Once Upon a Wish (3 page)

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S
TANDING IN A
corner of the enchanted Castle of Miracles at Give Kids The World Village in Central Florida, tiny hands cupped around the pointy edges of a shiny star, seven-year-old Tatum Null covered her lips with her hands as though telling a secret to her best friend.

“I wish for all the other children’s wishes to come true,” she whispered to the star before glancing up at the gleaming, dome-shaped ceiling sprinkled with stars. Her parents, David and Sherry, and younger sister, Hannah, watched as she then dropped her star, initialed with “T.C.N.” for Tatum Chloe Null, into a gold-painted box lined with red velvet. Lights twinkled as Tatum’s star vanished magically into the depths of the box.

“What did you wish for?” Sherry asked playfully, hunching childlike toward Tatum.

“Mom, I can’t tell you that,” she said with a grin. “Then it won’t come true!”

A Give Kids The World Village volunteer explained that the star fairy would retrieve all of the children’s stars and place them into the castle sky that night, adding to the thousands of stars already pinned to the ceiling from previous children who had stayed at the village.

David looked down at his two daughters. “Okay, girls, what’s next?” he asked.

Hannah looked up at her sister with big, blue, four-year-old eyes lined with face paint and glitter. The pink and blue swirls on Tatum’s face creased as a smile spread across her face.

“The carousel!” she yelled, and Hannah squealed, jumping up and down.

“We’ll catch up with you,” David said, and the girls were off, sprinting down the cobblestone road toward the red and white polka-dotted mushroom covering a handcrafted carousel imported from the Netherlands.

“I’ll race you, Dad!” Tatum hollered to David as they hopped onto the wooden platform of the carousel.

“But we’ll be going the same speed, Tate,” he said logically.

“You have to use your imagination!” Tatum yelled before hopping onto the back of a rainbow-colored rooster.

Sherry placed Hannah on a nearby horse and hung on.

“Oh, well in that case, you’re on!” David yelled, straddling the back of a rooster next to Tatum’s. The music fired up, and they began their dizzying circles. David scrunched his face to match that of a competitive derby rider, and Tatum did the same.

“I’m beating you, Dad!” she yelled.

“You sure are!”

It was the perfect way to end their first day at Give Kids The World Village, a nonprofit resort in Kissimmee, Florida, that partners with 250 Wish-granting organizations and children’s hospitals to house children with life-threatening illnesses and their families. The Nulls had six more days ahead of them, with meals at the Gingerbread House Restaurant, shows at Julie’s Safari Theater, bedtime tuck-ins by a six-foot-tall rabbit named Mayor Clayton, laughs from talking wishing wells, and banana splits for breakfast.

Sherry filled the girls’ tub with bubbles that night, and as Tatum carefully smeared a beard and mustache of white suds across Hannah’s face, Sherry asked, “What park would you girls like to visit tomorrow?”

With free passes to Disney World, Universal Studios, MGM
Studios, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and SeaWorld, Sherry thought it would take longer than a split second to decide.

“Disney World!” Tatum shouted as she perfected the pointy tip of a foamy cone on Hannah’s head that was slowly taking the shape of a wizard’s hat.

The decision was made, and the next day, the girls, with their parents trying to keep up with them, spent most of the day dashing from one ride to the next, skipping to the front of each line after Tatum flashed her Make-A-Wish button.

“Welcome, Princess” was the common greeting at the front of every line, and this expedited service allowed the girls to enjoy each ride in the park multiple times. Halfway through the day, Tatum’s skips and sprints gradually turned into slow walks.

“You okay, sweetie?” Sherry asked.

“Yeah, I’m okay. I’m just a little tired,” Tatum said.

“Let’s take it easy for a while,” David said, and they relaxed watching light shows and parades before Tatum’s energy increased and she could happily frolic once again toward the next ride. That night, for her eighth birthday, they went to Akershus Castle in The Norwegian Pavilion at Epcot Theme Park.

