I Took My Terminally Ill 10-Year-Old to a Football Game as His Final Wish – Then the Jumbotron Lit Up and Nothing About That Day Was What I Expected
Chapter 1 - Turn Around
"Mom! LOOK!"
Noah nearly dumped his soda trying to point at the screen looming over the field.
I looked up.
There we were. Forty feet tall, lit up in front of forty thousand strangers. Mark sat on one side of Noah, I sat on the other, and our son was wedged between us in his Hawks jersey, grinning so wide that for one second — just one — he looked like any other ten-year-old boy at a football game.
I waved at the screen like an idiot.
Mark threw both arms in the air.
Noah yelled, "WE'RE FAMOUS!"
The people around us laughed and waved too, caught up in it, and I reached for my phone again even though I'd already taken more pictures that afternoon than I could count.
Then the announcer's voice rolled through the stadium.
"Noah, we are so glad you're here with us today."
My son went still.
His face filled the screen, bigger than a billboard.
"But," the announcer said, "there's something you don't know about this trip."
I looked at Mark. He looked back at me, just as lost as I felt.
"All three of you," the voice continued, "turn around and look behind you."
The strangers in our row twisted in their seats to see what was happening. Noah grabbed my hand.
"What is it, Mom?"
"I don't know, Rookie."
We turned.
A man was making his way down the concrete steps toward us, weaving past knees and popcorn buckets, and Mark's whole face drained of color the second he saw him.
"Danny?"
Behind Danny came Gus from the hospital, lugging Noah's beat-up plastic tabletop football set under one arm like it was the Lombardi Trophy. A nurse from Noah's floor followed, along with a teenage boy named Marcus and his mother.
Noah's jaw dropped.
"No way."
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Whatever he'd braced for when the announcer told us to turn around, it wasn't this.
Then Gus held the little plastic field over his head, and Noah started laughing so hard he could barely breathe.
