The IV's light glowed in the darkness, its beeping like a heartbeat, like the beat to Bette Midler's song, "Wind Beneath My Wings," about heroes, playing from a radio in the nurses' station.
I'd heard that song's lyrics in my head over the weekend, late at night in the hospital as I looked at my daughter Jewel.
Think it's strange for a 37-year-old man to have a two-year-old as his hero? You don't know Jewel.
She's in remission now, and odds are the leukemia will never come back. About 80 percent of the kids who get the most common childhood leukemia never relapse.
It's been a year full of hope -- a year that brought a new baby to our home--but it's been a rough year too, a year of weekly trips to the clinic and a half dozen longer stays in the hospital. The first months of chemotherapy made Jewel's hair fall out.
Through it all, Jewel --who prays to "Baby Cheezits in the sky" and who loves family hugs -- has borne her illness with heroic grace. I can't imagine any adult dealing with it as well. I know I haven't.
Jewel's been in the hospital for the last five days with an infection from the catheter in her chest. Her temperature rocketed from 98.6 to 105 in five minutes when the bacteria in the catheter flushed into her blood.
Jewel became a prisoner for the weekend, connected to an IV machine. No problem for her. She rode around standing on the base of the IV pole, laughing with delight and waving to people.
Last summer, Jewel battled the doctors and nurses who examined her. She was too young to understand why she had to be stuck with so many needles, she didn't understand her antagonists were really angels of mercy. I'll never forget the look in her eyes when I helped the nurses hold her for another blood test and she howled and her eyes screamed, "How can you, my protector, betray me?"
But she forgave me every time, kissing me with a loud smack. As the year went by, she gained an understanding about her illness -- the need for trips to the clinic, the catheter, the chemotherapy.
One day, I asked her doctor why so many children who get the same lumphoblastic leukemia survive when so many adults who get it don't.
"We're not as tough," he said.
One night, one of the nurses told me she was having second thoughts about having children because of all the heartaches she's seen. Other people say maybe having children isn't worth the pain. That isn't true.
Yes, becoming a parent means signing up for a life of worry. You lie awake at night and pray, "What can I do to make my children become good people?"
The answer is they already are good people. They are already everything we hope they become.
Jewel's brother Rocky is nine. A month after Jewel was diagnosed, I told him about a bone marrow transplant. I explained he might be the perfect match for Jewel, how his bone marrow might save her life.
"Would it hurt?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"I don't want to hurt."
We drove on in silence.
"I'll do it," Rocky said suddenly. "I'll do anything for my sister."
For the first in a long time, the tears welling in my eyes weren't for sadness. And I knew leukemia was going to have a fight on its hands beating our family. There are too many little heroes in it.
