Once Upon a Wish

by Rachelle Sparks

  Her hair clung to the back of her sticky neck that afternoon as the doctor’s voice and others reached for her. Their words sank and resurfaced as she fought to put them together. Whispers calling her name floated by while the steady beeps of a monitor grew louder and sharper, becoming real. Big, brown eyes that had been hiding beneath their lids for the past eleven hours began twitching as jumbled voices became one.

  “Brittney, it’s time to wake up. Can you hear me?”

  It was the voice of the man who had delivered the most painful news she had ever received in her twelve years of life, and though it was a familiar voice, she strained to remember the face to which it belonged. Her eyes stayed closed as one clear thought repeated in her mind: You’re awake, keep your promise, she demanded of herself. Keep your promise, Brittney.

  The doctor’s voice faded as her mental strength crawled into the deepest realm of her consciousness, clinging to a little voice that had turned her into the resilient, independent young girl she was. That voice begged her to gain the strength she knew she needed to keep the promise she had made to her mother. A powerful internal force pushed through the thickness of her mind, sending signals to the tips of her toes. Her feet pushed slowly through the tucked covers at the end of the bed and her toes, painted a loud shade of green, curled.

  Dr. Meltzer’s eyes grew wide as he watched them bend back and forth slowly before becoming an unmistakable, intentional wiggle. He was the one who had told Brittney only days before that the odds of her becoming paralyzed from the surgery were even greater than the odds of her dying. Now she was moving all of her toes, and he watched in awe in that quiet hospital room.

  Staring at his little patient, Dr. Meltzer ran a hand through his pointy black hair and covered his gaping mouth with the other as a second miracle unfolded.

  Brittney, with eyes still closed, slowly lifted both arms into the air, fists leading the way, and popped her white-tipped, manicured thumbs toward the ceiling, giving the most determined thumbs up the doctor had ever seen.

  Dr. Meltzer finally left Brittney’s side and raced to the hospital waiting room where T’Ann sat with her family, including Brittney’s father, Charlie, and T’Ann’s boyfriend, Andy.

  “She kept her promise,” Dr. Meltzer said, surprise and delight in his voice.

  The eleven hours it took T’Ann and Charlie to hear those words were the longest hours of their lives. Filling the minutes and seconds with puzzles and nail biting, crying and pacing, it felt as though eleven years had passed.

  2

  Brittney’s promise was born from a nightmarish time that began one sunny Mother’s Day afternoon in 2001, when T’Ann discovered that her perfectly healthy twelve-year-old daughter had an eleven-inch tumor woven around her cervical spine.

  Complaints of a sore neck and numb fingers had resulted in a few visits to Dr. Meltzer, a neurosurgeon at Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego, who confirmed his suspicion with an MRI and diagnosed Brittney with a tumor so rare it hadn’t been given a name.

  Days inevitably passed after T’Ann and Brittney received the news, but time had stopped and the world no longer looked the same. The guarantee of Brittney’s growing up, going to college, getting married, and having children had been taken away. She was about to turn thirteen and complete the seventh grade, but there was no way to know if she would make it to the eighth. The last trip they had made to the desert to camp and ride dirt bikes might have been just that—her last. This was a time when T’Ann thought her daughter, who was stronger and more self-assured than T’Ann had ever been, might lose all hope and claim defeat before putting up a fight. But Brittney had decided that losing wasn’t an option.

  “I’d like to get fake fingernails, Mom,” she said softly one night shortly after finding out about the tumor. “I’ve always wanted to do it, and I think I’m old enough now. I want to get them done before the surgery so they look nice and pretty for when it’s all over.”

  Her daughter, who seemed to look at this surgery as an obstacle in her life rather than a possible end, stared up at T’Ann with a hopeful and teasing smile. It was hard to believe she was the same tomboy who loved camping and hiking. She was the girl who played Barbies in the dirt and couldn’t pass a puddle, muddy or not, without jumping into it.

