We prayed for guidance. We prayed for strength."

"Then why didn't God answer," I shook my head bitterly. "Why didn't He provide?"

Suzie smiled warmly. She understood why I was so angry. She was hurt, too. However, she had something I didn't: faith.

"God did provide," she said. "God gave you the means to take care of her. You don't want for money. Neither of you had to work unless you wanted to. Sometimes the answers to our prayers are already here. You got her the best medical treatments. The healing we ask for doesn't always take the form of a miraculous recovery; it's the doctors at the hospital or the nurses from Hospice."

"Why would He do this to her?" my voice broke. "Why would He do this to us? Why would He deny her miracle?"

I felt Suzie's arms around me as I sobbed. She pulled me to her and let me cry.

"God gave McKayla a miracle," Suzie said gently. "He sent her you. You loved her. You cared for her. You gave her the child she always wanted. You were at her side in the good times and the bad. You tried to kick her door down because you loved her so much you wouldn't give up on her. I think without you, she would have died a long time ago."

My body convulsed as she held me.

"These last thirteen years were McKayla's miracle," Suzie said. "None of us wanted things to happen this way, but that's not for us to decide. God put each of us on this earth for a reason, and we thank Him every day that He brought you into McKayla's life. You saved our daughter and gave us the granddaughter McKayla couldn't have on her own. You were the answer to her prayers. And to ours."