“That’s right.” The lab tech smiled. He was clean-shaven with thick, black glasses and a rash of red zits sprouting up his chin, but I could’ve kissed him for how well he was handling Josh. “We’ll take your blood to our lab and then we’ll separate the white blood cells. That’s called leukapheresis. Don’t worry if you can’t say it; it’s pretty tricky. I just call it Luke-Skywalker-esis. Once we do that, we freeze Luke-Skywalker-esis and send him off to our mother ship, where we train him to fight the Empire in your blood. That way, when we inject the reprogrammed T-cells—the mini Millennium Falcons—back into your body, they’re all trained up.”

“Cool!” Josh exclaimed.

I laughed, feeling the first sense that maybe everything would be okay. AML was a terrible disease, but CAR T-cell therapy had a high success rate. Maybe he’d be all right. I just had to make sure we could pay for it.

My phone buzzed again, but I continued ignoring it. Gabe had already texted twice, saying he needed to speak to me, but I hadn’t been able to leave Josh’s side.

The lab technician finally withdrew the needle from Josh’s arm, capped the little tubes, and put them in a white lab envelope.

“Okay, that’s all for us here. We’ll see you both in about three weeks with some fighters ready to put in your blood.” He gave a funny little salute and then left the room.

Back upstairs in his hospital room, I fluffed Josh’s pillows, pulled the blankets over his thin little body, and flicked the TV on for him.

Because my job was more flexible than Nate’s, we’d agreed that I would take the week off while he continued working as normal until we could establish some sort of rotation. Dr. Palmer had promised to let Josh go home if he was still doing well by Friday. We just had to return in two weeks to start lymphodepleting chemo. The chemo would prepare Josh’s body for the reprogrammed CAR T-cells. But until then it was R & R for Josh.

Moira swept into the hospital room. She’d promised to come every day after visiting Matt in the nursing home, and here she was, bearing gifts.

“How’s my little Jedi!” she sang. “I’ve brought you all your favorite toys. I don’t know how you’ve managed with just TV to keep you entertained.” She gave me a meaningful look, then dumped out the objects in the canvas bag she’d been carrying: Josh’s favorite Star Wars blanket, a teddy bear the size of my upper body, a box of Lego.

“Grandma!” Josh immediately launched into an update on the Millennium Falcons the doctors were preparing to put into his blood. As he was talking, my phone beeped. I glanced at the text.