Once Upon a Wish (30 page)

On transport day, nurses wheeled Meera, intubated but awake and alert, in a stretcher through the double doors and into the sunshine for the first time in weeks. She had forgotten the smell of Texas air, so she took it in, one shallow breath at a time.

“Wind in my face,” she wrote on the Magna Doodle before closing her eyes and tilting her head toward the sky, letting the sun calm her, the breeze soothe her. They arrived at the airport safely, and Nita and Meera boarded the plane. Limited space forced Alex to make the flight commercially.

Shortly after takeoff, he gripped the armrests of his chair as the force of a sudden drop thrust his body from his seat, shoving the belt into his gut. The left side of the plane dipped, the right side soared, as it shook furiously before freefalling and leveling momentarily. It swayed and jumped in the wind, danced in the clouds, for the next four hours.

“God, please take all the turbulence from Meera’s plane and put it on me,” Alex begged, waves in his stomach crashing as he imagined his daughter’s plane plunging and swaying to the sky’s relentless, violent rhythm.

After all she’s been through, just get her to New York
, he pleaded.

When he arrived in New York, Alex was relieved to hear that Meera’s plane, flying at a much lower altitude, experienced very little turbulence and would arrive shortly. He walked through the hospital as he would his hallways at home and tapped on the office door of Dr. Barst.

After so many years of traveling to see her, just being in Dr.
Barst’s office, in her care, relieved some of the pressure in Alex’s chest. He could finally start to breathe.

Nita and Meera finally arrived, and ten minutes after settling her into her new hospital bed, Meera suddenly clutched the metal rails as the voices of her family and chatter from the TV blended to the background of her mind’s panic.

I can’t breathe
, she thought.
I can’t breathe
!

Her body stiffened with determination to take another breath, but invisible hands wrapped themselves around her small neck, squeezing, suffocating. She thrashed as air crept slowly, mockingly, through its straw-sized passage before Meera’s body went limp, her fight dead.

Doctors from the ICU rushed in with a balloon and pumped air into her lungs, but the resistance was as great as the force. As air seeped out, they quickly and frantically hooked Meera up to an oxygen machine, started the monitors, and hovered over her blue body as Alex ran from the room.

“We should have never brought her here!” he yelled in the hallway, punching his fist into the wall. “This is all my fault!”

His shouts became whispers.

“This is all my fault. All my fault,” he repeated, pacing the halls, hands in his hair.

“She’s going to be okay!” Nita said.

How are you always so sure?!
Alex wanted to scream.

But once again, she was right. Doctors discovered a blood clot in her breathing tube that was blocking her airway, and after it was out and a new tube was in, she could breathe, her face regaining its beautiful color.

Okay, we made the right decision
, Alex assured himself, keeping his mind in the moment. He couldn’t let himself imagine what might have happened if the incident had taken place in the air—in
the small confines of an airplane with fewer doctors and less equipment than the hospital they were in now.

Shaking, Alex sat silently, internally thanking God for those ten minutes He had spared.

Over the next several months, Meera had her good days and her bad, an emotional mixture of successful stats, blood transfusions, surgeries, and steadied and crashed oxygen levels. Alex traveled between Manhattan and home, maintaining his career and visiting Zane, who was staying with his uncle in Dallas. No matter which city he was in, Alex found inspiration in the sunrise of the Dallas or the New York dawn. As the sun crept into darkened skies every morning, subtle glow leading the way, Alex prayed deeper and harder than he had ever prayed in his life. He knew God was taking those prayers with Him every night with the sun, delivering hope and assurance with each morning rise.

Through prayer, he kept Meera alive during a series of close calls—a nurse accidentally switching the medicine in her IV, leading to lung failure and paralysis of her GI tract, and her appendix rupturing less than a week later.

Zane flew out to New York to meet his family for the holidays, and on New Year’s Eve, Alex and Nita looked out the window to the celebration below with a renewed sense of hope.

“Two-thousand-seven is behind us,” Alex said, his arm wrapped around Nita’s shoulders. He rested his head on hers as he looked down at Meera in her wheelchair, her little brother by her side. They were a complete family again. “This is a new beginning for us.”

He felt it with every crash and color of the dazzling fireworks show in the distance. The black sky sparkled with vibrant colors
that eventually faded and vanished into the night. They could hear the cheers and shouts floating from Times Square, and they felt as though they had something to celebrate, too. Meera had held on for this long—had survived two cardiac arrests, a disconnect from a life-supporting breathing machine, a risky transport, paralysis of her GI tract, and a ruptured appendix—and they knew in their hearts that there was nothing their daughter couldn’t survive.

But they were not at the end of their journey, and they knew it. Still supported by machines, Meera faced two surgeries in March that, if successful, could lead to her recovery.

When Meera was still in Dallas, doctors inserted a temporary Flolan line to keep the blood vessels in her lungs and throughout her body open and flowing, which meant limited physical activity and little exposure to water.

“She can’t go swimming anymore?” Zane had asked sadly. Some of his favorite memories were playing Marco Polo with Meera in their community swimming pool, having races, and seeing who could hold his or her breath longer under water.

Saddened by the news, he wrote in a spiral notebook, “I wish for my sister to get off of Flolan so that she can go swimming again.”

In New York, doctors removed Meera’s appendix and placed a feeding tube in her stomach during the first surgery and inserted a permanent Flolan line during the second. She would always have to wear the Flolan pump, an intravenously administered drug, meaning her brother’s wish would never come true.

The last time Meera ever swam with her family was the summer before she became ill.

They had traveled to Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, Texas, when Meera was eleven and Zane, seven, for their first-ever
camping trip. They hiked along the Brazos River, searching for fossilized dinosaur footprints in the slate-colored stone.

Meera stopped at every track, placing her foot next to the giant, three-toed prints as though comparing them to famous hand-prints on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They followed the tracks to the riverbank and found a deep pocket called the Blue Hole, where kids jumped from cliffs and families splashed beneath the hot, Texas sun.

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.