Once Upon a Wish

by Rachelle Sparks

  The town car, following dancing lights of red and blue from four police cars leading the way, took them to a place that would reveal how these and other of life’s most delicious foods were made—Chef Passot’s Left Bank restaurant. The closest Tien had ever come to a police escort was riding in the back of an ambulance on his way to the hospital; and the nicest restaurant he’d ever been to would not come close to the restaurant he was about to experience.

  In the middle of Left Bank’s kitchen, Tien stood in awe as the hustle and bustle of a busy, French restaurant came to life before his eyes with the infectious chaos of knives chopping, pans clinking, flambés firing, shouts of dinner orders echoing. Tien watched as food in every form, from raw ingredients to pans sizzling to perfect plate placement, made its way from the loud kitchen to the dining area, where guests sipped on wine, enjoyed one another’s company, and pleased their taste buds with dishes that originated halfway around the world.

  Standing over a hot griddle as food on plates carried by the careful hands of prep chefs and waiters flew by, Tien remained focused on the task he was given—flipping crêpes. Left Bank’s industrial kitchen had different demands than his kitchen at home, where he had spent every Sunday morning cooking crêpes with his father from the time he was six years old.

  Tien had hung a sign on the kitchen door every weekend announcing “Crêpe Day Sunday” to the rest of the family, and he and Bruno spent hours making dough from scratch, flipping and filling them with jam or eggs and cheese. They laughed together as Tien learned to keep the crêpes from flipping onto the floor, and now, beside Roland Passot, the chef watched as Tien perfected the flip—quickly adjusting to the fifteen seconds it took to cook each side as opposed to the two minutes it took in his kitchen at home.

  They flipped and stuffed crêpes together, fulfilling the orders of customers ordering any kind of crêpe imaginable from the special, one-night-only, “Tien Menu.” Not only was Tien a chef, but also he was a chef with his own menu. He smiled more than he had smiled in months as a long table filled with police and firefighters sat and indulged in his creations.

  Touched by the spirit of this young, bright, and healthy child, the officers and firefighters passed around a hat to collect money for Tien—half of which he used to buy board games for himself, the other half he spent on buying games for the children in the pediatric ICU at UCSF. Three days a week, he was still one of those children, but on that night, he was a chef in Paris.

  10

  Tien’s tour through France continued two months later in a limo to the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley, where he witnessed a very different French restaurant culture from that of the pleasantly chaotic kitchen of Left Bank. The quiet, laid-back style of restaurant or bakery he imagined existing in Paris existed in the kitchen of the Culinary Institute, where Tien got to quietly learn from one of its students the art of making croissants and baguettes.

  He helped make dough from scratch for the baguettes, which he rolled out and placed in a machine that molded and folded it into perfectly shaped bread. Fresh from the oven, Tien and his family gathered around a large, wooden table in the main dining area and enjoyed a feast that included Tien’s fresh-baked baguettes and other French-inspired foods, such as steaks they could slice like butter, mini quiches, delicious vegetable creations, and traditional desserts like crème brûlée.

  Tien left the last trek of his trip to Paris with a bag of baguettes—the way he had always imagined people in France carrying the long, skinny bread from boulangeries to their homes or offices. Just like them, Tien was heading home. His trip to Paris was over, but through the three experiences that allowed Paris to come to him, the city would live inside of Tien forever.

  Tien returned to the fourth grade, maintained good grades, and signed up for his school’s end-of-the-year play, where he auditioned and got the part of the grandfather in a play about the Oregon Trail.

  On the night of the play, Dr. Portale gave his “okay” to let Tien leave dialysis a few minutes early as long as everything looked alright. Twenty minutes before Tien’s dialysis session was over, Dr. Portale looked at the numbers, checked his blood pressure, looked at the anticipation on Tien’s face, smiled, and set him free.

  Lillian drove Tien back to Berkeley, straight to his school, where volunteers were able to quickly paint an old man’s beard across Tien’s excited face and send him onstage. It wasn’t the circus—he wasn’t tumbling or twirling or flipping or turning cartwheels—but he was back on stage; back in the spotlight, back where he belonged.

  The audience, many of them the parents of Tien’s friends, cheered wildly at the end of the play, loudly in celebration of Tien’s return. He smiled and bowed with the rest of his classmates, then returned home to start his summer vacation.

  Tien spent the next six months going to dialysis three days a week, living in between his old, “normal” world and his new world, a world he had learned to adjust to, to live in, because there was no other choice. He no longer had working kidneys, but he was alive.

  One day after treatment, Lillian and Tien ventured into San Francisco as they did every other day of dialysis and enjoyed a little piece of France—crêpes in a small, quaint restaurant. Just like every other customer in the restaurant, Tien enjoyed every bite, but now he knew what went on beyond the swinging doors of the kitchen. It was another life back there, another culture, one that the Make-A-Wish Foundation had let him become a part of.

  That day was a day like any other, but when Tien and Lillian returned home that night, Lillian opened the backdoor of their house and knew that everything was about to change.

