TT After Midnight, a Mother Sat Alone in a Hospital Chair — Inside 10-Year-Old Jaxen McCall’s Silent, Painful Fight Against Cancer.

It was after midnight when the thought of Jaxen came to me. The house was quiet, the kind of stillness that usually signals the end of a long day, but my mind wouldn’t rest. I was about to go to bed when the image of a ten-year-old boy in Pinson, Alabama settled into my chest with a weight that felt intentional.

 I realized I hadn’t checked on him in several days. It was late, unreasonably late, but something told me to reach out anyway. So I picked up my phone and sent a message to his mother, Randa McCall, hoping I wasn’t interrupting sleep she desperately needed.

Jaxen is ten years old. He is autistic and non-verbal, and he has been fighting adrenal gland cancer with a quiet strength that feels almost unbearable to witness. His journey has been long, filled with hospital visits to Children’s of Alabama, treatment days that blur together, and stretches of time where simply getting to an appointment becomes its own battle.

 Not because of a lack of love or effort, but because life has not been gentle with this family. Their car is broken down. They live in public housing. Every step forward seems to require twice the strength it should.

When Randa replied, the night grew heavier. She told me she was sitting in a chair at Children’s of Alabama, watching her son endure pain so intense that he cried and moaned whenever he was awake. Jaxen cannot explain what hurts.

 He cannot ask questions. He cannot be reassured with words. All he can do is react to the pain moving through his small body, and all Randa can do is stay, helpless and present, loving him through something she cannot take away.

Eventually, the doctors had to sedate him just to give him rest. That sentence alone feels devastating. Sleep, the most basic form of relief, had to be medically induced because the pain would not allow it naturally. Jaxen remained in the hospital as morning came, his body still fighting a war it never signed up for.

Randa explained that the cancer tumors are literally pushing outward on Jaxen’s body. From his eyes, to his head, to his groin, the disease is visible in ways that are impossible to ignore. This is not a quiet illness hiding behind lab results or scans.

This is a cruel, physical presence reshaping a child’s body and breaking the hearts of everyone who loves him. Seeing him like this, Randa said, is killing her and his siblings. There is no metaphor needed for that kind of pain. It speaks for itself.

Pain was the first thing to arrive in Jaxen’s story, and it has never truly left. It lives in his body and in his home, in the spaces where childhood should be carefree and safe. It shows up in the way his mother types messages through exhaustion, apologizing for bad news as if suffering is something she should soften for others. Pain has become familiar, unwelcome but constant.

Fear followed closely behind. Fear of what comes next. Fear of what the night might bring. Fear of waking up to worse news. Fear of watching your child hurt and having no power to stop it. Fear settles into a parent’s bones and makes even breathing feel like effort. For Randa, fear has become something she carries alongside everything else, never fully setting it down.

Setbacks have been relentless. Missed appointments because transportation fails. Hospital stays that stretch longer than expected. Pain that escalates instead of easing. Each setback feels like a reminder that this fight does not follow rules or timelines. Progress is not guaranteed. Relief is not promised. Every small gain is hard-won, and every loss cuts deep.

And yet, endurance is everywhere in this story. It lives in Randa’s voice, tired but steady. It lives in her choice to keep going even when she is completely exhausted. “I am totally exhausted,” she told me, and there was no drama in the words, only truth.

She apologized for not having a better update, for not being able to offer hope wrapped neatly in good news. She said she wished she could. That kind of honesty takes strength.

Endurance also lives in Jaxen himself. In the way he continues to fight, even when his body is overwhelmed. In the way he shows up to each day without understanding why it hurts so much, without being able to ask for relief, without knowing how many people are praying for him. His fight is quiet, but it is fierce.

Randa said she believes prayer is powerful. She said they need a lot of it. Those words did not sound rehearsed or hopeful for the sake of optimism. They sounded like someone reaching for the only thing left that feels bigger than the pain. Prayer, for her, is not a formality. It is survival.

I don’t know why Jaxen came to my mind right before I went to bed. There was no alert, no update, no reason I could explain. But I’m grateful I listened to that small pull. I’m grateful I reached out to Randa on a night that turned out to be far heavier than anyone could have anticipated. Sometimes presence is the only gift we can offer, and sometimes it arrives at exactly the moment it’s needed.

Hope in this story does not look loud or triumphant. It looks fragile and stubborn. It looks like a mother who, despite exhaustion and heartbreak, still believes that prayer matters. It looks like people who choose to care, even when the situation feels unbearably unfair. It looks like light finding its way into the darkest hours, not to erase the pain, but to remind us that pain is not the only thing that exists.

As the night finally gave way to morning, Jaxen was still fighting. His family was still gathered around him, holding onto each other in the ways only families facing unimaginable hardship can. This is not a story with easy answers or clean endings.

It is a story of suffering, of fear, of setbacks that test the limits of love. But it is also a story of endurance and hope, of a child who continues to fight and a mother who refuses to stop believing.

May our prayers bring comfort to Jaxen and his family in this moment. May they feel surrounded, supported, and held when the weight feels too heavy to carry alone. And may hope, however small it feels tonight, continue to rise where pain has tried so hard to take everything else away.