Her yellow coat hung loosely from her shoulders.
She started using a wheelchair on long hospital days because walking exhausted her.
Still, whenever motorcycles arrived, she sat straighter.
One morning I found her alone beside the window while her mother talked with doctors outside.
I sat beside her.
“You tired?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to shut up?”
“Yes.”
So we sat silently.
Five minutes passed.
Then she spoke.
“Bear?”
“Yeah?”
“What if the medicine doesn’t work?”
I stared toward the parking garage.
There are questions adults want to protect children from asking because we are terrified of our answers.
Lily deserved better than that.
“I don’t know.”
She nodded.
“Mom says I’m going to beat it.”
“She hopes you will.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
She looked at me.
“But you don’t know.”
“No.”
She seemed relieved.
That surprised me.
Then she rested her head against my arm.
“I like when you don’t lie.”
We remained there until her mother returned.
Before leaving, Lily opened her purple notebook.
She wrote something.
I tried to see.
She slammed it shut.
“Royal business.”
I smiled.
What I did not know was that she had just written my name.
---
In July, the doctors began using a phrase none of us trusted.
“Final scheduled treatment.”
They explained carefully that the months ahead would still involve scans, bloodwork, monitoring, and uncertainty.
Lily ignored the qualifiers.
She heard “final.”
Within hours she planned a ceremony.
All twenty-five riders were ordered to attend.
Attendance was mandatory.
No excuses.
Tiny asked whether hospitalization counted.
Lily thought about it.
“Yes.”
“Funeral?”
She glared at him.
He immediately apologized.
That morning, we lined every motorcycle along the hospital drive.
That was the day security approached us.
The day Lily stood in her yellow coat and plastic crown and announced that twenty-five tattooed bikers were her guards.
Once the confusion was resolved, the hospital staff let us inside in smaller groups.
The oncology floor had never looked stranger.
Leather vests filled the hall.
Nurses took pictures.
Parents stared.
Children waved.
Lily loved every second.
But before her final infusion began, she became serious.
She opened her purple notebook.
From inside the back cover, she removed twenty-five envelopes.
Each had a name written in purple marker.
She distributed them one by one.
“Do not open.”
Tiny held his against the light.
“Tiny.”
He lowered it.
“I wasn’t.”