Endless Love.

As Nick Schmidt's body grew weaker as he battled cancer, the bond he shared
with Bahar Mallah grew stronger

By Duaa Eldeib, Tribune reporter
5:55 PM CST, December 12, 2010
When Nick Schmidt and Bahar Mallah were introduced, he told her he was sick.

At a bar after an Illini game on a chilly night in October 2008, she asked
him why he wasn't drinking. Cancer, he explained. That was typically when
such conversations ended.

But Mallah stuck around long enough for him to ask whether he could buy her
a drink instead.

"'I have cancer, but I'll buy you a drink?'" Mallah recalled saying to him.
"'That's your line? That's a horrible, horrible line.'"

Their first date was on Halloween. They grew happy fast. By November, the
couple had made lists of promises to each other.

He pledged to tell her he loved her every day, to play with her hair, to
trust her. She vowed never to let the petty things get in the way, to be
patient, to stay focused on the big picture.

They flew to Costa Rica, biked to Wisconsin, watched movies on their couch.

On Oct. 11, Schmidt, 31, and Mallah, 32, married. He wore Nikes to the
wedding. She was in 4-inch heels.

They were husband and wife for 51 days before the cancer killed him.

A week after Schmidt's Dec. 1 death, Mallah sat in their third-floor
Edgewater walk-up, where her wedding dress still hangs in the bedroom. She
ran her hand across a picture of his face.

"Ahh," she said as she wept softly. "I just love him."

Like their marriage, their journey together seemed to last but for a sweet
moment.

Schmidt's initial prognosis in 2008 wasn't good — six months to live, or a
meager 10 percent chance he'd see Christmas. Doctors diagnosed him with a
rare and aggressive form of sarcoma.

He took oral chemotherapy daily and for a while was summoned to Louisville,
Ky., every three weeks for an intense, 24-hour course. When one round fell
on New Year's Eve, Mallah snuck some lights, a dress and a pair of fancy
shoes into the hospital room.

Despite it all, he didn't act sick. Mallah kept buying tickets for things —
movies, concerts, trips to see her family in Baltimore — and he kept
showing up.

They were blissfully in love, but they weren't naive. Mallah works as a
pharmaceutical rep who specializes in cancer medicine. Before she even met
Schmidt, she knew how to change an IV and manage a port.

Schmidt had no interest in knowing. He put his faith in God and his trust in
her. If anything could be done, she would do it. Mallah sought the advice
of Chicago's medical oncology community, many members of which she knew well
through her daily work visits. Not only did her job provide an added level
of know-how, it gave her hope.

"There are people who beat this," she would think. "Why can't he be one of
them? Every new treatment he was on didn't exist when he was on the
treatment before that. There will come a time when science is going to catch
up, so (we) should keep trying."

Even before Mallah came into his life, Schmidt was determined not to
surrender to the cancer.

Born and raised in Champaign, he had always been the outgoing, comical type.
He started swimming when he was 5 and didn't stop until doctors banned him
from entering the water because of his sickness. Growing up an only child,
he delivered newspapers, played in the church band and was once accused of
TP'ing his high school. (The mountain of toilet paper rolls in the trunk of
his Blazer didn't help his case.)

Schmidt graduated with an accounting degree and an MBA from Eastern Illinois
University, where he still holds a swimming record. His conditioned body
would prove among his greatest allies in the battle that followed.

He worked as an accountant in Champaign, but his passion had nothing to do
with crunching numbers. He video-blogged constantly, often with a goofy grin
, even while an IV dripped cancer drugs into his bloodstream.

His mother, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and got around in a
wheelchair for much of her life, was the glue that kept the family together.
"He would tell his mom things that he wouldn't even think of telling me,"
said his dad, Bob, 71.

Sharon Schmidt died of heart complications about a year and a half before
her son was diagnosed.

"It was like somebody hit me with a hammer," Bob Schmidt, choking back tears
, said of his son's devastating news. "We decided we'd pray for it, and we
were going to beat it. He and I agreed on one thing: We were both happy
Sharon wasn't here."

He had one question after his son told him he wanted to marry Mallah — the
strong-willed, independent daughter of Persian-Muslim immigrants.

"What took you so damn long?"

Schmidt had fallen hard, but still, he was hesitant. He compiled a photo
book of their whirlwind romance — including a shot of the first time they
met — and spelled out, letter by letter, "Will you marry me" at the top of
each page. It took him nine months to give it to her.

"He didn't want to make me a widow," Mallah said.

Her mother's reaction, when she first told her she was dating a guy with
advanced cancer, was worry. Even after they got engaged, a mother's rightful
moment of unadulterated joy, Mehry Mallah's heart ached for her only
daughter and her inevitable fate.

But when the family got to know Schmidt — really know him — they adored
him.

"He was such a wonderful guy," Mehry Mallah said. "He was so gentle, kind,
polite and very loving of Bahar. We understood."

No one could deny it. Their love was the kind for which people spend a
lifetime searching.

"I already love you," she told him. "I'm already committed. It's going to
suck regardless, so be my husband."

He proposed a week after she spoke those words. Marriage, they agreed, was
an opportunity to share their love with friends and family and have it
acknowledged in the eyes of God.

"He loved me," she said. "Why would I reject that? It doesn't make any sense
. Even now that he's gone. Even now that I'm in so much pain."

Her eyes filled with tears and her voice trailed. "Why would you reject that
?"

A month before the wedding, he could barely walk. Doctors feared he wasn't
going to make it, but he ignored them. The Lincoln Park wedding was granted
by the nonprofit organization Wish Upon a Wedding. It combined her family's
Persian traditions, their books — a Quran and a Bible — and an unwavering
belief in Schmidt and his motto: Faith. Success. Recovery.

On that fall day, the fog lifted, the sun shone bright and butterflies
landed on Mallah's dress.

When Schmidt's health prevented them from heading to Costa Rica for the
honeymoon, Mallah surprised him with the chance to meet a beluga whale at
Shedd Aquarium. He stood for 45 minutes, stroked the gentle mammal and
thanked his wife for what he called a life-changing experience.

Even then, she didn't notice the jaundice or the gaunt frame that had lost
60 pounds. She saw the man she first fell in love with that October evening.

When he died less than two months later, their wedding planner coordinated
his memorial service.

For a brief moment at the hospital in those final hours, Mallah huddled in a
corner and started screaming. Then she reminded herself what they shared,
held his hand and whispered that she loved him.

"Who gets loved that much?" Mallah recently asked before heading out wearing
Schmidt's oversize peacoat and fiddling with his wedding band, now wrapped
around her right ring finger.

In the days following his death, her mother told her it was true love.

Mallah responded that he was going to be her husband forever.

"I know," her mother said.

"But I miss him," Mallah said.

"I know you do," her mother replied.