Once Upon a Wish by Rachelle Sparks Page A

weather warmed and Sharon decided, after watching her daughter’s body resort to the fetal position every night, to try something that had always worked to heal Katelyn.
    Water.
    Crystal’s friend from church, Jonathan, had a pool in his backyard, and his family opened it up to Ray, Sharon, and Katelyn every day when Ray got off work. They spent hours transporting Katelyn, her wheelchair, and all of her IVs to Jonathan’s house to dip her in the water, inch by inch, careful not to let a drop into her tracheal tube.
    Holding her from behind, swaying her gently through the water, Sharon and Ray watched as Katelyn’s weightless body immediately unfolded, succumbed to the water’s peace. Curled, white-knuckled fists loosened, feet, legs, and arms relaxed, and within moments, her entire body, long and straight, moved fluidly with the water.
    “What are you guys doing to get her so relaxed?” asked Katelyn’s physical therapist, Swathi Salin, a week after they started putting Katelyn into the water.
    Sharon smiled. She knew how well Swathi and Katelyn’s doctors would receive the news that they were placing Katelyn, comatose with a tracheal tube, in water.
    “Do you really want to know?” she asked.
    Swathi, who had been working with Katelyn for more than a year, studied Sharon’s face, lowered her brows with suspicion.
    “I’m not sure …” she said slowly.
    “A friend of ours has a pool …” Sharon started, and Swathi covered her ears.
    “Don’t tell me,” Swathi said, laughing. “I don’t want to know. Just keep doing whatever you’re doing because it’s working. Just don’t tell me about it.”
    Day after day, week after week, month after month, Sharon and Ray continued what they were doing—administering meds around the clock, daily physical therapy, monitoring storms, placing Katelyn in the pool, praying hard, and waiting for a miracle.
    One morning, after a year of watching her daughter sleep, never knowing if she would wake up, focusing on the plan, staying strong for herself and her family, Sharon stepped into the shower and lost it. The water and her tears poured down her face, her sobs filling the bathroom, echoing against the tile. Ray was working, Crystal was at school, and her cries, her pleas, filled the quiet house.
    “Lord, if you’re not going to heal her, then take her with you,” she cried. “Do not leave her lying here forever, trapped in this body.”
    Up against the shower wall, she slid slowly to her knees and closed her eyes as water crept down her body. Katelyn’s voice became loud in Sharon’s head, her smile the only thing her mind’s eye could see. Thoughts that this life could be Katelyn’s destiny weretoo much for her to bear. The pain of remembering Katelyn before she became ill, the desperation she felt to get her back, poured from her that morning and continued throughout the day.
    She managed to pull herself together long enough to take Katelyn to physical therapy, but as Swathi started to stretch her and put her braces in place, Sharon had to leave the room.
    “I’m just gonna go grab something to eat,” she lied and walked with weak legs and a weaker heart to the hospital chapel.
    “I don’t want to be selfish anymore,” she cried with long, breathless sobs, on her knees, alone in the chapel. A few months before, during a routine checkup, doctors found no trace of cancer in Katelyn’s blood. She was officially in remission. Why would He heal her from cancer but not wake her up? “If you’ve been holding on to her long enough for me to realize that I need to let go, then I let go. I’ll survive. I won’t survive well, but I’ll survive.”
    Just those words, those thoughts, made her cry harder than she had ever cried before, feel pain deeper than she had ever felt in her life.
    Sharon had stayed strong, focusing on the next step, on the plan, for so long, but on this day, a day no different from any other, something inside of her broke. She needed