Once Upon a Wish

by Rachelle Sparks

  “You played your heart out, buddy,” Henry said, hugging his son after the game. “Three touchdowns!”

  “Yeah, that was an awesome game!” Dakota shouted, and Henry reached for Dakota’s forehead to find it warm, clammy.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Fine, Dad,” Dakota said.

  “Are you sure?” Henry asked, concerned.

  It was hard to say whether the fire beneath his hand was fever or the game’s intensity. He let it fall from his son’s face, remembering the strep throat diagnosis Dakota’s doctor had given the week before.

  Antibiotics she prescribed were not working, and Dakota’s fever was persistent. Until the big game, his body had been weak, lethargic, but that night, Henry and Sharon, Dakota and Riley’s mom, saw the first sign of energy, the real Dakota, that they had seen in several days. They saw his face crease with determination as he sprinted down the field, his spirit as strong as ever.

  During the weeks following the game, Dakota’s walk gradually became slower, his skin whiter. Sharon tried to keep things as normal as possible for her boys as Christmas approached—a smile on her face, traditions alive—but her insides ached with every forced smile, every attempt at normalcy.

  Why are the antibiotics not working? Why is he so weak? she questioned, the thoughts heavy on her mind, the answers unknown.

  They baked cookies together and delivered them to retirement homes as they had every year, watched the town’s annual Christmas parade, attended their church’s cantata, and participated in their schools’ holiday programs. They put up their Christmas tree, hung ornaments, decorated their home, enjoyed the peace of freshly fallen snow, and counted the days until Santa arrived—but rather than a jolly heart, Sharon’s was heavy.

  Her mother’s intuition, an internal knowing, grabbed at her stomach, made her ache with worry.

  His bruises are probably from playing football, Sharon told herself as she stayed up late at night researching the symptoms her son had shown for weeks, but she couldn’t convince even herself. The symptoms were too close, too familiar.

  She read: “Leukemia—headaches, lethargy, bruising.”

  A few hours after Christmas Eve dinner, Sharon stood in the kitchen with her older sister, Regina.

  “Oh, my goodness, what will I do if my Dakota has leukemia?” she sobbed into her sister’s arms.

  The rest of their family was on the other side of the kitchen doors, laughing, celebrating, opening gifts, while Sharon remained in Regina’s embrace, their tears flowing together, dripping down linked arms.

  “Oh, Sharon,” Regina managed. “I’m so sorry, I just don’t know what to say.”

  She didn’t want to give Sharon false assurance with “It’s going to be okay” or “I know everything will be just fine” because, the truth was, she didn’t know. Instead, Regina hugged her tightly, feeling her sister’s pain deep within her own gut—a feeling of absolute desperation.

  “I just don’t know what to say,” she cried, almost whispered, into her little sister’s ear.

  3

  The next night, at their church’s Christmas program, Dakota’s pediatrician, Dr. Ruth Ann Blair, stood beside Sharon in the choir loft, getting ready to sing their first song. Dakota walked down the aisle, toward the front of the church where he always sat, and as he took his seat, Sharon leaned over and whispered to Dr. Blair, “Does Dakota look pale to you?”

  Friends and family agreed that, over the past few weeks, his skin had turned the color of gray sheep’s wool, but when Dr. Blair’s eyes studied him from a distance, squinting with concentration and then with concern, Sharon had her answer. That dark answer, lurking behind every thought, creeping through every part of her mind, was stepping into the light, standing directly before her.

  “Yes, he looks pale to me,” Dr. Blair confirmed gently. She had diagnosed him just a few weeks before with strep throat and could see that the antibiotics were not working. “Have him come see me after Christmas.”

  The music started, the soft, sweet sound of praise and rejoice. Sharon stared at her songbook and then blankly into the eyes of the congregation, and she knew hers were empty and deeply sad.

  She glanced at Dakota, and the words, her voice, flowed heavily, resiliently, around the heavy lump in her throat. She made it through the cantata as she had the rest of the Christmas season, with a forced smile and a sickened heart.

