Once Upon a Wish

by Rachelle Sparks

“Does it hurt, sweetie?” she asked, keeping calm.

  “A little,” Tatum admitted as she looked up at her mom.

  Sherry could see the concern in her daughter’s eyes, so she gave a reassuring smile before stopping to take a look.

  “Lift your arm up and let me see,” Sherry said, and David bent down next to Sherry with Hannah asleep in his arms.

  They each felt the lump under Tatum’s right arm.

  “It’s probably just a clogged sweat gland from all the running around you’ve been doing,” Sherry said with a teasing tone. “I’ve had that happen before.”

  “Okay,” Tatum said, and they finished their walk to the villa in silence.

  During the last two days of Tatum’s Wish trip, the Null’s spent their time exploring nearly every theme park in Florida, swimming at the village, playing miniature golf at Marc’s Dino Putt, and living in a fantasy world that could have been taken straight from the pages of a fairy tale.

  “Are you girls ready to go home tomorrow?” Sherry asked on the last night of their trip.

  “I wish we could live here!” Hannah said, and Tatum agreed.

  “Well, get a good night’s sleep tonight and we’ll see you in the morning,” David said before slowly shutting the bedroom door, leaving a crack for light to seep in.

  For fear of the girls overhearing, David and Sherry had spent the past couple of days avoiding a discussion about the lump under Tatum’s arm. After tucking them into bed, David gave Sherry a tight hug, kissed her on the forehead, and smiled slightly before heading to the rocking chair on the front porch of their villa. Sherry watched as he sat down with heavy shoulders and glistening eyes.

  She curled up on their bed with a glass of wine and her journal, and barely touched the pen to the page when an orange flame caught her eye and made her look up. The intensity of the small blaze dissipated quickly and smoldered into a red glow with each puff that David took. It was a weakness he hid from the girls; a nerve-calming secret he kept for times like these. Sherry watched as he sat in the dark, gray swirls dancing around her husband’s head. That was David’s release, and she needed hers. As she began to write, her throat, swollen from seized tears, opened the moment she let them fall.

  I don’t want to go to back to the hospital. It hurts my heart to think of Tatum enduring more procedures and possibly cancer. I’m scared about this lump under her arm, but I’m hoping it is just a swollen sweat gland. That is what I am telling her for now. She is feeling terrible, but she is still having the time of her life. Thank you, Make-A-Wish. I look around and see all these wonderful children and their families, and I realize the intensity of the world we’ve entered—a chronically ill one.

  Sherry closed her eyes and let her pen rest on the page. Like a movie in fast-forward mode, images of what Tatum had been through less than a year before entered her mind uncontrollably as she opened her eyes and stared at the page.

  2

  TEN MONTHS EARLIER …

  One March morning, Sherry’s dad, or “Granddad” as the girls called him, stopped by the house for breakfast.

  “What are your plans when you get to San Antonio?” he asked. It was almost spring break, and the Nulls were planning a vacation in San Antonio, Texas, about five hours south of their home in Dallas.

  “We’re taking the girls to SeaWorld and having dinner with Shamu, which they’re really excited about,” Sherry said. “We’ll take them to the Alamo, and …”

  She stopped and stared at her father. “What’s the matter, sweetie?” he said.

  “Did you hear that?” She turned her head toward the back of the house. The faint sound of coughing and gasping came from the hallway.

  “It sounds like Tatum has a cough,” David started, but Sherry had already jumped from her chair and was racing to the bathroom.

  She found Tatum curled around the toilet, hair hanging toward the front of her face as her little body jolted and released with violent waves. Sherry held her hair and rubbed her back, which was damp with sweat.

  “It’s okay, baby,” she repeated until Tatum finished.

  She helped her up, put her back into bed, and joined her father at the table.

  “The flu has been going around her school,” Sherry explained.

  She and David spent the rest of that Saturday afternoon keeping a close eye on Tatum, feeding her crackers and Sprite, but nothing stayed down. If it was a twenty-four-hour stomach flu, she would be fine by Sunday morning. After a long Saturday night, Tatum woke up Sunday feeling better.