“Welcome to our castle,” Ariel from
The Little Mermaid
said sweetly as Tatum and Hannah looked up at her with wide, star-struck eyes. Ariel bent down and left the girls with bright-red, heart-shaped kisses on their cheeks that they later refused to wash off before going to bed.

Each morning for the rest of the trip, Tatum and Hannah woke to taps on the door and musical voices of volunteers chiming “gift givers” before presenting them with piles of gift shop toys like key chains and stuffed animals. On Thursday night, two days before they left Give Kids The World Village to return home to Dallas, Texas, it was Christmas in the Castle of Miracles. Children at the
village piled onto the laps of Santa and Mrs. Claus and shared their secrets and wish lists. Excited to meet with Santa in January, less than a month after they had met him for Christmas, Tatum and Hannah pranced in circles as they followed their parents back to their villa.

As their energy dwindled, David scooped Hannah into his arms and she plopped her tired head onto his shoulder. Tatum grabbed Sherry’s hand and, as they walked together, said, “Mom, I found a lump under my armpit.”

Those words nearly stopped Sherry in her tracks.

“Does it hurt, sweetie?” she asked, keeping calm.

“A little,” Tatum admitted as she looked up at her mom.

Sherry could see the concern in her daughter’s eyes, so she gave a reassuring smile before stopping to take a look.

“Lift your arm up and let me see,” Sherry said, and David bent down next to Sherry with Hannah asleep in his arms.

They each felt the lump under Tatum’s right arm.

“It’s probably just a clogged sweat gland from all the running around you’ve been doing,” Sherry said with a teasing tone. “I’ve had that happen before.”

“Okay,” Tatum said, and they finished their walk to the villa in silence.

During the last two days of Tatum’s Wish trip, the Null’s spent their time exploring nearly every theme park in Florida, swimming at the village, playing miniature golf at Marc’s Dino Putt, and living in a fantasy world that could have been taken straight from the pages of a fairy tale.

“Are you girls ready to go home tomorrow?” Sherry asked on the last night of their trip.

“I wish we could live here!” Hannah said, and Tatum agreed.

“Well, get a good night’s sleep tonight and we’ll see you in the morning,” David said before slowly shutting the bedroom door, leaving a crack for light to seep in.

For fear of the girls overhearing, David and Sherry had spent the past couple of days avoiding a discussion about the lump under Tatum’s arm. After tucking them into bed, David gave Sherry a tight hug, kissed her on the forehead, and smiled slightly before heading to the rocking chair on the front porch of their villa. Sherry watched as he sat down with heavy shoulders and glistening eyes.

She curled up on their bed with a glass of wine and her journal, and barely touched the pen to the page when an orange flame caught her eye and made her look up. The intensity of the small blaze dissipated quickly and smoldered into a red glow with each puff that David took. It was a weakness he hid from the girls; a nerve-calming secret he kept for times like these. Sherry watched as he sat in the dark, gray swirls dancing around her husband’s head. That was David’s release, and she needed hers. As she began to write, her throat, swollen from seized tears, opened the moment she let them fall.

Sherry closed her eyes and let her pen rest on the page. Like a movie in fast-forward mode, images of what Tatum had been
through less than a year before entered her mind uncontrollably as she opened her eyes and stared at the page.

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T
EN MONTHS EARLIER
…

One March morning, Sherry’s dad, or “Granddad” as the girls called him, stopped by the house for breakfast.

“What are your plans when you get to San Antonio?” he asked. It was almost spring break, and the Nulls were planning a vacation in San Antonio, Texas, about five hours south of their home in Dallas.

“We’re taking the girls to SeaWorld and having dinner with Shamu, which they’re really excited about,” Sherry said. “We’ll take them to the Alamo, and …”

She stopped and stared at her father. “What’s the matter, sweetie?” he said.

“Did you hear that?” She turned her head toward the back of the house. The faint sound of coughing and gasping came from the hallway.

“It sounds like Tatum has a cough,” David started, but Sherry had already jumped from her chair and was racing to the bathroom.