  “Mama, can we go home to play with my new toys?” Dakota asked the next day. It was 1:00 p.m. on Christmas afternoon, and the family had just finished eating a big, traditional meal at Papaw’s, Henry’s father’s, home.

  The adults had gathered in the living room, drinking coffee and squeezing dessert into their stuffed bellies, while the kids played with their new toys. Sharon looked down at her son, who loved playing with his cousins, especially on Christmas, and smiled as best she could.

  “Sure, baby,” she said, keeping her tears tucked away.

  “Jingle Bells” and “Deck the Halls” swirled softly around the car on their drive home as Sharon glanced at Dakota, whose head was resting on his seat, eyes opening and closing slowly.

  “Mama, thank you for a wonderful Christmas,” he said, looking at Sharon as she kept her eyes on the quiet, open road, not a soul around.

  She looked at him with smiling eyes full of tears that she quickly blinked away when she turned her head back to the road.

  “This was the best Christmas ever,” he added.

  She couldn’t look at him again. She stared at the highway, reached a hand over, and squeezed Dakota’s knee, pursing her lips into a half smile, just in case he was looking to her for a sign that everything would be okay.

  She knew this wasn’t his best Christmas ever. In her mind, the piles of toys in their trunk should have made him feel better. The distraction of family, the excitement of the holiday, should have been enough, but it wasn’t.

  It was Christmas, and he wanted to go home and rest.

  “You’re welcome, baby,” was all Sharon could manage, the lump in her throat suffocating.

  The sweetness in Dakota’s voice, the kindness in his eyes that afternoon, would live inside of her forever. She believed it was his way of telling her that, somewhere, deep, deep down, he knew something was terribly wrong.

  They both did.

  4

  “The doctor needs to speak with you,” a nurse said the next day at Dr. Blair’s office. “Dakota, sweetie, come with me to watch some cartoons.”

  Sharon didn’t know this nurse, but even the eyes of a stranger could not conceal such a dark, unwanted secret.

  God, this can’t be happening, Sharon pleaded. She wanted to stay right there, in that moment, before another word was spoken. She clung to those last few seconds of not knowing, of having an ounce left of hope. She wanted to live in that moment forever.

  “Sharon,” Dr. Blair said when she walked into the room. She spoke as gently as she could, and Sharon closed her eyes. There was no easy way to say it. “Dakota’s white blood cell count is through the roof. I’m afraid he might have childhood leukemia.”

  There they were: the words she knew were coming. Dr. Blair wrapped her arms around Sharon as she slipped through them.

  “No, no, no, no, no …” she sobbed.

  Maybe if she said it enough times, if she squeezed her eyes tight enough, shook her head back and forth hard enough, this would all go away.

  “This can’t be, this can’t be …” Sharon cried.

  Dakota doesn’t have cancer, she told herself, hardly able to even think the word.

  Her body, her mind, numb.

  She couldn’t live without Dakota, so the only option was to beat it.

  Dr. Blair immediately sent her, Henry, and Dakota to Arkansas Children’s Hospital for blood tests and draws, and that day, it was confirmed. Dr. David Becton, the hospital’s chief oncologist, gave the news to Dakota in a way a child could understand.

  “You have leukemia,” he
said to Dakota, who suddenly turned from a growing eleven-year-old back into Sharon’s baby boy.

  She watched as her son studied the doctor’s face. She wanted so desperately to wrap him in her arms, to protect him from the world, from cancer, from the rest of what the doctor was about to say, but she knew she couldn’t. This was in God’s hands now.

  “Leukemia is a type of blood cancer,” Dr. Becton continued, “and the bad guys are fighting against the good guys in your immune system. We are going to annihilate the bad guys with chemotherapy, which we will start you on tomorrow.”

  He didn’t tell Dakota that he suspected Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML), one of the most destructive, hard-to-beat cancers rarely found in children. He wanted to keep it simple but real.

  “It’s going to make you sick,” he said. “And …” Dr. Becton paused.

  He looked at Dakota’s beautiful, thick red hair and added, “Your hair will come out.”

