No Man Is An Island

That was so much easier than walking into the house, as David did, and nor looking at the big framed picture of Brent that his mother refused to put away. Brent smiling, radiating health—that bucket of tadpoles and fishing pole must've been just outside the frame. A sweet-natured boy, the one to whose bed their little sister, Deirdre, always ran when she had nightmares, the one who always had mud on his pants and a snake or a turtle or a beetle in his palms and said, "Isn't this creature beautiful?" Darker-featured, like Dad; outgoing, like Dad. Already showing promise in Dad's sport in the father-and-son tournaments the two played at Timuquana as the pale and quiet middle child, David, stood by his mother, Diane, and his little blonde sister, ingesting it all through the prism of those thick glasses.

Bottle of iron pills, that's all 12-year-old Brent needed, Diane figured when he began asking out of town-league basketball games early. Looked a little pale, and then ungodly pale when the hematologist told Diane and Bobby, right in front of Brent, that his bone marrow, out of nowhere, had stopped producing white blood cells, that he had a disease called aplastic anemia, and three choices: Do nothing and die within three months, and not a pretty death; experiment with drugs about which virtually nothing was known; or attempt a bone-marrow transplant at one of five hospitals in the country that would perform it—perhaps, with a good match from a sibling, a 50-50 shot. Option three? One small warning: Before the transplant could be attempted, Brent would have to undergo weeks of chemotherapy and total-body radiation treatments. All of his bone-marrow cells would have to be slaughtered for the new marrow to have a chance.

The sibling? That was David. It was his bone marrow, not Deirdre's, that was a 90% match with Brent's. He was his brother's only chance to live.

My God. The transplant worked. Brent, left pale, gaunt and bald by the disease and weeks of chemotherapy, began to regain color and strength. The Duvals rejoiced, made plans for Brent to return home from the hospital in Cleveland. To celebrate they got permission to take him out for dinner with his favorite nurse, Molly Murphy.

At dinner Brent vomited. Just nerves probably, from being out in public again, doctors reassured his parents. David went back home to Jacksonville. Swiftly came the diarrhea, the teeth-clacking fever and the truth: Brent had graft-versus-host disease. David's bone marrow was attacking his brother's body; bacterial infection was hopping like a grease fire; organ after organ was shutting down.

One last time, it was decided, David should see his brother before he died. Escorted by Diane's father, Harry Poole, David flew back to Cleveland. He froze at the door of the ICU. That sunken bundle of bloodless flesh and bones connected to a tangle of tubes, inside that strange plastic bubble...that was the big brother he had flown kites with, played catch with, the one who had pulled David out of the St. Johns River just a few years before when he tumbled off the dock and thought sure he would drown?

"That's not my brother!" David screamed. He turned and raced down the corridor, past nurses and orderlies, around corners and down stairs and through doors, out into the air, onto the street, over curbs and between cars and across intersections. He heard his name called from behind, heard footsteps pounding closer, but he just kept running, gulping and running, three blocks, four blocks; the moment he stopped, it would all be true.

Then the nine-year-old boy felt himself wrapped in his father's arms, sobbing and gasping for air. David didn't say it then. It came a few weeks later, in the silence of their dumbstruck home. "I killed him!" he cried. "I killed him!"

The boy loved to golf alone in fog. No one could see him. He could see no one. It was as if the sky were colluding with him, lowering a gray curtain between him and the world. Somehow, when he could not see the consequence, the place where the ball landed, it made the instant when his hands cocked and let fly even purer. Just harmony, David and his swing.

Now and then David's father materialized on a cart, on his way to give a club member a lesson. Bobby had been good enough to play on the PGA Tour, but he had forsaken that dream for something that no longer existed, the stability of his family. He watched the boy from a little distance. Good shot, bungled shot—you couldn't tell the difference by David's face. You couldn't tell that he'd recently discovered that he lived in a world in which, at any moment, something too tiny to see could invade your body and destroy it, and no one, not the smartest adults on earth, could stop it. The boy was blank. He looked numb.