  “I guess we’ll head out tomorrow,” David said, and on Monday afternoon they shoved the last suitcase into their Toyota Sequoia.

  “We’re all set,” he said, and Sherry strapped Hannah into her car seat in the center of the second row. Tatum crawled into the “way back,” a third row of seats that made her feel independent. David watched as she slowly swung one leg over and rested on the top of the seat for a moment before flopping into the back.

  “You okay, Tate?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she managed, and then rested her head on the pillow she had taken from her bed, reached for her portable DVD player, and turned on Bambi, her favorite movie at that time.

  “You still feeling a little weak?” he asked, and she nodded a small yes. “Well, just take a little nap and you’ll feel better when you wake up, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, slowly blinking her eyes to fight falling asleep.

  Sinking into the layers of pillows, Tatum disappeared and remained quiet. Hannah snacked, Sherry dozed, and David drove in the welcomed silence, listening to the radio. A few hours down the road, Tatum spoke for the first time.

  “My tummy hurts again,” she said, holding her stomach with both hands.

  David looked back at her through the rearview mirror and saw the top of her head. A few wisps of blond curls blew gently in the breeze of the air conditioning. He angled the mirror down to get a closer look at her face, which had turned white. She proceeded to throw up all the way to San Antonio.

  They pulled up to the hotel around 5:00 p.m. and checked in. David and Sherry hoped Tatum was just suffering from the flu and it would pass by morning. Sherry tucked Tatum into bed while David made three trips to the car for their luggage—they had never been light packers. Exhausted, David and Sherry climbed into bed a few hours later and slept until 1:00 a.m., when David woke to hear Sherry in the bathroom with Tatum.

  “Is she sick again?” he asked, growing very concerned. His eyes adjusted to the glow of the bathroom light pouring into the pitch blackness of the hotel room. He sat up and watched Sherry lift Tatum and carry her back to bed. She knelt and flicked on the lamp on the nightstand.

  “She’s not doing very well. She’s …”

  Sherry’s words hung in the silence. She quickly cupped Tatum’s face with both hands, gently turned her head toward the light, and held her eyes wide open. She bent down toward Tatum’s face and looked up at David, terrified.

  “The whites of her eyes are yellow.”

  “Why don’t we drive home?” David asked, feeling the seriousness of the situation pound through his veins. He suggested taking Tatum to her regular pediatrician, Dr. Leslie Moore, the next morning. “If we leave in the next hour, we’ll get home right around the time his office opens in the morning.”

  By 2:00 a.m., they were packed and on the road back to Dallas. Tatum continued throwing up every ten minutes until a few hours passed and they were in Austin. When she finally fell asleep, David thought to himself, Now watch, she’ll sleep and wake up wanting to have dinner with Shamu. He smiled at the irony. The thought of her waking up and feeling better also made him smile.

  They made it home shortly after 7:00 a.m. and put the girls to bed while they waited for Dr. Moore’s office to open. When it did, they were able to receive the first available appointment at 9:00 a.m.

  When Sherry went to wake Tatum, there was no response.

  “C’mon sweetie, it’s time to go,” she said soft
ly. “Tatum, we’re going to the doctor now. It’s time to get up.”

  Tatum’s entire body moved fluidly beneath Sherry’s fingertips with every gentle nudge she used to try and wake her.

  “C’mon, baby, wake up!” she said in a louder voice, growing more urgent with panic. She shook her shoulders and pulled at her arms. “Tatum, wake up!”

  David came running into the room.

  “Oh, God, she won’t wake up!” Sherry nearly screamed as David yelled, “Tatum! Wake up …! Wake up!”

  He felt for a pulse and shouted, “She’s breathing!”

  “We’ve gotta go!” Sherry said, and David scooped little Tatum into his arms and carried her to the car, her limp body dangling and bouncing with every long stride until he laid her on the back seat next to Hannah, whom Sherry had just strapped into her car seat.