  “Son …” Henry said when Dakota started to cry. As his father, he needed to stay strong, even if his insides were falling apart. Henry placed an arm around Dakota’s shoulders and spoke his language. “We are in a marathon, and we are going to cross the finish line, and then we are going to keep running and running. We’re gonna keep our eye on what’s ahead, on the finish line.”

  Dakota, blinking tears down his lightly freckled cheeks, looked at his dad and nodded.

  “Will I ever play sports again?” he asked, turning his reddened face to Dr. Becton.

  He smiled at his little patient.

  “Yes, you will.”

  5

  Dakota was admitted to the hospital that day, and two hours after he got settled into his hospital bed, a Child Life volunteer at the hospital brought Dakota a stuffed toy, Doc, one of Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs. Dakota placed the doll on his lap, making room for a sheet of paper, and began to draw.

  Slowly, meticulously, he sketched an outline of Doc’s body, then filled in the details of his face. Beside Doc, he wrote, “I can beat it,” and at the top of the page, added, “I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength—Philippians 4:13.”

  Sharon’s eyes welled up when she saw the picture. She immediately thought of the time Dakota had brought his small New Testament Bible to show-and-tell in kindergarten.

  Dakota drew this picture the day he was admitted to the hospital after being diagnosed with cancer.

  “How many of you go to church?” he had asked his classmates, holding the Bible high into the air. A few kids raised their hands, most didn’t, some looked around, uneasy. His teacher, Mrs. Melder, who attended the same church as Dakota and his family, stood in the corner, watching, smiling.

  “Well, if you don’t, you should consider it,” Dakota finished and sat down.

  Even with news of cancer and within the confining walls of a hospital instead of a football field’s freedom, his faith was still alive, and so was his will.

  The next day, after Dr. Becton confirmed to Sharon and Henry that Dakota had AML, a bag of red chemotherapy, the meanest, most intense and aggressive form of treatment, hung beside Dakota, dripping its life into his veins.

  “I will beat this,” Sharon read again, and she pictured him at two weeks old, lifting himself with his arms when most babies couldn’t even lift their heads.

  He’s a fighter, she thought, suddenly seeing the significance, the irony, of his name—Dakota, Native American for “Strong Warrior” in the Sioux tribe—she had always been told.

  After two weeks of chemo, Dakota was in full remission. It was the end of January, but to make sure every cancer cell was gone, defeated, doctors continued his intense protocol for the next four months.

  Most treatments kept him in the hospital for a week at a time before he was able to go home, where Sharon, his “codoctor,” administered natural remedies she had researched to keep him fighting—Shiitake mushrooms to build his immune system, oxygenated water to supply his blood, green barley for its natural healing ability, and milk from a local goat farm for his bones.

  After learning that sugar can potentially feed leukemia cells, she kept Dakota on a low-sugar diet, had him take as many herbs and vitamins as possible, and eat fresh, raw vegetables to build up his weakened immune system. These remedies seemed to keep away the fever and infection that many leukemia patients developed, but Dakota still had good days and bad—days when he couldn’t get out of bed, days he couldn’t keep anything down, quiet days of sickness and sleep.

  One morning during a hospital stay, Dakota slept soundly, peacefully, as the sun rose and poured in through his window, crawling slowly across his face and onto his pillow, revealing the undeniable sign that they were actually going through this, cancer’s most irrefutable presence—a beautiful lock of strawberry hair lay, detached, inches from his head.

  This can’t be! Sharon wailed in her mind, silent tears and whispered sobs escaping her uncontrollably. This isn’t right!

  It didn’t take long before every strand, falling out by the handful, was gone.

  When Dakota saw the sympathy, the sadness, in Henry’s eyes, he teased, “Daddy, you always said hair was way overrated.”

  Dakota looked at his father’s balding head, sensed from his smile that he was warming Henry’s broken heart.

  “Now I look like you!”

  He was easing Henry’s pain, softening the severity of his situation, as he had tried to do from the beginning when he said with determination, “I can beat this.”

