Once Upon a Wish

by Rachelle Sparks

  Three years after Dakota’s death, Sharon and Henry received a clear message from God, telling them that, even in grief, even with holes in their hearts that could only be filled by Dakota, they still had love to give. After months of family discussion and lots of prayer, they called a local adoption agency to foster a child in need. They received a phone call one day about a two-year-old little boy waiting for a good home, and as soon as they heard the boy’s birth name—Dakota Quinn—they knew in her hearts that it was providential.

  Sharon sat, silenced, on the phone, eyes filling with tears, heart filling with God’s message. This little boy, Dakota Quinn, was meant to be with them. Sharon, Henry, and Riley opened their home and their hearts to the boy, who they decided to call Quinn, and a year later, adopted him into their family.

  There was no doubt in their minds that Quinn was sent from above—a gift that they knew Dakota would smile about from Heaven. God had given his parents this gift, just as Dakota had given the Gator, a gift that would keep on giving; a gift for his brother, Riley; his parents; and now their son Quinn.

  • STORY SEVEN •

  Tien Leou-on

  “I will always remember my wish, even if I get Alzheimer’s.”

  —Tien Leou-on, age twelve

  1

  PARIS, TIEN THOUGHT.

  Lights twinkling from the city to the sky. Streets filled with people on bikes, pedaling through the smell of rising dough, of baked croissants and French baguettes from local patisseries. Dogs sitting proper at the heels of their owners at café-lined roads packed with cars and honking taxis, people blowing cigarette smoke from their lips, words in French rolling from their tongues.

  Will I speak French by then? he wondered.

  Would Tien’s father, Bruno, have taught him more than simple words like bonjour and merci?

  Would he be able to say to a waiter, “Je voudrais le poisson frais du jour”?—“I would like the fresh fish of the day”—and compare its flavor to that of the fish he had pulled from the South Pacific in Tahiti with his family when he was younger? Would he be able to ask for frog legs and escargot with, “Je voudrais les cuisses de grenouille et les escargots”? He wanted his taste buds to learn the difference between France’s beef bourguignon and his father’s, wanted to see if its chefs could perfect an egg the way Bruno perfected an egg.

  Tien wanted to immerse his senses in the city’s tastes and smells, its sounds and feels. He wanted to see the rolling hills of France’s countryside, hills that, in his mind, were like those of Napa Valley, endless green waves of mountains. He wanted to climb the Eiffel Tower and compare the City of Lights to San Francisco, the biggest city near his Berkeley, California, home. He wanted to compare his hometown’s Victorian houses to the old, historic homes of Paris, see the differences between ancient cathedrals and the Catholic church where he attended Mass with his mom, Lillian. He wanted to hear the city’s live music pouring down its busy streets and taste the flavor of fresh crêpes and coq au vin that he would learn to make.

  During the nine years of his life, Tien had spent many of them imagining such a place, dreaming of going there. His older brother and sister, Yune and Vanina, had traveled to Paris before Tien was even born. Their experiences fueled his desire, ignited his imagination, with stories of cruising the Seine by boat, staring the Mona Lisa in the eye, indulging in French food, and viewing the lights of Paris from the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower.

  When social worker Steve Baisch asked Tien what he would wish for if he could wish for anything in the world, he didn’t have to think twice.

  Tien smiled.

  “I want to go to Paris, France,” he said weakly, and Steve thought, Really? Paris? “That sounds wonderful!” he said, smiling, as technicians hooked Tien up to the machine.

  It was time to start dialysis.

  2

  Before making this wish, Tien listened to the wishes other children on dialysis were making.

  “I’m going on a Macy’s shopping spree,” said one little boy, hooked to another dialysis machine near Tien, just a few days before. “When my dialysis is done, I’ll get out my laptop and show you pictures of the things I want to get.”

  Tien smiled, imagining what it would be like to wander the endless aisles of the department store, clothes, shoes, and toys at his fingertips. But then, through his imagination, came the sounds and scents of Paris, the stories from his siblings, the voice of his grandfather telling him how he had met Tien’s grandmother in the world’s most romantic city.

  While studying law at the University of Paris, Tien’s grandmother, Theresa, met his grandfather, Yin, when Yin was attending École Nationale Des Ponts et Chaussées—National School of Bridges and Roads—the world’s oldest civil engineering school. They had both grown up on the small island of Tahiti but had never met, and together, learned about and fell in love with the foods of France, a passion they passed down to their nine-year-old grandson.

  As Tien’s dialysis machine grabbed blood from his body, circling and placing it back inside his veins, his mom watched and thought of her own mother, Theresa, who had passed away before Tien was born. Twenty-two years ago, when Lillian left her Berkeley home to live with her mother for a month in Hawaii, where Theresa lived the last of her days near her sister and her best friend, Lillian never imagined that two decades later, she would be holding the hand of another loved one hooked to dialysis, the small hand of her young son.

  Lillian thought of her mother fondly as she remembered the serious, intellectual nature of Theresa, the goody-two-shoes reputation she had as a devout student at the University of Paris. Her father, Yin, on the other hand, was a shoot-from-the-hip kind of guy, a man who loved life and didn’t take it too seriously unless he needed to.

