Once Upon a Wish (12 page)

“Lord, if you’re not going to heal her, then take her with you,” she cried. “Do not leave her lying here forever, trapped in this body.”

Up against the shower wall, she slid slowly to her knees and closed her eyes as water crept down her body. Katelyn’s voice became loud in Sharon’s head, her smile the only thing her mind’s eye could see. Thoughts that this life could be Katelyn’s destiny were
too much for her to bear. The pain of remembering Katelyn before she became ill, the desperation she felt to get her back, poured from her that morning and continued throughout the day.

She managed to pull herself together long enough to take Katelyn to physical therapy, but as Swathi started to stretch her and put her braces in place, Sharon had to leave the room.

“I’m just gonna go grab something to eat,” she lied and walked with weak legs and a weaker heart to the hospital chapel.

“I don’t want to be selfish anymore,” she cried with long, breathless sobs, on her knees, alone in the chapel. A few months before, during a routine checkup, doctors found no trace of cancer in Katelyn’s blood. She was officially in remission. Why would He heal her from cancer but not wake her up? “If you’ve been holding on to her long enough for me to realize that I need to let go, then I let go. I’ll survive. I won’t survive well, but I’ll survive.”

Just those words, those thoughts, made her cry harder than she had ever cried before, feel pain deeper than she had ever felt in her life.

Sharon had stayed strong, focusing on the next step, on the plan, for so long, but on this day, a day no different from any other, something inside of her broke. She needed her daughter back or she needed her to be at peace.

When Ray got home from work that evening, he asked, “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

“It’s just been a rough day,” Sharon said with a forced smile.

He looked at her with concerned, loving eyes, but she found no reason to drag Ray into her black hole. He needed her to stay strong. If she lost hope, so did he. All of her tears had fallen, and after all her pleas and prayers with God, her heart had spoken.

She woke up the next morning and said to herself, “Today’s another day,” before crawling out of bed. She was back on track, back
to the task at hand—getting Katelyn to physical therapy, preparing her for the day she would wake up.

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A few months later, after a trip to the mall and an afternoon in therapy, Sharon brought Katelyn home, cooked dinner, and talked about her day with Ray and Crystal before getting Katelyn ready for bed.

She dressed her in pajamas and carefully tucked her in, leaning down to kiss Katelyn’s cheek. Sharon studied her face, a lifetime of memories behind her daughter’s closed eyes, a million more to make if they ever opened, and whispered, “I love you, Katelyn.”

Sharon stood up and looked down at Katelyn as her lips parted and mouthed slowly, “I love you, too, Mom.”

“Oh my …!”

Sharon cupped her hands over her heart and let out a scream that sent Ray and Crystal running to Katelyn’s room. Had she wanted Katelyn to wake up so badly that she imagined it?

“She just …”

Sharon couldn’t speak. She closed her eyes, gathered her thoughts, and pointed at Katelyn.

“She just mouthed words to me!” she managed.

“Kate?” Ray asked.

“Dad,” Katelyn mouthed.

Her eyes had opened and her head turned slowly from one side of the bed, to the foot, to the other, as her parents and sister, surrounding the bed, excitedly threw questions at her.

“How do you feel?”

“Did you know you were asleep?”

“Are you in any pain?”

“Do you remember being diagnosed with cancer?”

There were no answers, just slow head turns as Sharon, Ray, and Crystal, wrapped in one another’s arms, jumped around, tears pouring endlessly. They hugged Katelyn, kissed her face, held onto one another, as Katelyn’s eyes slowly closed, back to peace. The same, silent question entered all of their minds.

Will she wake again?

They studied her sleeping face, the same they had seen for the past year and a half, before leaving the room quietly. Crystal went to bed while Sharon and Ray stayed up, reliving the moment, praying together, questioning if Katelyn would open her eyes in the morning.

“Thank you for this precious moment, for allowing us to see a glimpse of her again,” Sharon said to God that night, then begged, “Please wake her again in the morning.”

After several hours, Ray and Sharon finally managed to fall asleep, and the next morning, they stood over Katelyn’s bed and held their breath as Sharon jiggled her arm.

“Hey, Katelyn, it’s us,” Sharon said.

After Katelyn opened her eyes, she mouthed, “Hi, Mom.”

Their daughter was back. Ray and Sharon hugged each other, happy tears falling, and after wrapping their arms around Katelyn, they looked at her and watched as her head moved back and forth with their voices, but her eyes did not.

