Once Upon a Wish

by Rachelle Sparks

  Her patience was gone. Her hope was gone. If Tatum died, part of her soul would be gone. Sherry stared at the man above her, who gave her a gentle, apologetic smile.

  “I’ll leave you alone,” he said nicely. “That’s all I needed to hear.”

  “I would like to see Larry,” she told Gay after the chaplain left the room. Larry was their church’s minister and the man who had married Sherry and David nine years before. Sherry grew up in his church, and he had known and loved Tatum from the time she was born. Sherry had always felt a sense of peace in Larry’s presence, a reassurance that everything would be okay.

  “You’ve got to pray for us,” she said, hugging him tightly when he came into the room with David. “Pray that God’s will be done; pray that we stay strong, no matter what happens.”

  Sure that the words “she’s gone” were waiting just around the corner, Sherry bowed her head and closed her eyes, praying harder than she had ever prayed, crying more than she had ever cried, believing deeper than she had ever believed.

  Larry finished the prayer, and within moments, Dr. Shore plunged through the waiting room doors with a shining smile.

  “She’s okay!” he blurted, explaining that either during the exploratory surgery or during intubation at Medical City, a small hole was poked into Tatum’s lung. Her chest cavity had slowly filled with air, pushing her heart to the side and causing it to beat irregularly.

  “I inserted a catheter under her left armpit to release the air,” Dr. Shore said. “We’ve got her stable now.”

  David and Sherry’s hearts were still racing and settling when Sherry wiped her eyes and smirked.

  Okay, God. I will not doubt you again, she said in a silent prayer for Tatum’s transplant the next day. Sherry and David said good-bye to friends and family that night and made their way to the ICU to see Tatum.

  8

  Exhaustion had settled into every bone and muscle in Sherry and David’s bodies and the air around them became thick as they pushed their way down the long hallway. It had only been a matter of minutes since the chaos of the group dissipated, but the silence left Sherry’s eyelids free to fall, and they did. It had been three days since either of them had slept.

  “I can hardly stay awake,” she said as they neared the ICU.

  “Me, too,” David said, suddenly feeling the weight of his head as he struggled to keep it upright. “We’ve just got to hang in there a little longer. Tomorrow is the big day.”

  Sherry smiled and leaned into him as he reached for the door to the ICU.

  “Her meds are maxed out! Call the team in! David and Sherry, we need you to stand back!”

  Shouts from a roomful of doctors and nurses hit them from every direction.

  God, you’ve got to be kidding me! Sherry screamed in her mind. When is this going to end?

  She and David backed up slowly, their strength gone, as their daughter’s stable condition crashed before their eyes, once again. Alarms sounded, switches were flipped, and buttons were pressed on every machine hooked to their little girl, and all they could do was watch. They plopped helplessly onto a short couch by the window at the opposite end of the room, took each other’s hands, and bowed their heads.

  “God, until now I have been asking,” David prayed out loud, angry, his voice shaking. “But now I am telling you. You will keep her through the night. One more night is all she needs before her surgery tomorrow.”

  His prayer became a plea.

  “Just give her that.”

  They silently understood that there was nothing more they could do or say. The turmoil in the room continued, with beeps turning to whispers and shouts dimming to hums, as David and Sherry’s bodies uncontrollably faded and shut down.

  There is nothing more we can do, they reminded themselves again before falling fast asleep. The tears they knew they had left were too weak to fall.

  One calm, steady beep invaded David’s dream three hours later and shot him straight up.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, rubbing his eyes, letting them focus from the bright light of the room. He couldn’t believe he had fallen asleep.

  His voice jolted Sherry from her sleep as he threw a question at a nurse who was calmly checking on their daughter. “How is she doing?”

  “She’s stable and hardly on any meds,” said the nurse, who had apparently taken over the calm of the storm that had occurred just a few hours before. “She’s ready for her transplant today. They’ll take her back to surgery around 3:00 p.m.”

  David just looked at Sherry, any hope of understanding gone.

  “It was that prayer,” he said quietly.

