The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [5]
The positive results were merely a temporary reduction in symptoms, Sophie’s regular doctor and his colleagues had argued. Beneath the surface, the disease still raged. They claimed Schaefer offered false hope to the hopeless, but stopped just short of calling the small, wiry, soft-spoken doctor a charlatan. Janine could easily see the situation from their perspective. After all, the medical profession had been grappling with Sophie’s form of kidney disease for decades, searching for a way to turn the tide of its destruction. Then along comes some alternative medicine doctor, with his combination of tree bark and herbs, and he thinks he can do what no one else has been able to do: cure the incurable. Sophie’s regular doctor said Schaefer’s treatment was nothing more than a Band-Aid, and it terrified Janine that he might be right. She was just getting her daughter back. She could not bear to lose her again.
“Where are the other parents?” Janine looked behind her toward the parking lot entrance. It was nearly three.
“Oh, I think it’s just you and me. I’m going to drive a couple of the girls home. Gloria and Alison will take the rest, but we figured you’d probably be anxious to be with Sophie, so we didn’t think to ask if you wanted one of us to give her a ride.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I can’t wait to see how she made out.”
“She looked so excited when she got into the van Friday evening,” Suzanne said.
“She was.” Janine was glad she was wearing sunglasses, because her eyes suddenly burned with tears. Her baby girl. How rare it was to have seen such unfettered joy in Sophie’s face rather than the usual lines of pain and fear. The sort of fear no child should have to endure.
“She’s so cute,” Suzanne said. “Where’d she get that red hair?”
“It’s a combination of mine and her dad’s, I guess,” she said, touching her hand to her own strawberry-blond hair. Joe’s hair was dark, his eyes blue, like Sophie’s.
“It’s her kidneys that are the problem, right?” Suzanne probed.
“Yes.” Janine didn’t mind the questions. The only time she was bothered by them was when they were asked in front of her daughter, as though Sophie were deaf and blind as well as very, very ill.
“Would a transplant help?”
“She already has one of mine.” Janine smiled ruefully. “Her body rejected it.” Joe had offered one of his, as well, but he was not a good match. And now, Sophie was beyond being helped by a transplant.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Suzanne said kindly. “She seems to handle everything very well, though. I was so surprised when I met her, because she’s so tiny. I thought she was about six. But then this eight-year-old voice comes out of her, with a ten-year-old vocabulary. It’s such a surprise.”
Janine smiled. “Kids with kidney disease tend to be small.”
“What a lot you must have been through with her,” Suzanne said. “And to think of how much I worry when Emily has the sniffles. I really admire you.”
Janine didn’t feel admirable. She was coping the only way a desperate mother could—searching for solutions, doing all she could to make Sophie’s time on earth as happy and carefree as possible…and crying only when she was alone at night.
“Emily told me you’re a helicopter pilot,” Suzanne said.
“Oh.” Janine was surprised. “I was, a long time ago. Before Sophie got sick.” She had learned to fly a helicopter in the army and had flown for an aircraft leasing company after getting out of the reserves. Was Sophie telling people