  Inches from where she stood were silent flutters in the cool, dark night; black wings of a bat danced wildly, momentarily, before scurrying clumsily back into the night. Staring at its tiny body, its beady, mysterious eyes, and snout face before watching it fly away, there was a moment of truth between them: a clear message delivered from the depths of folklore—bats were symbols of transition, of change, and initiation—out with the old, in with the new. As the wild animal’s dark body merged with the night, taking “the old” with it, Lillian knew in her gut what “the new” would be.

  After nearly a year of keeping Tien on dialysis, carefully and occasionally broaching the subject of “transplant” with each other, Lillian and Bruno had finally made a decision. Despite its possible complications, they knew that keeping Tien on dialysis was not a “forever” solution. He could not live the rest of his life being kept alive by a machine, having his “normal” world constantly darkened by this other world of dialysis, a constant reminder that he was still ill.

  He needed a transplant.

  11

  An hour after the bat fluttered into the night, the phone rang and Lillian knew exactly why. Tien had been on the transplant waiting list for less than a month, and as the bat predicted, the words, We have a kidney for Tien, were proof of the change the bat promised was on its way.

  “Come now,” said a woman from UCSF.

  Lillian closed her eyes, creased with lines of both happiness and sorrow: happiness for Tien and sorrow for the family that had just lost a loved one, making this transplant possible. She shared the news with her family—Tien was getting a new kidney.

  The predicted three-hour surgery (“if everything goes well”) was a little less than three hours. It was late at night, and Bruno had returned home from the hospital to be with Yune and Vanina. As Lillian paced the halls, thinking, praying, hoping with all her might that the surgery would go well, keeping her mind free of the haunting “what if” thoughts that easily could have seeped in, she was finally able to breathe when doctors announced that the surgery was a success and Tien was heading to recovery.

  “I’ll be here when you wake up,” Lillian had whispered to Tien when doctors announced, “It’s time,” before wheeling him back to the operating room. As a family, Lillian, Bruno, Yune, and Vanina had remained strong, patient through months of waiting on test results, ki
dney function, a transplant, and the fight of Tien’s spirit to pull him through.

  Finally, as Tien crawled slowly from the grip of anesthesia in the recovery room, the wait was over. They, as a family, had won death’s battle, and after Tien’s successful surgery, they knew he would have a full life ahead of him, a life that did not require machines to keep him alive, a life he would be free to live to its fullest.

  More than two and a half years after Tien’s transplant, he is enjoying middle school, learning to play the drums, and performing once again as part of his school’s drama club. Other than a few hospitalizations for different viruses and bacteria and the worry of his body’s rejection to its new kidney, Tien’s mind is consumed with childhood joy, such as playing with friends after school and coming up with new dreams, new places to imagine visiting, because Paris no longer lives within the limits of his imagination.

  He has been there.

  A place that only his mind once had the power to take him had come to him through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. It had led him through the double doors of a true French kitchen, let him stand side by side with a true French chef, and allowed him to taste hundreds of authentic French foods.

  He hadn’t traveled the streets of Paris to arrive at such restaurants, hadn’t walked the sidewalks or seen the buildings or heard the accents. But that didn’t matter; he had experienced so much more. Rather than eat the food of French chefs in Paris, he had gotten to work with them. Rather than sit in fancy French restaurants, he had gotten to cook in them. Rather than breathe in the scent of crêpes and baguettes and croissants floating down the streets of Paris, he had gotten to make them.

  He had visited Paris through his brother’s and sister’s stories, inherited his love for the city from his grandparents, developed an appreciation for its food from his father, and finally experienced its culture through a gift from the Make-A-Wish Foundation. And if the day never comes to cross the ocean and step onto the streets of Paris, the city, the experience of that city coming to life in his hometown, will forever be with him, will forever be enough.

  • STORY EIGHT •

  Serena Butler

  “Music is an emotional healer that starts from deep within the soul. Without music, all we have is silence, and what is silence but the audio form of darkness? It wasn’t until the past decade that I discovered the true power of music.”

  —Serena Butler

  1

  “IT’S CANCER,” SEDRA said to her fifteen-year-old daughter, Serena. She turned around in the front seat of the car, eyes filled with tears. “Pull over, Kevin,” Sedra added quietly to her husband.

  They were somewhere between Lincoln, Nebraska, and Beaver Dam, Wisconsin—a solitary stretch of Iowa or Missouri highway—on their way to Serena’s grandfather’s funeral. Loose, black gravel crunched beneath the tires of her parents’ chili-red SUV as Serena’s father slowed to a halt.

  In the weeks prior to her grandfather’s death, Serena had been through endless blood tests, biopsies, and sonograms, and she knew the results were waiting for her around a dark corner.

  Always finding hope and inspiration from the music of Michael Jackson, she had turned to him as she neared that corner, every morning and every evening, gaining strength from his song, “Will You Be There,” living by its message to fight until the end.

  If this is cancer, I will fight, she told herself from the time an enlarged thyroid had become a cancer threat. I will fight till the end.

  They had been waiting for biopsy results for more than a week, but when Serena’s grandfather passed away, her mom had called the doctors and told them to wait until they returned home to Nebraska to deliver the news.

  The message was clearly lost, and the news came crashing in with an unexpected wave against an already saddened family.