  “It sure was.”

  They spent the day by Tatum’s side, talking to her though they knew she couldn’t hear, stroking her hair though they knew she couldn’t feel, until 3:00 p.m., when doctors arrived to take her to surgery. David and Sherry kissed Tatum’s face as many times as they could before she was wheeled through the doors of the operating room.

  Seven hours later, they got the news from Dr. Randall that the transplant was over, it was a perfect fit, and the new liver was already producing bile.

  Rumble and boom from a furious lightning storm would have gone unnoticed in the wake of the thunderous applause that escaped the waiting room.

  When Sherry and David finally got to see Tatum, Sherry whispered, “It’s almost time to wake her up.” Her eyes uncontrollably filled with tears and in the peaceful quiet of the room where Tatum lay, perfectly still and just as perfectly healthy, the ordeal somehow seemed as though it had never happened.

  After a few hours, David, Sherry, and Gay stood over Tatum as her eyes fluttered open for the first time in several days. Watching his daughter’s eyes open filled David’s with tears, and he wasn’t ashamed to let them fall. Sherry, on the other side of Tatum, held her hand tightly and cried with her husband as their little girl looked between them, her wide eyes searching for answers. A single tear dropped and slid slowly down her right cheek.

  “It’s okay, baby,” Sherry managed. “You’re at the hospital. You were very sick, but you’re okay now. Mommy and Daddy are here. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Everything is okay.”

  “Don’t talk, sweetie,” she continued as Tatum tried to open her mouth to spit out a million questions. “The machine is breathing for you. You can talk later. You’re okay, though, I promise. You’re going to be just fine.”

  David took over and Sherry called her friend Karen, who was now watching Hannah. Sherry told Karen that Tatum was awake and asked her to bring Hannah to the hospital to see her sister. Sherry sat the prayer pager, which buzzed every five minutes, next to Tatum, who stared at it with confusion. Sherry explained that the world had been praying for her. The pager continued buzzing “143” for the next three days. During those three days, David and Sherry did not leave Tatum’s side. They took turns sleeping on the couch while the other sat on a stool next to her bed, holding and rubbing her hand.

  “How long have you been a teacher?” one nurse asked Sherry while filling Tatum’s IV with meds.

  “Seven years,” she said.

  “What grade do you teach?”

  “Sixth-grade math and science.”

  “I bet it’s a lot of fun,” the nurse said.

  “Yes, I love it. It keeps me young,” Sherry replied.

  The small talk comforted Tatum. It brought normalcy to her hospital room, to her life. Confined to a bed with metal rails in a place that smelled like ammonia and Band-Aids made her cry.

  “Are you in pain?” Sherry asked.

  Tatum moved her head back and forth slightly. The nurses made sure to keep her pumped with as much morphine as necessary.

  “It won’t be long until you can tell us what’s wrong,” Sherry said, comforting her daughter. Unable to move, eat, or breathe on her own, Sherry knew that waking to a body that, essentially, no longer worked, had to be the most terrifying thing for her daughter.

  The next day, after dete
rmining that Tatum’s lungs were strong enough to breathe on their own, a group of doctors and nurses came to remove the tube from her throat.

  “Can you talk?” the respiratory therapist asked once the tube was gone.

  “Ouch” was all she said.

  Breathy whispers were all Tatum could manage for several days, and she had to go through the painful process of relearning to swallow. After two days in the ICU, she was moved to the fifth floor of the hospital, where she spent the next ten days undergoing tests and therapy to regain her strength.

  One evening, as Sherry and David watched Tatum sleep, enjoying welcomed quiet time between frequent nurse and doctor visits, Jennifer, a friendly member of Tatum’s transplant team, tapped on the door, walked in, and smiled as she passed Sherry and David. She peered down at Tatum, hoping to find her awake, and decided to share her exciting news with Tatum’s parents instead.

  “You know,” Jennifer said, smiling with childlike excitement, “Tatum qualifies for a wish from the Make-A-Wish Foundation.”

