Free Once Upon a Wish by Rachelle Sparks Page A

watched the monitor, listened to the flutter, the vibration of her daughter’s heart.
    Things will get worse before they get better.
    Three hours earlier, when these words had poured from the lips of a visitor, another stranger, Sharon knew that God was holding the strings. They were His words, His message. Just like the men who had visited a few months before, the visitor who came to see Sharon the day Katelyn first “stormed”, as doctors called it, with dangerously high fevers and racing heartbeats, had never met her. She had only heard her name but knew nothing of her story.
    That visitor was a nurse from Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, where Katelyn had been transported to undergo all of her brain surgeries. One late, quiet night, as the nurse manned the hospital’s suicide hotline, the glow of the small TV in her office flickered.
    At 2:00 a.m., the Sunday service at Ray and Sharon’s church was aired, as it was every week. The nurse watched as Pastor Sam Shaw talked about Katelyn, asked the congregation for their support, their prayers, and the nurse decided to make a visit to this girl—no face, only a name.
    Something told the nurse she was the same Katelyn who had been admitted to Le Bonheur numerous times, the same girl she had tried to visit during one of her recent shifts. But Katelyn had already been transferred back to St. Jude.
    After calling the church to find out where Katelyn was—to find out if she was still alive—the nurse showed up in her hospital room with a blanket that she and twenty other nurses had prayed over.
    After a short visit with Ray and Sharon, she walked out of Katelyn’s room and into the hall, and Sharon followed.
    “I appreciate you comin’,” Sharon said, and the nurse stopped and slowly turned to face her.
    “This might sound crazy,” she said, “but this is what I’m supposed to tell you.”
    What does she mean, “supposed to?”
Sharon wondered, and then she knew.
    “Things will get worse before they get better,” the nurse said, and it was clear that the message was not from her. It was sent through her.
    The nurse’s words, God’s message, stayed with Sharon for the next nine hours as her daughter’s temperature increased to 109°F, her heart trembling at 240 beats per minute, her blood pressure at185/135. Sharon reminded herself of the pastor’s message—
Stay strong in your faith in what God is telling you.
    God had spoken through the nurse, and Sharon needed to listen, to obey.
    She needed to keep her faith, realizing that these autonomic “storms” needed to happen before things could get better.
    After every twelve-hour storm—where bags of ice were defeated instantly by the heat of Katelyn’s skin, where her heart raced, she panted with stubborn breath, and her body lifted in agony—her body would rest, lie calm and cool for three hours, before storming again.
    Things are going to get better
, Sharon reminded herself daily, hourly, with each rise and fall of Katelyn’s temperature, every fast and slowed beat of her heart. No cooling blanket or amount of ice could put out Katelyn’s fire; no medicine could bring down her temperature or slow her heart. Certain that the fevers were killing her brain, doctors also believed that a stroke would take her life long before the cancer did.
    But Sharon’s mind wasn’t on death or stroke or heart failure. She knew that somewhere, deep inside Katelyn’s mind, she was still there, a part of her was still living. She believed that somehow, despite the storms, despite the doctors’ words and doubts and numerous talks of death, Katelyn existed.
    Every time they discussed calling family or “making arrangements,” every cell of Sharon’s body, every ounce of her being, knew it was wrong. She forced every negative word, every bit of bad news, out of Katelyn’s room and into the halls—away from her daughter, whom she believed might be able to hear and understand everything.
    She couldn’t