A flash of light floated across the night sky. Squeezing my eyes hard, I chanted, “Star light, star bright, first shooting star I see tonight! I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight! I wi–”
“Nadja! What do you think you’re doing awake still, child?” The nurse scolded, coming over to my bed to tuck my covers more securely around my frail body. “This late at night, you should be fast asleep! At this rate, you’ll wear yourself out before you get a chance to get better. Now please, go to sleep, before we have even more problems to deal with.”
As the nurse left, flicking off the lights and leaving me in darkness, I thought to myself, If that’s even possible. I knew it was, but I had a strange love of playing a game with my mind where I told myself I would be all better and going home in the morning. It was a cruelty to get my own hopes up so, but I couldn’t help it. I had spent two years in this hospital, waiting for someone who would come along with just the right heart for an eight-year-old little girl.
The doctors called it “refractory dilated cardiomyopathy.” I called it “The Destroyer.” For it was this thing, this problem with my heart, that kept me from doing what other little girls got to do. Most eight-year-olds got to run around outside with their friends. I, however, was not allowed to run, or even walk quickly. I simply lay in my bed all day long, hooked up to more monitors than I’d ever wish for, making up little stories in my head and doing lessons from the books my private teacher brought in for me.
Some days were better than others. There were times when things would be looking up, that my body seemed to have taken to the latest medicine the doctors had tried, or a rumor that a heart might soon become available for me would spring up. Then there would be the days where my chest would start hurting more than usual, or I’d need to go back on a respirator, or my hopes for a heart would be crushed, and I’d ask myself “Why am I bothering to learn this stuff, anyway? I’m never going to be able to do anything with it!”
The doctors didn’t think I knew what was happening to me, but I did. Once, about six months ago, I pretended to be asleep while two of my nurses spoke outside my door, and I overheard them saying that if I didn’t receive a transplant in the next year and a half, I wasn’t likely to make it much longer. My own heart was killing me, and there wasn’t anything I –and apparently the doctors– could do.
Gazing out the window once more, I wondered, If the star isn’t in the sky anymore, does it still count? Maybe…maybe I can still get my wish.
Squeezing my eyes shut once more, I prayed upon that star with all of my broken heart.
***
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Why won’t that noise stop? He wondered. Karim felt nothing, but the noises around him carried on at painful decibels.
What’s going on? He tried to say, but nothing was responding. He could not move his limbs nor his mouth or eyes. He could not even get his lungs to perform the ups and downs of breathing. However, it seemed that something else must be taking care of that, so he did not let it worry him.
Instead, he thought of the party he had just come from. It had been his best friend Kevin’s ninth birthday, and all of his friends had been invited to spend the night. Unfortunately, a snowstorm had blown in when his mom came to pick him up. Caught on a slippery back road, they’d spun out of control, and… after that, everything was a blank void in his mind.
Voices pierced through the din of the beeps. Snips like “One in a million chance,” “Best not to hold on” and “Taking him off life support is really the best decision” came through at long intervals, though most was lost. What were they talking about? Could his parents seriously be thinking about giving him up? Karim had read about life support in his big sister’s science book. It was where a machine was keeping you alive, but if they pulled the plug, you died. That couldn’t really be happening to him, could it?
Another voice came to him. “There’s a little girl in this very hospital who’s been waiting for a heart just like your son’s. I’m sure she’ll be forever grateful for your sacrifice.”
What was this? They wanted to give away his heart? They couldn’t do that, could they? He needed that heart to live! Weren’t they at least going to ask him before they took it away from him and gave it to some little kid?
Apparently they weren’t, for his mother’s voice became very clear as she said directly to him, “Karim, dear, you probably can’t hear me, but… the doctor says that there is no hope left. He says that your death won’t be for nothing, though. There’s a little girl on the fourth floor who needs a new heart, because hers is sick. With your heart, she’ll live. Won’t that be nice? Karim, I–” her voice was cut off.
Filled with frustration, Karim shot through the roof. He was determined to find this girl who thought she could just take his heart away from him. Zipping through the corridors, not even sure who was looking for, he felt drawn towards one room. Peeking inside, he spotted a child about his own age sleeping in a bed. She was a tiny girl, her pale skin and limp black hair giving her the looks of a dead body. Despite the peaceful look on her face that he would have normally been opposed to changing, he marched straight up to her bedside and slapped her hard on the shoulder.
She startled awake, her eyes popping open. Timidly, she asked, “Have you come to take me away?”
“No, I came to tell you that you can’t have my heart, so there!” Karim snapped, crossing his arms.
Hope flooded her face. “A… a heart? For me?” she stammered.
“Yes, and it’s mine, Nadja, so you can’t have it!” How he knew her name he could not say, but how he could even speak to her when he was, for all intents and purposes, dead was still a mystery as well, so he did not think to investigate it far.
“But… if you aren’t using it…”
“I am! It’s my heart and I’m keeping it!”
“Oh.” She looked crestfallen.
Seeing her so made Karim feel awful, but he wasn’t ready to back down. Feeling a slight tug on his ghostly body, he said to her, “I have to go, now. Remember what I said!”
As he was fading, he heard her whisper, “But… but… my wish.”
He didn’t understand really what she was talking about, but before he disappeared entirely, he (and apparently Nadja) heard a soft woman’s voice say, “Fear not, Nadja, your wish has already been granted.
***
The paper a week later held the following article:
“Two Children Buried at Katryce Memorial Park
Following a devastating car crash last Saturday on Melrose Road, nine-year-old Karim Fuller was placed on life support after suffering severe head trauma. Upon being told there was no hope for their son, Mr. and Mrs. Fuller decided to terminate life support at 1:04 AM. They were also told of Nadja Vanderhoof, an eight-year-old little girl who was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy at the age of six who was in desperate need of a heart transplant. The Fullers agreed to give Vanderhoof their son’s heart. However, when Vanderhoof was informed of the transaction approximately a half hour later, she refused to allow the transplant to take place. Says nurse Noelle Jones, ‘She was dead set that it was wrong. She told me, “He isn’t done with his heart yet. Let him keep it.” I couldn’t persuade her to give in, and she somehow managed to convince her parents to let her do it.” Young Nadja’s last wish, told to her parents the day before she passed, was that she might live to see her baby sister be born. Just twelve minutes before the young girl’s life ended, Hope Vanderhoof’s life began, fulfilling Nadja’s wish.”
