DEACON
"I hope you have something good to tell me, doctor."
Sissie Lewis was perched on the end of her hospital bed like a bird about to take flight. At eighty-three, the woman was spry and peppy, and being around her always made me feel like I was a slacker. I'd known her my entire life-she'd taught me Sunday School in the third grade-and I was fairly certain that she still saw me as the mischievous little boy who'd stolen peppermints from her knitting bag while she was setting up Bible stories on the flannel board.
Still, when she'd been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma earlier this year, she hadn't hesitated to come straight to me and request that I manage her treatment. She'd even consented to make the trip over to the Calumbra Center near Tampa until we had the wing up and r