When Sharon took her to therapy that morning, Swathi said, “C’mon, Katelyn, let’s get you over to the mat.” Katelyn, who had just met Swathi for the first time since waking, mouthed, “Okay, Miss Swathi.”

“She knew your name!” Sharon said excitedly with realization.

Katelyn, on some level, had heard and remembered Swathi’s name when she was in the coma. Sharon smiled at the thought that
Katelyn’s mind, after all those storms, all those 109°F temperatures, was still there. Her smile crawled into a proud grin when she realized that, along with Katelyn’s memory, her mind remembered its good Southern manners—she had added “Miss” to Swathi’s name.

Once Swathi saw Katelyn, it didn’t take long for every doctor and nurse at St. Jude to hear the news that Katelyn had woken up, and her oncologist, Dr. Rubintz, was the first to visit. His face, his eyes, beamed when he saw Katelyn, and after hugging her, he said, “Kate, you made my day, my week, my year!”

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Katelyn awoke from her coma with no vision, no voice to speak the words trapped in her mind, no ability to walk or eat, so she continued intense physical, speech, and occupational therapy. It took four months for her vocal chords to heal and allow a whisper to form, and eventually a soft voice, just in time.

“I would like to swim with dolphins,” Katelyn whispered to a Wish granter who came to visit her home one afternoon, repeating the words she had spoken more than a year before.

When Katelyn was first admitted to the hospital a year and a half before, Sharon’s best friend, Lyn, had told Sharon about the Make-A-Wish Foundation. A day or two before the seizure that sent Katelyn into a coma, Sharon spent hours filling out paperwork and getting ready to meet with Wish granters, and without thinking twice, Katelyn had said “swim with dolphins” when Sharon asked what she would wish for if she could wish for anything in the world.

Katelyn had a fascination with dolphins from the time she was a little girl and a passion for water. The wish made perfect sense. And now that Katelyn was well enough to officially make a wish, Sharon wasn’t surprised that it hadn’t changed.

“You’ve gotta get strong to hold onto that dolphin,” she told Katelyn almost daily after Katelyn had made her wish. She pushed and struggled through therapy, and with every reminder came a boost of energy, a drive to push harder, grow stronger. The look in Katelyn’s eyes, the grimace on her face through every demanding challenge, her determination to get better, came from the same place from which it had always come when competing for first place in swim meets.

Her competitive spirit was back, but there were no swimmers in lanes beside her. Nobody to race, nobody to beat. Only herself—her illness. The dolphin was waiting at the finish line. But first, she had to get well.

“I’ve gotta get strong enough to swim with the dolphins,” she told her doctors and nurses as she struggled through months of working to sit up on her own, to stand up, and eventually, after a year of therapy, walk slowly with a walker.

During that year, Katelyn also relearned to eat, and the family’s first meal out was to CiCi’s Pizza, where Sharon and Ray sat patiently for six hours, watching Katelyn eat four slices. Under the cruel demands of chemotherapy, her young swimmer’s body, with solid muscle tone, heart-shaped calves, strong abs and shoulders, had dwindled to flesh and bones—fifty-eight pounds—skin stretched over skeleton. After a slow-dripping tube had kept her alive, kept her nutrition just where it needed to be, watching Katelyn eat each slice of pizza was like watching her get her life back, one bite at a time.

It was a year after waking from the coma that Katelyn’s eyesight returned, first by light, then shadows, then pinhole vision.

“They’re going to test your eyes and brain to see where the problem is,” Sharon explained as she drove Katelyn to an appointment one morning.

“Mom, I can see light,” Katelyn said as though it was something Sharon should already know.

“What do you mean you can see light?” she asked, looking at her daughter, trying to keep her car in its lane.

“It’s not just darkness anymore,” she said. “I can see some light.”

Sharon smiled at the thought that Katelyn’s world was slowly coming back to her. Her body, her mind, her spirit were waking up, slowly remembering how to live.

“Well, that ought to help them figure out what’s going on,” Sharon said, and within a week, objects became figures, figures turned into shadows, and those shadows eventually stepped into the light, creating sight that let Katelyn see the world through a piece of Swiss cheese. But at least she could see.

The other abilities Katelyn had lost and started to gain back—the ability to eat and walk and talk—worked with her body’s determination to exist, and every day grew stronger and stronger.

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