  “Fake nails?” T’Ann said, hardly able to form the words. “You’re not old enough to get those. You can get your hair cut and I’ll take you to get a pedicure. If you want, you can get a manicure, too, but no fake nails.”

  Brittney’s persistence didn’t surprise her mom. It was the same persistence she had shown on her first birthday when she decided it was time to eat Mickey Mouse cake instead of open presents. When Brittney was five, T’Ann started letting her decide what clothes she would wear to school. She would put together three outfits and let Brittney pick the one she’d like to wear. When her mom left the room, Brittney would put on a top from one outfit and the bottoms from another and insist on going to school with stars and stripes and mismatched colors.

  Well, I told her she could pick out her outfit, T’Ann would remind herself and laugh quietly as she dropped her colorful daughter off at school every morning.

  This innate determination to get what she wanted only grew stronger with age, so T’Ann knew Brittney would need to hear the word no a few more times before accepting that she was not getting fake fingernails.

  It was after dinner one evening that T’Ann changed her mind. During the week between finding out about Brittney’s tumor and the day of the scheduled surgery, she and Brittney found endless ways to spend their days together just in case they were their last. They cuddled and watched movies, baked, played games, and did puzzles.

  Brittney, T’Ann, and her boyfriend, Andy, sat one evening with a bright, spirited woman named Patty, who had changed Brittney’s diapers and earned the title of “Grandma” rather than “friend of the family” during the course of Brittney’s life. As the four of them put together a puzzle that, in the end, would bring to life a small dolphin jumping out of the ocean, there was a moment of silence between stories and laughter when Andy turned to T’Ann with a thoughtful look.

  “You should let her do it,” he said.

  “Do what?”

  “Get the fake nails.”

  T’Ann wasn’t sure where it came from, but she looked into Andy’s loving eyes and decided he was right. They had been dating for nearly a year, which was how long it had taken Brittney to get past the stages of hating him, resenting him, warming up to him, eventually accepting him, and finally loving him.

  “All right,” T’Ann said, turning to Brittney. “You can get those fake nails.”

  “Yes! Thanks, Mom …”

  “Hold on a second,” T’Ann said with a look that told Brittney there was more to it than that. “You can get those nails if you make me a promise.”

  She stared with intense eyes at her beautiful daughter then leaned toward her delighted face.

  “When you wake up from this surgery, promise me you will wiggle your toes and give the doctor a thumbs up,” she said, choking out her words as her throat swelled.

  Though she knew the odds of her daughter’s waking from the surgery, and the chances of her ever walking or moving her arms again if she did, were very slim, she believed it was a promise Brittney could keep. T’Ann’s eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t blink—she kept them on her daughter as she squeezed her small hands and waited for an answer.

  “Done,” Brittney said without hesitation, turning back to the puzzle. She glanced quickly at Andy and gave a small smile.

  “Thanks, Bunk,” she said to Andy, a nickname she had given him that referred to a contestant from one of her favorite reality shows, Big Brother.

  3

  The assurance in Brittney’s answer that night had put T’Ann at ease, and now, staring at Dr. Meltzer in the doorway of the hospital, she fell to her knees and sobbed as her family collapsed beside her, wrapping their arms around her shaking body. B
rittney had kept her promise, and now T’Ann was breaking hers. She had promised Brittney from the beginning of all of this that she would be strong and never let her tears fall.

  “You’re not allowed to cry and neither is anybody else,” she had told T’Ann the afternoon they came home from the hospital after hearing the MRI results. “I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  It was profound coming from a twelve-year-old, and T’Ann resorted to saving her tears for the pillow at night. But in the waiting room of the hospital, she knew the “no crying” rule did not apply; these were tears of joy and relief. So she let them fall, long and hard down her reddened face, letting them drip from the bottom of her chin onto the polished tile floor. Dr. Meltzer placed a hand on her shoulder and gave her the rest of the news.

