CHAPTER ONE

      SAM MARCUS STOOD in the observation room above the OR suite in St. Francis of the Valley Hospital, waiting for his child to lose an eye. He’d seen his share of surgeries before, being a pediatrician, but never for someone he loved. This time he needed an anchor, so he leaned against the window to see his son better and to offer support against the threat of his buckling knees.

      He watched as the anesthesiologist put his tiny boy under and while the surgeon measured the eye globe and cornea dimensions, the length of the optic nerve. His heart thumped in his chest, and a fine line of sweat gathered above his lip as the surgeon made the first incision. He swiped it away with a trembling hand, trying his best to get his mind wrapped around what was happening.

      Enucleation.

      His barely three-year-old newly adopted son had retinoblastoma and needed to have his left eye surgically removed. He swallowed hard and shook his head, still unable to believe it.

      He’d fallen in love with Danilo, an orphan, on his last Doctors’ Medical Missions trip to the Philippines. The mission had been in response to their latest typhoon, to tend to the countless new orphans. He hadn’t been in the market for a son or daughter. No, it had been the last thing on his mind then. Yet there had been one particular one-year-old boy who’d lost his entire family in the typhoon and who’d miraculously managed to survive for forty-eight hours on his own. A little hero.

      Over the days of the two-week mission, Sam and the other doctors had performed physicals and minor procedures, as well as arranged for other children who had required more extensive medical care to be transported to where they needed to be. Dani had used his new walking skills to follow Sam everywhere. It’d made Sam remember one of his favorite childhood books, Are You My Mommy? A story his own mother had read to him, where a little bird who’d fallen out of the nest went looking for his mother, asking everyone, even machines, if they were his mother, and it had broken his heart.

      All the children on this mission were orphans dealing with their losses in their own ways, yet this child, Dani, seemed to have chosen Sam. He gave in and took the boy with him everywhere at the orphanage clinic, cautiously opened his heart, then fell in love in an amazingly short period of time. Then it was time to leave. Dani cried inconsolably, and one of the sisters at the orphanage told Sam that it was the first time the child had cried since arriving there six weeks before.

      What was a man supposed to do? He knew how it felt to be homeless. He’d been taken away from his mother when he was ten. She hadn’t abused him, but she’d had to leave him alone most nights so she could work a second job. Her plan had backfired and the authorities had taken Sam and put him into foster care. Yeah, he knew how it felt to be left all alone.

      Fortunately for him he’d been placed into a big happy family and currently suffered from missing them, with everyone fanned out all across the United States. There’d been five natural siblings in all, and he’d become kid number six, yet his already overworked foster mother had insisted on bringing in more foster children—a long, long list of foster kids had come and gone over the years. Why? he used to ask whenever he’d been instructed to share his bunk bed with yet another new kid. We don’t have room for more, Mom. She’d always insisted he call her Mom.

      Even after all these years her response never left his subconscious. “We don’t always know how we’ll make ends meet or where they’ll sleep, Sammy, but we just know we’ve got to bring them in because the child needs a home.”

      The child needs a home.

      He’d been one of those children. And he’d been trying to prove himself worth keeping ever since.

      When he’d returned home from the Philippines, he’d been unable to get Dani out of his mind. Missing his infectious smile and unconditional love, he’d decided to try for the adoption in honor of his deceased foster mother, because that child needed a home.

      Though it had taken a year and a half to jump through all the hoops to arrange for Dani’s adoption, six months ago he and Dani had teamed up and never looked back. And what an adjustment being a single father had been. It’d always been hectic, growing up with so many foster siblings, yet under the chaos there had been stability. Something he’d never had when he’d been a young boy. That was his goal for Dani, to give the boy stability, but he’d never been a parent before and they were both on a stiff learning curve, working things out, juggling the logistics of his busy career, child care and father-son time.

      Then this cancer nightmare had happened, and any stability they’d established had been replaced with utter mental and emotional turmoil.

      They’d discovered the tumor on Dani’s very first eye examination in the United States. The simple yet disturbing fact that his pupil had turned white instead of red when the ophthalmologist had shone a light into it had heralded the beginning of more and more bad news. The child had intraocular retinoblastoma.

      The team of doctors, headed by the pediatric oncologist, had recommended the surgery after all other avenues of treatment—each with drawbacks and no guarantees—had been considered and rejected. Dr. Van Diesel, the pediatric eye surgeon, had come highly recommended, and since there wasn’t a chance that Dani’s vision could be saved, they’d opted for enucleation.

      Sam watched from behind the viewing window as the surgeon, through a dissecting microscope, removed the outer covering of the eye. Next the four rectus muscles were detached from the eyeball, then the surgeon placed a hemostat on the stump of the last severed eye muscle. With special long, minimally curved scissors, he cut the optic nerve. Sam’s battered heart sank, realizing the monumental change that single surgical incision had made to his son’s vision. He stood motionless, unable to take in a breath, emotion flooding through his veins as next the surgeon removed the eyeball.

      Unable to swallow the thickening lump in his throat, Sam watched as a nurse stood nearby with a small specimen container to collect a tiny piece of the optic nerve for histopathologic study. For their next huge hold-your-breath diagnosis—had all of the cancer been removed or had it spread? His stomach pinched at the potential outcome. The doctor worked painstakingly to also open the eye globe to harvest tissue from the retinoblastoma. Before closing, he placed a plastic temporary conformer into Dani’s eye socket to avoid a shrunken look and maintain a natural shape. They’d discussed in advance how this would be done in preparation to ensure the proper size and motility for the future eye prosthesis.

      When he finally could, Sam took a deep breath. The worst was over, no, check that, the worst had been getting the damn diagnosis of cancer in the first place. Since he wanted to keep a positive outlook, he’d deemed today the first step in Dani’s healing. He watched like a hawk as the anesthesiologist prepared his son for transfer to the recovery room and the surgical nurse bandaged Dani’s left eye with a special patch to help decrease swelling.

      He rushed out of the observation deck and hustled down the stairs to be the first to talk with Dr. Van Diesel when he exited the OR.

      “All went well,”