Once Upon a Wish (6 page)

“The liver is sixty years old,” Dr. Klintmaulm explained, and panic that had momentarily subsided within Sherry resurfaced.

Is the only option to save our daughter a liver that is sixty years old?
she thought.

David vocalized her concern. “Is that okay?” he asked without hesitation. “How long do livers last?”

“There is nothing to indicate that this liver won’t last a hundred years,” Dr. Shore said, slowly easing their minds.

But he was wrong.

Thirty minutes later, he and Dr. Klintmaulm walked side by side toward David and Sherry, their faces announcing bad news before their words could.

“I found a tumor on the liver,” Dr. Klintmaulm said in a kind but matter-of-fact tone. “We can’t use it.”

He paused momentarily, and then continued, explaining that it would be best to take her liver out before it poisoned her.

“You’re going to take it out and not put anything back in?” David asked, feelings of desperation bubbling in his gut. “How long can a person live without a liver?”

“Thirty-six hours,” Dr. Klintmaulm said. “We need another option.”

David and Sherry knew what that option was. Among the family members tested earlier that day, Sherry’s brother-in-law Jim had proved to be a perfect match. “Take mine,” he ordered.

Sherry, who, along with her sister, Gay, was also a perfect match but could not donate because she was too thin, looked at her brother-in-law of nearly ten years.

“You don’t have to do this, Jim,” she said sadly, knowing the risk he’d be taking to give a portion of his liver to Tatum. It would be a major surgery, and though the portion remaining inside of him would rejuvenate itself within weeks and the healthy, left lobe portion he would give to his niece would also rejuvenate and save her life, Sherry wanted him to know he had a choice. “You can change your mind.”

His unfaltering stance gave Sherry combined hope and fear. Doctors sent Jim to Baylor University Medical Center-Roberts Hospital for further testing to make sure his body was indeed ready for such a major surgery.

“We’d like to do an exploratory procedure in the meantime to see if there’s any chance of Tatum’s liver revitalizing itself,” Dr. Klintmaulm said. “As the body’s most resilient organ, rejuvenation is not at all impossible. It’s a low-risk surgery that should just take a couple of hours, and that will tell us, for sure, whether or not Tatum needs a transplant.”

Sherry and David gave consent for the exploratory surgery and then joined their family and friends in the waiting room. Nerves crawled through Sherry’s body and grabbed at her stomach with each passing second as she and David made their way into the
hallway that led to the operating room before the doctors wheeled Tatum by. Though low-risk, they knew that with any surgery, there was never a 100 percent guarantee of her coming out alive. Holding on to each other for support, they watched as Tatum neared, the clinking sound of metal from her hospital bed echoing between quiet walls. Sherry pursed her lips together and swallowed the burning in her throat as the bed came to a halt at their feet. Tatum remained in the coma that had started on their trip back from San Antonio. Sherry and David stared down at their beautiful daughter, whose skin had yellowed and sunk around her closed eyes. They bent over the rails of the bed, kissing her cheeks and whispering quick messages into Tatum’s ear.

“Keep living,” Sherry managed, her voice shaking. “We love you
so
much, baby.”

“Stay strong, Tate,” David said softly into her ear. “You’re going to be just fine. Just stay strong.”

With that, Tatum was wheeled through the double doors, into the unknown.

As the doors swung closed, David and Sherry slumped to the floor, shaking with the agonizing reality that they may have just told their daughter good-bye.

After minutes that felt like hours, they finally stood, hugged, and walked back into the waiting room, hand in hand. They mingled nervously for the next few hours, praying with friends and family, finding strength in their presence. With no food or sleep in two days, they needed it.

The hands of the clock on the wall ticked nonchalantly past midnight before they heard the distinct sound of an opening door. David and Sherry shot their heads toward the entrance of the room, where gastroenterologist Dr. Naveen Mittal and transplant surgeon Dr. Henry Randall stood in their scrubs and booties. Dr.
Randall used a large, wooden desk at the front of the waiting room as a podium, and everyone stood and rushed to surround him, David and Sherry at the front of the group.

A pin drop would have sounded like a shattering vase.

“There is more healthy liver than not,” Dr. Randall began. “We can’t tell yet if Tatum’s liver will be able to heal itself, but there is enough healthy liver to leave it in for the night.”

With that, the room erupted. Hugs and cheers were tossed around the room, but David and Sherry stood in that moment simply looking at each other, the celebration surrounding them a blur. They didn’t cheer or clap or shout. There was a shared and silent understanding between them that, while it was great news, this didn’t mean Tatum was going to live. Though both natural optimists, wanting to rejoice, they pushed that urge aside. They were learning that a moment of good news meant only that—a moment. Nothing more. And moments like these could pass as quickly as it takes for good news to spread.

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When the excitement died down and the hour hand on the clock passed one, Sherry and David walked groups of dedicated visitors to their cars in the parking lot and made their way back into the hospital and up to Tatum’s room in the ICU. As they pushed open the door, familiar, panicked shouts of doctors’ orders escaped the room and four nurses surrounded Tatum’s small body. Beeps of every machine collided, mockingly, as alarms sounded and blended to chaos. David and Sherry backed to the far wall of the room, eyes wide, mouths covered, petrified. They watched as they were hit with pieces of words thrown from the nurses who were trying to fill them in on her condition.