  “We were able to remove half of the tumor,” he said with a serious yet compassionate voice. “During surgery, we tested several pieces, and results came back benign in some tests and malignant in others. This tumor has obviously lived a long time inside your daughter.”

  “Is that even possible, for a tumor to be both malignant and benign?” T’Ann asked.

  “No, it isn’t, so we’re going to send samples of the tumor out for more testing.”

  He paused and took another breath. “Brittney’s in the ICU right now and our next step is to get her off the breathing machine.”

  T’Ann didn’t know what the steps after that would be or how she would find the strength to take them. She just knew Brittney had survived the surgery and was on her way to fighting a larger battle, and T’Ann was determined to make sure they won.

  As Dr. Meltzer spoke, she felt dizzy and suddenly anxious. She needed to see her daughter, to hold her and make sure she was okay. She wanted so badly to see Brittney’s shining smile and bright eyes, to hear her laugh and see her run around. So when Dr. Meltzer took T’Ann to Brittney’s room, where she was lying still in a hospital bed covered in white linens, IVs spilling from the creases of her arms, she stood in the doorway, covering her mouth while every ounce of sorrow and worry and sadness inside of her escaped.

  She wept into her shaking hands and pushed her face hard into Andy’s chest, waiting for the pain to pass. Just weeks ago, her baby girl was a healthy, active seventh grader passing notes in class, her entire life ahead of her.

  But everything had changed. Now she was lying in a cold room, alone, waiting to hear whether she was going to live or die. Dying shouldn’t be an option for a twelve-year-old. As T’Ann stared at Brittney through the tears in her eyes, she collected herself, somehow, for her daughter’s sake.

  Brittney’s closed eyes twitched and she knew her mother was there. T’Ann could feel it. The bond they shared had never been tighter, and it would only get tighter from that point forward. With a gentle hand, T’Ann touched her daughter’s cheek, tucked her hair behind her ears. She held her hand, careful not to bump the IVs, and Brittney squeezed it back.

  She knows I’m here, T’Ann thought, forcing back threatening tears. It would take time and patience to know what to do next, and she had plenty of both. Suddenly her full-time job became a little detail, and little details meant nothing. All that mattered now was her daughter’s survival.

  Two hours after the surgery, Dr. Meltzer took Brittney off the breathing machine, which he had thought she would need for at least three days, confirming his belief that she was a fighter. She spent one week in the ICU, motionless, keeping her neck still in its brace, while T’Ann slept curled up in a chair behind her bed, never leaving her side. Brittney had five hundred dissolvable stitches beneath her skin and one hundred lining the back of her neck from her hairline to the middle of her shoulder blades. They itched with miserable persistence, but she remained still.

  “On a scale from one to ten, how bad is the pain?” asked a friendly nurse the first day Brittney was in the ICU. There was skepticism in the nurse’s voice. She obviously had not believed Brittney’s answers in the past.

  “I’d say, two,” Brittney said with determination that did not quiver.

  “I need an accurate number,” the nurse said.

  Brittney glanced at the ceiling. “Five.”

  “That’s better. But I have a feeling it’s a little more than that.”

  Brittney would have shrugged if she was able, but her eyes spoke instead. It was much more than five. Much worse than ten. But she could handle it. Nobody needed to worry about her.

  “Okay, I’ll be back to check on you in a little while,” the nurse said before leaving the room.

  “Brittney, why won’t you give her an accurate number?” T’Ann asked.

  “Mom, I can’t be a baby about this,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Her mental strength outweighed her physical strength. Her hands, especially her right, were very weak, but as far as she was concerned, it was so minor compared to other possible outcomes that it wasn’t worth fussing over. Still, it was worth spending some time in the physical therapy ward, which, after a week in the ICU, Dr. Meltzer announced would be their next destination.

  “All right, Sunshine,” he said. “You’re doing too well to stay in intensive care. We’re moving you to physical therapy.”

