“You should have seen him,” Dale kept saying. “Tiny little guy. So scared. Fighting so hard just to exist in a world that doesn’t make sense to him. And I helped. I actually helped.”
Repo understood. “You’ve been feeling useless, brother. Like the cancer made you into nothing but a dying man.”
The story should have ended there. But it didn’t.
The next day, Jessica appeared at Dale’s room at 10 AM with Emmett. The toddler was calmer, but still clearly anxious in the hospital environment. The moment Emmett saw Dale, though, his face lit up.
“Dale!” he said, pulling away from his mother and running to the bed.
Dale was hooked up to more machines today, looking worse than yesterday, but his face softened. “Hey there, little man. You remember me?”
Emmett nodded vigorously and held up his arms. The universal toddler signal for “pick me up.”
Dale looked at Jessica. “If you’re okay with it?”
“Please,” Jessica said. “He woke up asking for you. I didn’t think he’d remember, but he did.”Continue reading…