  Brought up on a French-speaking island by parents who spoke only Chinese, Yin could trick his parents into believing his grade school progress. He’d offer up phrases like, “Vers le haut de la colline, un, deux, trois, quatre, Napoléon est parti en Egypte”—“Up the hill … one, two, three, four … Napoleon went to Egypt”—disjointed sentences combining unrelated words spoken with beautiful French pronunciation—when his parents insisted he demonstrate his progress of learning the language. They believed every word.

  Yin’s blood ran through Tien, even as it left and re-entered Tien’s body. Forced to sit for three-hour stretches every day, Tien suppressed his love of playing games and running outdoors with his friends. He needed to push those thoughts, that life, away for those hours. Just like his grandfather, he was serious when he needed to be, and he was devout like his grandmother.

  With his head tilted perfectly still, blood flowing, Tien sat for every long dialysis session, studying with his hospital teacher, Alice Cassman, listening to stories from his mom, his favorite about how his grandfather fooled his parents into believing he could speak French.

  Tien laughed, shaking just slightly to avoid disturbing his central line, as this story took him out of the world he was in and into the “normal world,” the world he had fully been a part of just a couple of months before—a world where evenings were spent playing games with his family and the biggest concern of the day was deciding which friend to play with after school.

  Now, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, when Lillian or Bruno took Tien to dialysis, they left that world when the hospital doors slid closed behind them, leaving “normal” outside along with the bright, California sun. The sounds of cars taking people to and from work and school, dance lessons, and soccer were on the other side of those doors as Tien and his parents made their way to the pediatric dialysis center, where this other world existed.

  Dreaming of Paris or a day at Macy’s brought these kids to that other world, that “normal” place, and kept them there through their long hours hooked to dialysis machines.

  “I want a French culinary experience,” Tien had said to pediatric nephrology doctor, Dr. Anthony Portale, before sharing his wish with Steve.

  Their pa
rents found different ways to cope and bring “normal” back into their lives when they could. From the time Tien was admitted to the hospital, Lillian had found comfort in the other families who were part of this new, unfamiliar world, a world where life could be taken at any moment, where a single moment could change everything.

  Lillian was fascinated during long, sleepless nights by another mom with a sick child, who told stories of her truck-driving days—the night she ventured down haunted sections of highway, the time she carried a light truckload of ping-pong balls through a windy section of the Rocky Mountains.

  Small talk in the halls, hugs from other parents who had a deep, mutual understanding of their situation, bridged the gap between these two worlds for Lillian and Bruno and became necessary distractions.

  Visits from strangers and new friends in the dead of the night reminded Lillian and Bruno that they were not in this alone. The night they got a phone call telling them to rush their son to the nearest emergency room was not uncommon in this world, nor were sharing their concerns and telling their story to other families living similar nightmares just down the halls.

  Tien, Lillian, Bruno, Yune, and Vanina left the comfort of their safe, normal world, their previous life, abruptly with no warning.

  3

  A few months before, Tien had slowly placed his hands, palms down, on the flat, hard, wooden surface of a table in the middle of the gymnasium. Blocking out the stares of his teachers, the voices of other performers, Tien slowly pushed, the strength of lifting all his weight shaking in his arms. Legs moving toward the ceiling as if being pulled by rope, Tien’s body became a flawless, still line as he perfected his well-practiced handstand.

  He held his position as the teachers of his circus class stared, his sweat dripping, before slowly, gracefully lowering his body and standing upright on the ground to receive smiles and applause. The teachers, who were part of Splash Circus, a group of young performers that entertained audiences throughout the Bay Area, were auditioning for new members. They wrote quiet notes as Tien prepared for the next act in his audition. He walked to the long, thick ropes hanging from the ceiling and grabbed on.

  Looking up, he focused as one hand reached above the other, one at a time, slow and meticulous, until he reached the top. Using the same strength it took to climb, Tien slowly, gracefully, lowered himself down the length of the rope. He climbed up, down, up, down, demonstrating the poise and endurance of any other nine-year-old circus performer before moving on to his final audition performances.

  From the age of three, Tien had practiced Capoeira, a Brazilian art form combining martial arts, music, and sport, and the technique, dedication, and strength it gave pounded through his body as it flipped, end over end, hands leading the way, across the floor in perfect back handsprings, twirled with perfect cartwheels past the teachers, and balanced perfectly on the shoulders of others during partner acrobatics.

  When he was finished, Tien stood proudly before his teachers, panting and smiling, hoping they would select him for the circus.

  After the audition, Tien gathered his things and walked to meet his parents as a pain, achy and familiar, crept through the heel of his foot, traveling slowly, purposefully, through its length to his toes. He grabbed at his foot midstep, massaged it quickly as it reached for and touched the ground, and then he grabbed for the other. It was a pain that he had learned to ignore, learned to live with over the past several weeks, because though it would go away briefly, it would always make its return.

  He had learned to run through the pain during games of zombie tag at recess with his friends, let it dangle when hanging from the monkey bars, and kick through it during gymnastics and circus class. It would leave and return in the heat of the day as Tien played outdoors with his neighborhood friends, the hot sun pulling at the pain, intensifying it.

