Once Upon a Wish (31 page)

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.