  At times, Brittney felt like a child whose parents had moved her into a mansion with endless rooms to explore and a different name for each. She didn’t know how long she’d be there or what to expect from the physical therapy ward, but she knew a change of scenery would be nice. Dr. Meltzer explained that they would start therapy to help her gain strength in her hands and relearn to walk.

  During her stay there, doctors and nurses came in and wheeled Brittney from her room to take MRIs of her back. She knew they needed to monitor the tumor, and as strong as she had been to that point, Brittney could only pretend that the pain she felt when they simply touched her gurney was not the most she had ever felt in her life.

  With the weight of her head resting on her neck, Brittney let out screams that tore through the room and echoed down the hallways. Those pain-drenched screams haunted T’Ann at night and reminded her of how helpless she felt, how helpless she was.

  Weeks passed slowly in physical therapy as Brittney’s condition improved. She was gaining more strength in her hands, and on her thirteenth birthday she managed to sit upright for the first time since surgery. After a month in the ward, they heard the magic words.

  4

  “We’re sending you home,” Dr. Meltzer said to Brittney and T’Ann one afternoon. “You’ve made great progress since the surgery. You’ll be here often for therapy, and we’ll be monitoring the tumor.”

  He paused, then added, “You’ll have to wear the hard plastic brace for a few months, and then we’ll switch you to the soft collar.”

  T’Ann threw her arms around her daughter and cried. At this point, any little thing, good or bad, set her off, but Brittney was used to it. They held each other while Dr. Meltzer gave them specific instructions to follow once they got home.

  “Keep her walking,” he told T’Ann, and then said to Brittney, “You have to keep walking. We need to build strength up in your neck and your back.”

  She smiled and nodded and promised Dr. Meltzer she would practice walking every day, and he knew she would keep that promise—she hadn’t broken one yet.

  A few nights after going home, T’Ann lit a candle and placed it in the middle of the patio table in her front yard, where she sat with Brittney and Andy for dinner. As the sun was setting behind them, T’Ann stared at her daughter with overwhelming joy that she was back at home where she belonged.

  “How are your hands doing?” she asked. The only thoughts she seemed to have lately were of Brittney’s recovery, and every question she asked reflected those thoughts. Brittney was right-handed, so she found it clumsy and awkward to use her left.

  “I still can’t move them very well,” she said, “but I can move the left one better than the right.”

  She perked up with a mischiev
ous smirk and offered a challenge to Andy and her mom. “Since I have to eat with my opposite hand, why don’t you?”

  They smiled and told her “no problem”, and the three spent the rest of the meal laughing as food fell from their forks and their mouths.

  “See, it’s not as easy as it looks,” Brittney said, satisfied.

  After dinner, she offered another challenge to her mom.

  “Here, wear this and walk with me down the street,” she said, handing T’Ann the soft collar Brittney would wear once she was out of the hard brace.

  Each in a white neck collar, they linked arms and walked clumsily, side by side, down the sidewalk with the glow of overhead street lamps lighting the way. The brace perched their chins high in the air and forced them to walk without looking down, an unnatural way of walking to which Brittney had become accustomed.

  T’Ann, however, stumbled awkwardly over her own feet and threw her arms out to the side when she tripped and nearly fell to the ground. Brittney laughed hysterically and tossed her a smug look that announced her satisfaction.

  “See, Mom,” she giggled. “It’s not that easy.”

  Over the next few weeks, life for Brittney and T’Ann was starting to get back to normal. They took each day as it came, one at a time. That’s all they could do. They spent time relaxing and playing together, walking, and staying as active as possible. They shared mother-daughter talks at night, and T’Ann held her as she fell asleep.

  Nothing bad is ever going to happen to my beautiful girl again, T’Ann thought.

  Brittney’s father, Charlie, from whom T’Ann had been divorced for a year and a half, lived only minutes away and spent the weekends with Brittney.