  Was there some sort of miscommunication? Sherry thought. Is Jennifer here to tell us our daughter is dying? Make-A-Wish is for terminal children.

  “Oh, no, no, no,” Jennifer said with one long breath, sensing the worry pouring from David and Sherry’s eyes. “Tatum is just fine,” she reassured them. “The Make-A-Wish Foundation grants wishes for children with life-threatening illnesses. Tatum can wish for anything she wants.”

  “Oh,” Sherry said, letting out an equally long sigh of relief. “Oh, good. That’ll give her something to look forward to!”

  Anything she wants, Sherry thought, repeating Jennifer’s words in her mind. She wondered what their daughter, a little girl full of ideas and imagination, would wish for. When Tatum woke a few hours later, Sherry gave her the good news, and Tatum spent the day thinking about it. She considered shopping with her favorite celebrity, Raven-Symonè, meeting the cast of one of her favorite TV shows, Full House, or meeting the President of the United States.

  “I’d like to meet George W. Bush,” she declared a few days later when a volunteer from the Make-A-Wish Foundation came to visit her at the hospital. She wanted to spend the weekend in the White House, sharing breakfasts and dinners with George and Laura Bush, sleeping in the Blue Room, playing in the gardens, enjoying fancy tea parties.

  But when she learned that a wish to meet the president would involve waiting up to two years for a three-minute meet and greet, Tatum quickly decided on a Disney wish. She would leave this hospital and visit a world where everything was perfect—a world with castles, rides, princesses, and candy.

  For the next few days before Tatum was discharged, she closed her eyes during blood draws and procedures, letting the magic of Disney consume her imagination. She grew stronger every day, with thoughts of riding rides and meeting her favorite princess, Tinkerbell—who Tatum always liked best because “she’s sassy like me”—pulling her through.

  A few nights after Tatum told her parents what she was going to wish for, David, asleep in a sleeping bag on the tile floor, woke up to quiet sobs from Sherry, who was curled up in the foldout chair above him.

  “What’s the matter, baby?” he said, sitting upright.

  “She just looks like a little concentration camp victim,” she said, looking at Tatum, who was sound asleep in her hospital bed. The look of her daughter tore Sherry apart—lethargic, bony, pale. She didn’t deserve to be any of those things. Sherry knew they would be leaving soon, and though filled with hope and faith that Tatum would continue to recover until she was well enough to meet Tinkerbell, the quiet of the night, the moon’s glow on her daughter’s tired face, made everything real.

  “She’s alive,” David reminded his wife with a playful grin. “She’s been clinging to life. We’ve come this far. She’s going to get better. Just give it some time.”

  “I know,” Sherry said through cries. “It’s just so hard to see her this way.”

  “I know,” David assured her. “But things will only get better from here.”

  9

  Back at Give Kids The World Village, Sherry continued writing in her journal.

  I find myself feeling angry at the idea of Tatum suffering anymore. She looks panicked at the idea of going back to the hospital and stressed about the idea of knowing what to expect. She almost knows too much now. I watch her sleep and I just cry. I’m so thankful she’s still alive and that we’re still a whole family. I think we’re still in shock at all that’s happened, and we feel so uncertain about our future.

  They had lived the past week worry-free, doctor-free, and carefree. It was the first time in nine months that they felt like a “normal” family again. After Tatum’s transplant surgery, the roller-coaster ride doctors predicted was scarier and more intense than anything they ever could have imagined.

  Her body’s rejection of its new liver three different times, a severe C. difficile infection that resulted in damage to her digestive tract, and a constant battle to regulate meds and keep her body from rejecting the liver once again, were the deepest dips; exhilarating climbs came only from rare days spent between hospital stays.

  With physical and occupational therapy, Tatum relearned to breathe on her own, swallow, and walk, and when she was discharged from the hospital after her transplant surgery, her first-grade education continued at home, where she was able to be until her health declined and she was readmitted to the hospital again.

  After eight months of that terrifying ride, spending more time in hospital rooms than at home, Tatum and her family were finally able to start thinking about taking this trip to Florida—a trip they had to cancel once before when Tatum’s health had made yet another turn for the worse.