  During hospital stays, Dakota had good days and bad. On good days, when chemo would release its firm grip, even momentarily, Dakota would roam the halls and even leave with doctors’ permission to go to the movies, race go-carts with Henry and Riley, and make visits to Toys “R” Us, before returning for more treatment.

  “I’ll be in here!” he whispered to his parents loudly one afternoon on a good day, crawling into the medical closet of his hospital room.

  He had filled two syringes with apple juice and closed the door behind him, waiting patiently to hear the voice of one of his nurses.

  “All right, Dakota …” she said before he threw open the door, aimed and squirted the juice, his laugh filling the room, the halls, the lives of other families nearby who needed the sound of a child’s laughter.

  Dakota had pulled his first prank at six years old while visiting Sharon’s mom, “Mama Lamb,” on her farm at the end of a dirt road in Delight, Arkansas. Mama Lamb’s tiny washroom was in the corner of the barn, the clothesline outside. It was a breezy day and clothes flapped in the wind as Dakota helped hang them with wooden pins.

  When Mama Lamb entered the barn, darkened without the help of the sun peeking through its door, Dakota used all his weight to swing it shut, locking her tightly into that dim, smelly barn.

  “Dakota, if I ever get a hold of you, I’m gonna wear you out!” Mama Lamb shouted, and Dakota chuckled, just the way he did when he squirted apple juice at his nurses or put Riley in his place in his hospital bed, shocking the nurses when they’d pull back the sheets.

  On days when Dakota wasn’t feeling well, when it took all of his energy to get out of bed, he would pile games, books, puzzles, and video games from friends, family, and church members into the hospital’s red wagon—the wagon used to discharge kids once they got well—and drag his IV pole with its hanging bag of fluid to distribute the gifts to the other sick children on the third floor.

  Dakota visited a two-year-old little girl with leukemia down the hall one day and told his parents about how happy he had made her. He imitated her smile, mimicked her laugh, reliving the girl’s joy when he handed her a “Dora the Explorer” balloon. “Oooh, Dora! I love Dora!”

  He created smiles with jokes, laughter from words, and hope with his presence in the hallways coming and going from his hospital room.

  6

  Dakota remained in remission but struggled against the tight grip of chemotherapy, its cruel demands, relentless misery, until May, when he received his fi
nal treatment and a “last chemo party” in the oncology department’s outside courtyard where he was showered with love and gifts from friends and family.

  The courtyard’s water fountain, its colorful flowers and small wooden bridge, had been a place of escape, of make-believe, for Sharon and Dakota throughout his treatment. They had left the doors of the cold, sterile-smelling hospital every day to enter this place of peace, where they shared their thoughts, sat in silence, read books, and made plans for when Dakota came home for good.

  Sky-high glass windows with peeking patients surrounded them, reminding them of where they were—in the middle of this nightmare. But in those moments, in their minds, they had left the hospital and entered the outside world.

  The day of the party was a day when the door opened, even just the slightest bit, to that outside world—that world filled with family and friends and a future without cancer. Dakota had undergone his last treatment that morning, and in his twelve-year-old mind, “last” meant forever. But for Sharon and Henry, “last” signified only a moment in time—the “last” treatment in a month, a year, a lifetime? They didn’t know.

  All they knew was they had this moment, this very special moment that brought Dakota, weak and sick from chemo, out of his hospital room and into the sunshine, where six of his best friends gathered around and performed a humorous jingle they wrote about Dakota and his love for sports and life.

  Bless his heart, Sharon thought. He just doesn’t feel good.

  She could see the misery in his face, the weakness in his eyes, but, as always, the joy he had in his heart, the hope and happiness he felt in his soul, lived in his smile, which reached from ear to ear as he received gifts and hugs from his friends, his family, his doctors, and his nurses.

  A hole of uncertainty ached in Sharon’s heart as she watched her son’s happy but pained face, and while the reality of possible relapse would inevitably live in the back of her mind, she decided to view this moment as a milestone, the first step in possibly beating cancer forever.