Fascinated by the minnows darting past her legs, Meera wanted to watch their activity from a distance. Alex carried her in his arms and trudged through the clear, warm water’s edge. He placed her back into the water when Zane wanted to see who could venture further into the water without going under. On her tiptoes, Meera squealed and lunged toward her father, who plucked her from the water and back into his arms.
The memory of that moment made Alex smile as he sat with Meera in her New York hospital room, finally back at her side.
7
A couple of months passed. Alex and Zane had returned home to Dallas in January so Alex could work and Zane could continue a somewhat normal, second grader’s life. It tore Alex apart daily to be so far from his daughter, but knowing she was gaining strength and making progress gave him the reassurance he needed to know she was on the path to recovery.
It was the beginning of March when he and Zane returned to New York and stayed for the entire month. Anticipating their arrival, Meera excitedly said to Nita, “I’m gonna show Daddy how strong I am by standing and giving him a hug and kiss when he gets here!”
When the day in early March arrived, Meera dressed in a snow white robe she had received for Christmas and asked Nita to neatly French braid her long, black hair. Meera sat in a chair and waited patiently for Alex to walk through the door. When he did, she silently pushed at the arms of her chair, concentrating. Slowly and steadily, she stood and raised her chin, looking up at her father, intense pride in her eyes.
He had doubted for so many months that this moment would ever come, and when it did, the pure bliss he felt carried him across the room until Meera was wrapped tightly in his arms. He closed his eyes as they filled with tears.
“I am so proud of you, Meera,” he managed.
He sat beside her the rest of the day, listening to stories of how she had grown so strong. She told him about the first time she managed to sit on the edge of her bed, the moment she was able to get out of it, the exercises she had done and the therapy dog, a big, black poodle named Scout, that helped to mobilize her arms.
“I dressed Scout in bandanas and sweaters,” she said, giggling. “She even let me paint her toes pink.”
As Meera spoke, the hope she felt poured into Alex. He knew life would not be the same—she could no longer swim or play sports or live without some worry—but she was alive, and that was all that mattered.
After Meera’s two successful surgeries in March, Alex and Zane returned to Dallas. On Zane’s first day back to school, Alex walked him onto the campus and into Ms. Adams’s second-grade classroom, the same room where Meera had spent her second-grade year—the year she was diagnosed with PH.
Alex pictured her sitting in one of those small desks, raising her hand. He remembered the homework he and Nita helped her with and the stories she would write. Ms. Adams could see the pain on Alex’s face as he remembered the day Meera graduated from fifth grade. The halls had been lined with parents and teachers, clapping and cheering as their soon-to-be middle schoolers proudly paraded down the halls.
The moment Alex and Nita had learned about PH, Meera’s future had become uncertain, the severity of her condition unknown. Graduating from fifth grade was a milestone in her life, and as Alex pictured her smiling face as she walked with her friends down those halls on graduation day, Ms. Adams put an arm around his shoulder and squeezed.
“Those are the memories you should cherish,” she said with a small, encouraging smile.
Blinking back tears before they fell, he knew she was right, but those memories made Alex want Meera home that much more.
On April 16, 2008, Meera was finally released. The automatic doors of the hospital entrance slid open, and she closed her eyes from the shock of the bright sun and lifted her face toward it. She had been in New York for six months but never had a chance to inhale the scent of the city, the smell of freedom, until that moment.
Planters of tulips with rainbow beauty surrounded Meera as Nita wheeled her alongside them. The closest Meera had come to feeling nature’s embrace was the sun’s warmth pouring in through her hospital window during naps she took with Nita on a small couch beneath the window.
On this very special day, she savored every smell, every bird chirp and rustle of leaves, because she knew that the next month would be spent in a New Jersey rehab facility. During that month in New Jersey, she grew strong enough to return to Dallas, where Alex and Zane were waiting.
A group of “Welcome Home” balloons peeked from behind tall, cement pillars in the baggage claim area of the Dallas airport, swaying in the light breeze of scurrying crowds. Alex gripped the balloon strings and a bouquet of flowers in his hand with anticipation, Zane’s hand in his other.
As Meera and Nita approached, they jumped out from behind the pillar and hollered, “Welcome Home!”
Meera, who had always welcomed surprises with as much enthusiasm as getting blood drawn or taking a math test, couldn’t contain her smile. Wrapped in her father’s arms, she was finally home.
When they pulled into their driveway, twenty neighbors and friends waited with a sign Alex had made in the colors of Meera’s bedroom—lavender and lime green—that read, “Welcome Home, Meera!”
Meera’s smiling eyes were back and so was her laugh. The celebration of her return home continued at school when she went back the very next week, just two weeks before the end of sixth grade.
“We missed you!” and “Welcome back!” her classmates hollered, arms in the air, as she walked into her classroom for the first time. They stood and cheered as her jaw dropped, and she covered her cherry-colored cheeks with her hands.
Meera had been out of school for most of the sixth grade, but after a meeting with her parents and teachers, Principal Ann Aston decided to let her take a placement exam to determine whether or not she needed to repeat the sixth grade. Meera couldn’t imagine her friends moving on without her.