  This trip was supposed to be the beginning of their happily ever after. It was everything Tatum and her parents needed after what they had gone through, and it was the greatest blessing of their lives. As a family, they had escaped death, stepped off the roller coaster that tested their endurance, proved their determination, and landed safely on solid ground.

  The lump Tatum had found under her armpit shook that solid ground, opening an abyss to the unknown yet again. After her transplant surgery, doctors had warned Sherry and David that post-transplant cancer was always a possibility—not likely, but a possibility. Sherry had told Tatum that the lump was probably a clogged sweat gland, but she knew in her gut, in the deepest part of her soul, that it was cancer.

  Letting the pain Sherry felt drip from her face onto the pages, she continued writing in her journal and ended with a written prayer.

  Dear God, protect Tatum’s health and her liver. Bring Hannah peace and a sense of security. Thank you for this trip and the healing it has brought to our family.

  They left the fairy tale they had been living in Florida and returned home to Dallas, where they scheduled an appointment immediately at Children’s Hospital to get the lump checked out.

  A few days later, on their drive to see Dr. Mittal at Children’s, Sherry wondered what she would fix for dinner that night; it was the only worry she felt she could handle. She pushed the possibility of Tatum getting admitted to the hospital out of her mind, letting herself focus only on the fun and freedom she and her family had just experienced at Give Kids The World Village. She wasn’t ready to let go of the idea that life could remain that way. But when doctors admitted Tatum that very day, Sherry knew it was time, time to let go of their trip as the start of their “happily ever after.” Instead, she would look at it as a reminder of what life would be like after they beat cancer. It was time, once again, to fight, as the whirlwind they had escaped pulled back, circling and suffocating them.

  “Did you pack your bags?” Dr. Mittal asked.

  Sherry nodded. “They’re always in our car.”

  A few days later, after extensive testing and agonizing hours of waiting, Dr. Mittal’s mouth moved in slow motion, his words a useless hum, as fancy medical terms fell and landed upon unwilling ears.

 
; “Is she going to live or die?” Sherry interrupted, her eyes like stone.

  “She has PTLD—post-transplant lymphoma disorder,” the doctor said, referring to lumps they had found in Tatum’s armpit, in her ribcage, and along the walls of her rectum. “This could be serious.”

  Ten days after being admitted, Tatum sunk into her hospital bed and remained there. “How are you feeling, baby?” Sherry asked. Nothing.

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” Silence.

  “C’mon, Tate, you need to talk to us.”

  For two weeks, Tatum looked out her window and rolled or closed her eyes when nurses came in to take her blood, change her IV, or give her the medicine she needed to fight the cancer.

  She was defeated, and it frightened Sherry. The spirit of her lively, energetic daughter was dead.

  “Wooooo-wooooo-woooo,” Tatum heard from down the hall. She gave the first smirk Sherry had seen in weeks as she turned her head toward the doorway.

  Nurse John skidded to an imaginary halt and pretended to put his ambulance into park. He got his needles and gloves ready and attempted to make a breakthrough with his young patient.

  “Done anything cool lately?” he asked playfully.

  Tatum gazed at the pink princess tiara hanging in her hospital room. “Yeah,” she started, then sat up a little and didn’t stop. She told Nurse John stories of the princesses she had met on her Wish trip, the lines for the theme park rides where she and her family had been escorted to the front, the banana splits they ate for breakfast, the six-foot-tall rabbit, the carousel, her eighth birthday party with the princesses, and the free pizza they could order at any time, day or night.

  “One time, the delivery guy had on a crystal watch and a three-piece suit!” Tatum exclaimed excitedly.

  She was back.

  From that point on, she made every nurse and doctor sit in her room’s rocking chair for pre-poke, pre-test, or pre-procedure story time. She was reliving her wish and taking the rest of the family there with her. It was the only normalcy she had experienced in nearly a year, and the mere thought that life could become the healthy, fun-filled destination she had experienced on her Wish trip made her fight for it.