Her heart rate is dropping. Blood pressure, increasing.

None of it made sense, but they had learned already what numbers to look for on what machines—how to tell if her intracranial pressures (ICPs) were increasing—and what numbers indicated a steady heartbeat and a healthy blood pressure. The green line revealed Tatum’s ability to breathe on her own and the yellow line showed breaths the ventilator took for her. Their eyes darted between machines as Sherry felt the urge to scream,
What the hell happened? She was fine a few minutes ago! How does this keep happening, where’s she’s fine one minute and dying the next?

David’s internal voice seemed to be the one Tatum heard.

Fight, Tatum, fight!
he shouted in his mind.

Her fight was the reason those nurses got her stabilized once again, and Tatum was calm. When the fire died and the room was quiet, Sherry and David sat across from Tatum on the small hospital couch, letting their hearts find a normal beat while their eyes remained intently on the machines working to keep her alive. By now, they could have interpreted those beeps with their eyes closed. Ears perked and eyes dancing, Sherry let them stop for a moment on a picture of Tatum that nurse Erin had asked them to bring and hang in her room.

Just three months earlier, Sherry had taken the girls to get a portrait taken as a Christmas gift for David. Captured in black and white, Tatum and Hannah flashed their radiant smiles from the steps of a beautiful staircase, and it was this image that let Sherry fall asleep for just a little while with a smile on her face.

She awoke to news that they had received the liver of a three-year-old child who had just passed away. With deep, familiar, and agonizing pains of sympathy for the family that had just lost their child, Sherry and David also knew that this was their chance to save Tatum.

As doctors explained, cadaveric donors are always preferred
over living donors due to higher success rates and only one person having to undergo surgery. After news of receiving a liver for Tatum, doctors told Jim, who was still at Baylor getting tested for possible surgery, that he was no longer needed to give half of his liver to Tatum. A great sense of relief washed over him and the rest of their family.

David and Sherry spent the afternoon by Tatum’s side, watching the silent rise and fall of her chest, praying for a successful transplant the next day. As reds and oranges from the sun’s setting colors streamed and glowed into Tatum’s room, David’s mother, Betty, called to tell him that she and David’s dad, Gary, had arrived. They had been on a road trip from Texas to Arkansas when they received the phone call about Tatum, and they had finally made the long drive back.

David took Betty to visit Tatum, and twenty minutes later, she and David appeared in the waiting room to join the rest of the group. As Sherry went to greet them, the door burst open and a young, male nurse they had seen only in passing shouted, “Sherry, we need you and David immediately!”

The panic in his voice sent them running toward the door, and they followed him quickly out into the waiting room with the stained glass. He didn’t waste any time.

“They’re performing CPR on Tatum right now,” he said.

“What?!” Sherry nearly screamed.
No, no, no, no, no, no,
she thought to herself. She was certain that screaming it enough times in her head would make God finally listen and jump-start Tatum’s heart.

David sprang from his seat and ran from the room. He went to get the one person he knew could help.

“Oh, God, noooooooooo,” Sherry sobbed as the door swung closed behind David. She dropped her head into her sister’s lap. “This can’t be happening! Not now!”

“They’ll get her back on track,” Gay promised, over and over, as she cried with her sister.

“Is God not hearing all our prayers?” Sherry asked angrily. “Where is He?”

“Excuse me, Sherry?” said an elderly man who introduced himself as the hospital’s chaplain. “Is there anything I can do to help you? Would you like to pray?”

She looked up at him through stained, swollen eyes and went against her sweet, patient nature.

“I don’t know you,” she said. “I really don’t want you in here.”

Her patience was gone. Her hope was gone. If Tatum died, part of her soul would be gone. Sherry stared at the man above her, who gave her a gentle, apologetic smile.

“I’ll leave you alone,” he said nicely. “That’s all I needed to hear.”

“I
would
like to see Larry,” she told Gay after the chaplain left the room. Larry was their church’s minister and the man who had married Sherry and David nine years before. Sherry grew up in his church, and he had known and loved Tatum from the time she was born. Sherry had always felt a sense of peace in Larry’s presence, a reassurance that everything would be okay.

“You’ve got to pray for us,” she said, hugging him tightly when he came into the room with David. “Pray that God’s will be done; pray that we stay strong, no matter what happens.”

Sure that the words “she’s gone” were waiting just around the corner, Sherry bowed her head and closed her eyes, praying harder than she had ever prayed, crying more than she had ever cried, believing deeper than she had ever believed.

Larry finished the prayer, and within moments, Dr. Shore plunged through the waiting room doors with a shining smile.

“She’s okay!” he blurted, explaining that either during the exploratory surgery or during intubation at Medical City, a small hole
was poked into Tatum’s lung. Her chest cavity had slowly filled with air, pushing her heart to the side and causing it to beat irregularly.

“I inserted a catheter under her left armpit to release the air,” Dr. Shore said. “We’ve got her stable now.”

David and Sherry’s hearts were still racing and settling when Sherry wiped her eyes and smirked.

Okay, God. I will not doubt you again,
she said in a silent prayer for Tatum’s transplant the next day. Sherry and David said good-bye to friends and family that night and made their way to the ICU to see Tatum.

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