SAN ANTONIO – In the back of La Villita Assembly Hall, Austin Rains waited to meet his "bone marrow brother" for the first time.
"It makes me feel relieved," Rains said. "I haven't seen him for three years."
The 26-year-old from Dayton, Ohio, flew in to Texas for the first time to meet face-to-face with the now-7-year-old boy he saved with a bone marrow donation, Luke McCormick.
Luke received the transplant in 2014 at Methodist Children's Hospital in San Antonio.
The Be The Match bone marrow registry that paired the two in the first place arranged their meeting at an event sponsored by Methodist Hospital for bone marrow transplant survivors, their families and the Methodist staff who helped treat them.
As Rains walked on stage to meet Luke, the boy handed him a present, a drawing he made. It was a picture of him and Austin. Though, for reasons known only to 7-year-old boys, Luke had drawn himself as a dog.
"It's probably going to go in my office or somewhere. I don't know," said Rains, who described the picture as "awesome."
The picture is a reminder of the awesome gift Rains gave Luke almost three years ago when the two were still strangers. Luke had been diagnosed with a rare, genetic disorder, hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, or HLH, which affects the immune system.
"The way we correct that is through a bone marrow transplant," said Dr. Troy Quigg, Luke's doctor at Methodist Children's Hospital. "Because the bone marrow is where your immune system grows from."
Without a transplant, Quigg said, death is certain for people with HLH.
Unfortunately, Luke's sister, Melody, or his brother, Callum, were not matches for a donor. The family also found out Melody had HLH, but fortunately, Callum was able to donate marrow to her.
The family turned to the Be The Match bone marrow registry operated by the National Marrow Donor Program. That's how the family's future would be placed in the hands of Rains, who a few months before had seen a table for the marrow registry on his college campus.
"I think they were giving out free T-shirts, to be honest with you," he said with a laugh.
With a career in health care, Rains had signed up, thinking, "Why not?" That impromptu decision helped save Luke's life.
Luke's mom, Jennifer McCormick, had talked with Rains before Saturday's in-person meeting. After meeting face-to-face, she said it "just fits." He was part of the family, and it was like he was always supposed to be there.
"Luke calls him his 'bone marrow brother,'" she said. "And it's so fitting because he is. They're a part of each other. They always will be. He will always be a part of our family."
The feeling goes both ways. Sitting with the McCormicks after their first meeting, Rains invited them all to his wedding in Ohio in 2019. After all, it's hard to imagine a wedding without inviting your brother — "bone marrow brother" or otherwise.
