Archie has a younger brother and sister, twins born two months before Archie’s second birthday. The twins, Kit and Jack, were born in the middle of Archie’s treatment protocol against leukemia, on the day the levee broke in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. When I think of it now I remember how oblivious I was to it all back then. I was operating under a morphine-induced fog, my consciousness flying low under the radar. I knew that my babies were doing ok, that we were receiving good care, and that Archie was being looked after around-the-clock by his grandparents and his nanny.

On the first full day of their lives, Kit was in the NICU, Jack was dividing his time between the newborn nursery and my room in the maternity ward, and the twins’ older brother was receiving a blood transfusion as an outpatient in the pediatric oncology clinic, all under the same roof in the same, big hospital. It was a tumultuous time, to be sure, but we were all going to be just fine in the end. That much I knew. And to that end, I was right.