She passed the test with high scores and was placed in seventh-grade honors classes.
Alex and Nita believe it was the work Meera had done with Mary Hennigan, an Irish teacher at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, who helped Meera escape to other places—back in time to the Renaissance, into the magical world of Harry Potter—with her readings and lessons.
“She’s been back ten minutes and she’s already showing you up!” teased her sixth-grade math teacher, Mrs. Crawford, who had supported the decision to let Meera take the placement test. Mrs. Crawford had put a problem on the board and let Meera, the only student with a raised hand, share the answer with the class.
8
Life was moving forward, but something invisible, unexplainable, was holding Alex back. He needed some kind of closure from the nightmare they had lived through, and the only place he could think to find it was at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, where Meera had started and nearly ended her battle. He needed to stand in the waiting room, peek into the ICU to reassure himself that it was really over.
During a routine visit, Alex, Nita, Meera, and Zane made their way to the twelfth floor of the hospital, got off of the elevator, and headed down the empty, quiet hallway toward the locked doors of the ICU. The doors suddenly swung open and out walked Dr. Thompson, who slowed in pure shock at the sight of Alex and Nita.
She looked at Meera with disbelief—like she wasn’t the little girl who had failed kidneys and lungs filled with blood the last time she had seen her.
Dr. Thompson’s glossy eyes lit up with her smile as she reached out her arms and hurried toward Meera and her family. She bent down and squeezed Meera’s small body in her arms before looking up at her parents.
“I will never be able to repay you for what you did for our daughter,” Alex said, hugging Dr. Thompson.
“You can repay me by inviting me to her high school and college graduations,” she said with the same confidence she always had when telling Alex and Nita that their daughter would be okay.
“I also want an invitation
to her wedding,” she added softly, winking down at Meera.
The thought of walking his daughter down the aisle brought tears to Alex’s eyes, and he could not speak.
Dr. Thompson’s words, her belief in Meera’s future, were exactly what Alex needed. When they left the hospital, he knew he could finally move on.
Over the next six months, Meera continued physical therapy and made frequent doctor visits, regaining all of her strength and most of the weight she had lost. She walked proudly through life with the Flolan pump attached to her waist, the only reminder that she was ever ill.
In seventh grade, she continued playing the violin and enjoyed Girl Scouts, which she had been involved with since she was eight years old. She never lost her love for science and won first place in the school’s science fair that year—taking her to the district and regional fairs—with a project comparing the UV blocking capabilities of different materials and the energy conservation of each.
Her life, which had nearly ended just a year before, was before her, waiting. She had made it this far, and she was determined to attain every goal, reach every dream. She knew she had survived for a reason—to become a PH doctor and to find a cure for her disease.
9
The breeze, dampened with the scent of ocean and hibiscus, brushed Meera’s skin as she hiked with her family through trails of Iao Valley in Maui, Hawaii. The clouds had parted earlier that morning, rain ceasing nourishment to its forest below for a few short hours. Sunrays stained the blue sky, pouring in streaks from the heavens, breaking through thick, white puffs still hugging the tip of the Iao Needle.
Mist and rainbows lingered in the high skies, but the delicious air surrounding them remained warm and calm and welcoming as they came to the spot where Meera’s young tree would start its new life.
She placed the three-foot-tall native Ho’awa tree on the ground and plunged a shovel into the moist, Maui soil. After a few digs, she handed the shovel to Zane, who plowed into the ground with full force. They removed the tree from its container and placed it into the ground, pushing on its roots, breaking its perfect form, letting it—letting them—become part of the Hawaiian earth.
After planting Meera’s tree, she and her family stood back to look at it, proudly placed along a paved path of Iao Valley State Park, where thousands of field trip students would see it and become inspired by the story of its existence.
“This tree was planted by Meera Salamah in partnership with the Make-A-Wish Foundation,” a plaque staked near the tree announced to the world. It would be there for decades of time, for generations of people to see.
I want a chance to help stop the deforestation of the rain forests that could potentially hold the cure for my disease. Meera’s words repeated in Alex’s mind as he recalled his daughter’s wish from her hospital room more than a year before.
She’s going to change the world, Nita thought proudly, and this was the first step to fulfilling her purpose.
Planting the tree connected Meera and her family to the Hawaiian life they had been experiencing over the past week with luaus, helicopter rides, dinner cruises, submarine rides, whale watching, and walks on the beach. Inspired not only by the beauty of the island but also by the feeling of liberty that signified their entire trip, Alex and Nita gave themselves something they were denied sixteen years earlier.
They had met and fallen in love while attending the University of Texas at Dallas, both studying electrical engineering. Disapproval came from both families—hers from India, his from Lebanon—so they went against their families’ wishes and eloped, giving up their dream of a big wedding.
Now, sixteen years later, love had gotten them through everything, and with the Pacific Ocean as their backdrop, the palm trees spying from above, their two beautiful children by their sides, they decided to renew their vows, barefoot in the sand.