  David hit the gas pedal and skidded from the driveway. Homes in their quaint neighborhood whirled by as he tore through the quiet streets, zipping with precision, turning stop signs into suggestions. Freeways leading to Dr. Moore’s office were full but moving as car horns blurred behind them and streetlights, red, yellow, and green, blended to gray with everything else.

  Dr. Moore always writes “She’s fine” on Tatum’s charts, David reassured himself as his eyes searched frantically for the closest parking spot when they got to the office. That’s what he’ll do this time. He’ll wake her up and make everything okay like he always does.

  “You need to get her to Medical City,” was the unexpected response of Helen, a friendly nurse at Dr. Moore’s office who took one look at Tatum when they ran through the front doors. “They have an excellent pediatric center there.”

  They got back into the car, and David sped through red lights, swerved through traffic, and challenged speed limit signs before plunging into the parking lot of Medical City Dallas Hospital a few minutes later. Pulling up to the front doors, he jumped from the car, lifted Tatum carefully from the back seat, and told Sherry to park. With Tatum over his shoulder, David ran, plowing through the front doors.

  “My daughter needs a doctor!” he pleaded.

  “Follow me,” said a triage nurse as she grabbed his shoulder.

  She took him to a large room in the emergency room, where he lay Tatum down on a bed with white sheets. The nurse pulled a curtain around the bed and asked David to come with her.

  God, what’s happening? he wanted to shout. I need to stay with my baby!

  Not knowing what else to do, he followed the nurse’s orders and left Tatum there with the doctors. They found Sherry, and the nurse led them into a small, private waiting room and asked them to sit.

  “Someone will be right with you,” she said gently before closing the door.

  Moments passed and time stood still. Sherry pushed her face into David’s chest as they waited for what came next.

  3

  An hour later, there was a tiny tap on the door.

  David and Sherry turned to see a doctor enter the room.

  “Your little girl is very sick,” said the doctor, who introduced himself as Dr. Mark Miller. “We’re setting her up in the intensive care unit right now and we’ll be running some tests.”

  They wanted answers so desperately, but waiting was all they could do. David had already started a chain of phone calls that resulted in family, friends, and members of their church coming to visit. Dan Stevens, their friend and church pastor, and his wife, Kelli, one of Sherry’s best friends, came to visit. They said they would take Hannah for however long David and Sherry needed them to watch her, and Sherry looked at Kelli with grateful eyes.

  Sherry went to greet those who had come to offer support, indicating David could stay and wait for the doctor.

  He smiled nervously and said, “I can’t just sit here. I’m going to walk around for a minute.”

  David wandered into a long, lonely hallway and sat. He imagined it as one of those empty hallways on TV shows that groups of doctors run the length of while surrounding a gurney, trying to save a dying person’s life. He shook the vision from his mind. That was the last thing he needed to think about. In real life, doctors were surrounding his own daughter at that very moment, trying to wake her up, testing to see if she was going to live.

  God, this can’t be happening, David thought as he held his eyes tightly shut. It was the first quiet moment since returning to Dallas that he had to actually think about what was happening. This can’t be real, he said to himself.

  He needed to feel Tatum’s touch, to hear her voice. He reached into his pocket, grabbed his cell phone, and listened to a message she had left just a couple of weeks before. He thought it would somehow give him hope.

  “Hi, Daddy! Thank you so much for the playroom. I really, really love it! Thank you!”

  David stared at the white wall in front of him, arms crossed, lips curling into a small smile as tears filled his eyes. Tatum’s arms had stretched as wide as they could reach, chin pointed toward the ceiling, when he had announced that the room was finally finished and asked if she’d like to come in and see it. Sitting on the floor in the long, quiet hallway of the hospital, he closed his eyes and pictured how she had stepped through the purple door with a gaping mouth, stood in the middle of the room, and spun, letting colors of the freshly painted walls blur to rainbows until she was nearly too dizzy to stand. Before David had finished the room, Tatum spent countless hours circling the newly installed hardwood floor on her scooter with Hannah in tow on her tricycle. They had placed a pile of their favorite stuffed animals in the center and circled like a carousel before serving tea and sitting down with the animals for a picnic.