  His feet would ache during bamboo sword fights and throb during “survivor,” a game he and his friends made up that involved eating cherry plums, sour grass, and dandelion leaves from their backyards in order to survive.

  One morning a few weeks after auditions, after learning that Tien had been accepted into the circus, Lillian gently touched his cheeks as his eyes slowly opened from the night. Beneath her fingers, Tien’s skin, warm from sleep, puffed around his chin, his forehead, and the area below his eyes. She squinted and looked closer and felt deeper, as her fingers sank into the soft yet firm skin on his face.

  She called Tien’s pediatrician, Dr. Randy Bergen, and scheduled an appointment for later that day. Something wasn’t right. His achy, swollen feet and puffy face were trying to send a message to Lillian and Bruno but not a clear one. Tien was enjoying third grade, loving the math club he had joined, and playing with his friends after school every day—what could be wrong?

  “It’s possible that you have lupus,” said Dr. Vivien Igra from Dr. Bergen’s office, the only doctor available to see them right away.

  Lupus, Lillian thought, her body and heart instantly numb with worry, sickened with fear. Flannery O’Connor.

  Through the American novelist’s words, Lillian had learned in high school about life’s cruelties and hardships, many of them derived from the author’s experience with the same disease—the one with which her son had possibly just been diagnosed.

  Sisters from Lillian’s Catholic high school had read O’Connor’s work to their students, opening their eyes to life’s realities, from serial killers to human greed to morality and ethics. The moment Dr. Igra uttered “lupus,” Lillian instantly thought of the fourteen-year-battle O’Connor had with the disease. She remembered how lupus sometimes became a character in O’Connor’s writing because of its dark, cruel existence in her life. At the time, Lillian was intrigued by the disease’s benevolence, its loosened grip on O’Connor’s life during remission, until it took it from her in 1964.

  O’Connor’s death was all that Lillian knew about lupus.

  She didn’t know that her son’s body was about to turn against itself, eating away at perfectly healthy tissue and functioning organs. She didn’t know the disease’s potential to wipe out any part of the body, from the skin to the joints to its most important organs.

  Lillian didn’t know that the rashes forming on Tien’s skin, rashes she and Bruno thought must be from Tien’s allergies to strawberries, chocolate, and citrus—maybe Tien drank a glass of lemonade—combined with his puffy face and aching feet were all indicators of lupus.

  “Can you move this for me?” Dr. Igra had asked Tien before suggesting he had lupus. She moved Tien’s feet gently, touching the small joints near his ankle bone. He sucked in his breath, pain rolling beneath the doctor’s fingers.

  The pains Tien had been experiencing in his feet could have stemmed from anything, Lillian and Bruno had told themselves—playing in the dirt, tripping over rocks, climbing and falling from the branches of trees. He was a classic boy, an active nine-year-old. He was playing soccer in a summer soccer camp program for the third year in a row, and he was one of his team’s best, most aggressive players.

  “Does this hurt?” Dr. Igra asked, tugging at the joints of his hands.

  The small bones throbbed with the doctor’s slightest touch.

  Aches in the small joints of the hands and feet, rashes, a swollen face—lupus.

  She ordered labs to be done, an Antinuclear Antibody (ANA) test that would indicate the presence of an autoimmune disease, so Lillian took Tien to get his blood drawn later that day.

  “We’ll call you with the test results,” Dr. Igra said, adding that, if the ANA test came back positive and they determined he had lupus, treatment would involve ointment for the rashes, medicine for the aching joints. Simple.

  Even if the results came back positive for this disease with no cure, the treatment would be easy and Tien would be fine. Lillian was comforted by the doctor’s words. O’Connor’s suffering would not be her son’s.

  The next step was waiting, the step after that, dealing with those results. Lill
ian had built her life around taking one step at a time—it was the only way she knew to function, a way of life echoed from past generations in her family. As a young girl, Lillian’s mother had shared stories with her about the hardships her mother and grandmother faced in China—hunger and war—and the way they shepherded their families, did what they needed to do, and faced what came their way with unending strength and courage.

  Having never thought about where it came from, Lillian journeyed through life the same way, from the time she went through law school in the early 1980s and faced the challenges of being a female law student at that time to the situation they were in now.

  This would be no different.

  For past generations, taking one step at a time meant figuring out how to put meals on the table. For Lillian during law school, it was studying as hard as possible and passing the bar exam. Now, it was getting through one test, one lab, one result at a time.

  3

  They got Tien’s blood drawn for the ANA test on Father’s Day 2008. After their hospital visit, they went out to celebrate the day with brunch in Walnut Creek, a city near their hometown of Berkeley. As waiters placed plates heaped with delicious-looking food in front of them, as Bruno opened his handmade card from the kids, Lillian had to work every second of that day to keep her mind present—there with her family, not at the hospital where her son’s blood was being processed, not drifting into the unknown future.

  She spent that day and the next living with her mind in two places, split between thoughts, consumed by two different worlds—the world where Tien lived as a healthy child, growing and exploring, loving life, and the other world with the disease that killed Flannery O’Connor.