They all dressed in off-white, Alex and Zane in suits, Meera and Nita in flowing dresses, with matching leis of bright, plum-colored flowers. Arms outstretched, hands linked in front of them, Alex and Nita stared at each other and repeated after the preacher.
Alex heard the words his wife was saying, but the true message behind their love, their marriage, was unspoken. The same strength that had gotten him through Meera’s illness poured from Nita’s big brown eyes and into him, and he felt like the luckiest man on earth to have her as his partner through this life.
Alex realized in that moment that some marriages might have fallen apart in the middle of everything they had gone through to save Meera, every difficult moment, every impossible decision, but they had survived.
After the ceremony, the four of them created a single jar of sand together, simultaneously pouring layers of different colors, watching them flow and mix.
Later that day, they walked down the beach as a family, until Zane ran off to explore and Meera lingered behind, feeling the tickle of the sea between her toes. She watched the waves roll and crash, and while she longed to jump into them, to be part of them, she was just thankful to enjoy them from the shore.
Alex watched as the breeze caught Meera’s dress, her hair, and he knew it was time to let go. Meera was free. It finally felt real that there were no more numbers to watch, no more beeps to interpret, no more stats to worry about. The whole family was free.
Watching Meera walk along the sand, Alex remembered taking her mind to the beach with his words when she was ill, and now, here they were, at the place he believed kept her alive. He had reminded her to breathe, to take in the ocean air, and now he could finally do the same.
They all could.
• STORY SIX •
Dakota Hawkins
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
—2 Timothy 4:7
1
“ONE … TWO … three … four …” Dakota said, breathing in slow, steady breaths, air crawling gently, obediently, through his mask.
“Five … six … seven … eight …” Riley continued.
Dakota remained calm, focused, as his eyes sent an unspoken message to his younger brother.
Keep counting, they commanded, his smile, provoking and competitive. Eyes locked, a silent understanding between them, Dakota and Riley continued to count, a fight against the other’s will.
“Nine … ten … eleven …” Dakota continued.
They weren’t on the football field, or racing quads, or preying on the same seven-point deer in the woods. This wasn’t a game of baseball or basketball or “Underwear Olympics” that they played nightly with their father, Henry, in the hallways of their cozy, Cabot, Arkansas, home.
This time, Dakota and Riley were on the same team, fighting the same fight—but it was in their nature, their blood, to keep the competition alive, even during a transplant from one brother to the other.
“Twelve …” Riley nearly whispered into his mask, eyelids pushing down against his mental strength.
Keep counting, he demanded silently. He couldn’t let his brother win.
Dakota had always been the kid in track and field who pulled ahead of the other runners and stayed that way past the finish line. He was the star of every team—scoring the most goals, the highest points, the greatest touchdowns. He was a born athlete, a natural leader who was used to winning, addicted to victory.
Not today, Riley thought, but his words were floating away, leaving him.
“C’mon boys, keep counting,” he heard from one of the doctors, whose voice, encouraging competition, became whispers, clouds in his mind.
Dakota’s face, his stark blue eyes that were once paired with hair as fiery as his spirit—hair now gone—remained still and just as strong as Riley faded into the darkness.
“Thirteen … fourteen …” Dakota continued, but once he knew Riley was completely under, he closed his eyes, sinking heavily beneath the wave of anesthesia flowing through his body, letting it carry him away.
Dakota and Riley lay side by side, in silent pea
ce, as the process began—the process to save Dakota’s life.
2
A year and a half earlier, Dakota ran beneath the white glow of towering stadium lights, which pushed against cold, black air, lighting up the small, all-American, football-loving town of Cabot.
Bleachers surrounding the field rumbled beneath pounding feet, shook with excitement, as eleven-year-old Dakota and his team, the Green Bay Packers, took on the undefeated Dallas Cowboys in the last game of the peewee championship.
A cool, November breeze carried the scent of fresh-cut grass and powdery chalk into the stands, where dozens of familiar faces screamed and cheered for their boys, who, for that one night, were NFL players in the Super Bowl.
Dakota was on fire. His cleats tore into the earth, heart pounding with every step, as he made every pass, every tackle, every play with perfection.
He had grown up on the sidelines, mapping out plays in the dirt for Henry, loosening the hillsides playing one-on-one with Riley. He spent years studying his father’s coaching technique, memorizing tactic, internalizing strategy, until Henry, who had played football for Arkansas Tech University and was an assistant coach for the Cabot High School football team for the past fourteen years, determined he was old enough to play.
The night of the last championship game, Dakota was unstoppable. He scored two touchdowns before the ball, leather spinning in a perfect spiral, landed in his arms at the twenty-yard line. He looked up from under his helmet, eyes of a cat before pouncing, and ran with the breeze down the length of the field, zigzagging, dodging, sprinting, until he was safe in the end zone.
He smashed the ball hard onto the ground, letting it fly, while his teammates stormed and the crowd went wild. They had won the game and the championship. At the end of the night, Dakota and his fellow Green Bay Packers smacked high fives into the crisp air and wrapped their arms around their hard-earned trophy.
Once Upon a Wish Page 19