Page 115 of Wish Upon A Star

He shakes his head. “I don’t want to get your hopes up. The machine is being recalibrated and we’re going to test again. But…there’s a chance—apossibility—that her leukemia is…retreating.”

“Retreating?” Charlie, now looking deflated and stunned. Like someone poked a hole in a balloon. “What does that mean? We’ve been told it—that it can’t. It won’t. It’s not responding to treatment. It’s advancing. Now it’s retreating? Will she…can she...?”

The doctor rubs his face. “To be perfectly candid, Mr. Park, I just don’t know. I’ve heard of cases like this…maybe two other times, in my career.” He sighs again. “She’s still barely hanging on. I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic, necessarily—but if we recalibrate the machine and re-scan her and the results come back the same as the previous couple sets of scans? This could be an anomalous, unexpected remission. But we’re in uncharted territory here, okay? I don’t know what’s going to happen. She could continue to improve. Or…not. We just don’t know.”

He stands up, takes a deep breath, lets it out, and seems to rally. “For now, we wait.”

And then he exits.

That man is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, it appears.

The moment he’s gone, Grandma stands up and strides purposefully to the exit.

“Mom?” Sherri asks. “Where are you going?”

“To pray,” is the response. A pause. A look to me. “Westley? Are you coming?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

I follow her to the chapel. Hold her hand as she descends to her knees in the second row, this time, holding on to the back of the pew in front of her. I’m beside her. Kneeling.

Once again, I can’t form ideas or words or thoughts. Am I directing the plea in my heart to the cross? To a being somewhere beyond the sky that I’m not sure I believe in? I don’t know even that.

I just know my heart beats a single word:

Please.

My mind repeats it.

My soul sings it.

At some point, I feel others join me. Macy on my left, her incredible profusion of hair bowed. Bethany is on the other side of her. Sherri and Charlie on the other side of Grandma.

We kneel together in the second row of the chapel.

We wait. Some of us pray. Others weep.

Eventually Grandma moves from her knees to sit on the pew. Reaches into her voluminous purse and removes a small bible with a locking front cover. Old, worn red leather, gold clasp in the shape of a heart, with a tiny red jewel in the center.

She pops the clasp and uses the crimson ribbon to open it. Psalms.

Reads aloud, but in a low murmur. Not quite to herself, not quite aloud.

I listen.

It’s Old King James, withtheeandthouandthy.

Somehow, in this place, it fits.

There’s a sacred silence here, profound and deep.

Please.

Please.

* * *

Time spent prayingpasses sludge-slow and in a fast-forward blur.