  When the room was complete, the furniture, old and new, was placed neatly and the bright yellow walls were decorated with handcrafted pictures, pink shelves, and giant flowers painted in the brightest colors. Hot pink curtains hung over windows lined with green trim and were swooped and tied to the side, letting bright Texas sunlight into the room every morning.

  Tatum and Hannah had always shared a room, so as Tatum got a little older and needed her own space, David and Sherry decided to squeeze the home office into their bedroom and give each of the girls a room of their own—a place to create, to share, and to imagine. David scraped the popcorn ceiling, tore out the twenty-year-old carpet, replaced the doors and moldings, added a ceiling fan, and painted the retextured walls with colors like “forest sunrise” and “enchanted coach ride.” Tatum loved that room, and she was never shy to wrap her arms around her parents’ waists and tell them how grateful she was.

  Silence around him, alone, David watched as the long, skinny arms of a round, starch-white clock with black numbers ticked loudly. Each tick felt like an hour. He let out a long, breathy sigh and stood.

  Then he paced.

  He pressed the button on his phone to hear Tatum’s message again.

  “Hi, Daddy! Thank you so much for the playroom. I really …” he slapped the phone shut and squeezed it. Her voice was too real; the images of her face too clear. The thought of her leaving that message made the feeling of wanting her to be okay too overwhelming. So he sat with his eyes closed, praying that when he opened them he’d be somewhere, anywhere, but in that hallway.

  “Dan is asking that we go and pray with Tatum,” Sherry said, and David’s eyes shot open to the reality of their situation. He hadn’t even heard her coming. The thought of seeing Tatum, of touching her hand, of being in her presence, filled him with hope as he followed Sherry to where Dan and Kelli waited.

  4

  The girl whose personality drew people to her when she walked into a room lay there quietly, eyes closed. David and Sherry stood in disbelief. Pale and fragile, with attached IVs draped over the rails of her bed, Tatum seemed like somebody else’s little girl lying there. But no, she was theirs, and this was real.

  Sherry reached for Tatum’s hand and stared at her face, thinking of the time the two of them spent together in New York City when Tatum was five. The thought made her
smile through her tears. While dancing in circles down the streets of the city, Tatum sang songs from The Lion King, a Broadway musical they had seen the night before. People stared; some laughed, most applauded.

  “Is she in a show?” they rightfully asked. She belonged on stage.

  “No, not exactly,” Sherry said, laughing. “She’s just in a world of her own.”

  “Well, she should be,” one woman said. Her wise eyes creased when she smiled. “She just glows with joy.”

  The same face that served as a canvas for an artist in Central Park to create a brilliantly colored butterfly with a wingspan stretching from one side of it to the other was now white and nearly lifeless.

  “Everybody, join hands,” Dan said, jolting Sherry from her thoughts. The four of them formed a circle around Tatum and tightly held hands. Dan began to pray, and Tatum’s chest, which had remained so still, suddenly lifted with his words. Her breaths, which had been so quiet, sounded like whispers filling the room. As Dan finished the prayer, Sherry leaned toward her daughter’s face and said, “It’s okay, baby, calm down. Just rest.” The prayer filled them with strength, and they knew they were not in this alone.

  “Okay, you can come with me,” said a short Indian man who introduced himself as Dr. Patel a few minutes later.

  David and Sherry followed him into another small conference room where Dr. Patel sat them down and asked, “Do you have a faith?”

  Before Tatum was born, David would have proudly answered “no.” He had chosen to fall away from the Christian beliefs he was raised with—until seven years ago when Tatum was born. He looked into her eyes that day, and she had turned him back into a believer.

  “Yes, we are Christian,” he told Dr. Patel. With a slightly tilted head and questioning eyes, David stared.

  “Now would be a good time to start praying,” the doctor said gently. “All we know is that it looks like her organs are shutting down.”

  “Shutting down?” Sherry cried. “Everything was fine a few days ago! She’s never been sick in her life!”