  Diagnosed with the same cancer nearly ten years before, Sedra knew deep down what the biopsy would reveal. Sitting in the SUV, consumed by memories of her father, she had looked down at her cell phone on its first ring to see Dr. Olson’s office on the caller ID.

  By the third ring, she knew she needed to answer. She listened quietly, and after hanging up, she finally repeated the words that haunted her—“It’s cancer.”

  Serena looked out the window, past the highway, and into a sea of calming yellow—where towering corn husks danced to the gentle music of the breeze. She closed her eyes as her mother crawled into the backseat, wrapping both arms around her body as her dad pulled back onto the highway for the remaining four hours of their drive.

  Small talk of work, school, and everyday life had filled the first four hours, letting Serena, her parents, and her older sister, Seanza, escape the reality they were about to face. Sedra had just lost her father; the girls had lost their beloved grandfather.

  The silence surrounding Serena, the thoughts of death and cancer circling her mind, became dark, dizzying. She pulled out her laptop, turned it on, and hit “play” on “Affirmation,” her favorite Savage Garden song, the voice of lead singer Darren Hayes engulfing the car.

  Serena sank into her mother’s embrace, letting his voice fill and free her.

  Every line, every message, started with “I believe.” When the song faded to silence, to darkness, she hit “play” again, listening to its message about not appreciating love until you’ve been burned.

  I’ve just been burned, Serena thought. Tears crawled down her face, and she turned from her mother.

  The words flowing into her ears, through her mind, quickly carried those negative thoughts like a gentle yet determined wave. Mom beat this, she thought instead. So can I.

  “If the biopsy reveals cancer, just remember,” Dr. Olson had said, “this is the good cancer—the best kind of cancer.” In Serena’s mind, no cancer was “good cancer.”

  The SUV remained as silent as the countryside outside its windows. Miles of farmland, green pastures, and quaint country homes stretched as far as Serena could see. She longed for the simplicity, the tranquility, of her surroundings—the peace and certainty her life had just five minutes before.

  As “Affirmation” continued with reminders of the importance of family, Darren Hayes’s message was clear.

  I can beat this, Serena thought. My family and I will get through this. But first we need to get through grandpa’s funeral.

  2

  They pulled into her grandfather’s driveway, and as her parents and sister crawled slowly from the SUV and gathered their things, Serena stared at the front door of his small house. It was always unlocked with the anticipation of family’s arrival. That day, she knew he wouldn’t be there to leave the door unlocked—he didn’t know they were coming.

  He wouldn’t be sitting in his recliner, iced tea in hand, watching the playful ripples of Beaver Dam Lake, where he had spent many years fishing and exploring by boat. He wouldn’t greet them with the boisterous, “Well, hey there!” with which he had greeted them every summer for the past fifteen years.

  He simply wouldn’t be there.

  A deeper sense of emptiness than she was already feeling from hearing the word cancer settled over Serena as she pushed open the door and made her way into the house. Inside, she mingled politely with members of her family who had traveled from all over the country for her grandfather’s funeral before making her way as quickly as possible to the screen door leading to the big, grassy backyard filled with her childhood memories.

  She needed to be alone, to feel his presence. She sat on the water’s edge and watched the sun sink into the darkened waters across the lake, setting it ablaze with deep orange and golden rays. Leaves of giant hickory trees whispered above as she picked up their fallen nuts and skipped them across the lake, just as she had done when she was a little girl.

  One, two, three, four, five, she counted the times the hickory nuts jumped across the surface of the water before sinking into its darkness.

  If she closed her eyes, she could hear the echo of her and Seanza’s giggles carrying across the lake
when they were kids, sitting with their grandfather, Red, on his fishing boat, poles in hand.

  The rock of the boat always upset Serena’s stomach, sending her to the shore most of the time. As she sat there, in the very spot where she had sat and fished for so many summers, she recalled her grandfather and Seanza floating by, laughing and talking. She smiled at the memory of one particular afternoon, one with the three of them and one lost wish.

  Serena was about nine, her sister, twelve, and a ladybug had landed on Seanza’s hand.

  “That’s good luck! You can make a wish, but your wish won’t come true if she doesn’t fly away,” Red had warned.

  The small boat rocked as Seanza flung her arm crazily through the air, whipping her hand back and forth, flicking her fingers. “It won’t come off!” Seanza playfully screamed.

  The ladybug clung to her thumb, refusing to spread its wings. Seanza blew on her finger, determined to see it fly, to take her wish with the wind, until the bug’s small legs lost their firm grip and she fell into the water and bobbed, wings becoming drenched by the lake. Small ripples carried her further and further from the boat, and as Seanza and her grandfather watched it kick and fight, the ladybug never left the water, and then it was too late.

  “Your wish will never come true now,” Red teased.

  Five years had passed since Seanza lost her wish on Beaver Dam Lake, so now it was time for a new one to come true. Fifteen-year-old Serena and her family had been home from Red’s funeral for several weeks, and the surgery to remove her thyroid was a success. Standing in her sister’s hospital room, Seanza looked up to find five little black and red spotted bugs crawling on the ceiling.