Our Family Was Flying on a Make-a-Wish Trip for My Ill Son – Halfway Through the Flight, the Pilot Said, ‘Mike, There’s One Thing About This Trip That You and Your Parents Know Nothing About’
Mike unfolded his.
The easy smile vanished from his face.
“I’ve made these.”
Stella turned toward him.
“What?”
The captain began telling a story.
“I’ve made these.”
***
Months earlier, on the pediatric oncology floor of a hospital several states away, a little boy named Nolan stopped speaking.
He refused food.
He fought the nurses when they touched his IV.
His mother sat beside him each afternoon, holding a sandwich he never ate.
One day, another patient dragged his infusion pole into Nolan’s room.
That patient was Mike.
One day, another patient dragged his infusion pole into Nolan’s room.
Mike stared at the boarding pass in his hands.
Captain Harris continued.
Mike had brought crayons and folded paper. He sat on the floor and drew two crooked airplanes.
He handed one to Nolan.
“Pretend we’re already on vacation,” he whispered.
He did not tell Nolan to be brave. He did not say the medicine would stop hurting.
He simply asked where they should go.
He did not tell Nolan to be brave.
Nolan pointed toward the ceiling.
“The moon,” he had said.
It was the first word he had spoken in three days.
Mike looked at us.
“I remember him.”
I did too.
It was the first word he had spoken in three days.
I remembered the thin boy in the room beside Mike’s. I remembered seeing paper scattered around the hallway and asking a nurse why every child suddenly had one.
She had smiled.
“Travel documents.”
I had been too tired to ask more.
I remembered the thin boy in the room beside Mike’s.
Captain Harris explained that the next day, another child wanted a pass.
Then another.
Soon nurses began keeping crayons at the desk. Before difficult treatments, frightened children received boarding passes to beaches, castles, dinosaur parks, and planets no adult had ever heard of.
The passes did not make the needles hurt less.
They gave the children somewhere else to place their minds.
The passes did not make the needles hurt less.
