On the way into the city, I’d been so juiced up by the audacity of what I was doing that I hadn’t had time to think about why I was doing it. Sitting passively in the driver’s seat, I was overwhelmed by the reality of what was happening. How had Olivia’s leukemia come back so quickly? It wasn’t possible.We were stopped at a red light. “I just don’t get it,” I said. The thought had been in my head for so long I felt almost as if I’d already spoken it. “Olivia’s had two rounds of chemotherapy since September. How can her body already be making new leukemia cells?”“Jake said that Dr. Maxwell said that Olivia’s leukemia is very aggressive.” The light changed, and Calvin put his foot on the gas. “Apparently they knew that from the beginning, but then she responded well to the first round of chemo, so everyone got their hopes up.”I looked out the window. The few trees we passed were brown and leafless, and the Hudson River—normally so luminous and rich—did nothing but reflect the slate-gray winter sky back at itself.
