Chapter 2 - A Different Kind of Wish
Three months earlier, football had still been an ordinary thing in our house.
Sunday afternoons meant Mark hollering at the TV, Noah correcting his play calls with more confidence than any grown man deserved to have corrected, and me pretending I wasn't invested while complaining louder than either of them the second a ref made a call I didn't like.
"Mom," Noah told me once, cracking up, "you don't even know the rules."
"I know cheating when I see it."
Mark nearly choked on a mouthful of chips.
Then the treatment stopped working.
The doctor asked Mark and me to step into the hallway outside Noah's room one gray afternoon. I remember staring at a crayon drawing of a football taped to his door while the doctor talked, because it was easier than looking at his face.
"I'm so sorry," he said. "The treatment isn't giving us the response we'd hoped for."
Mark had a hundred questions. Was there another trial? A different medication? A specialist somewhere else who hadn't seen his file yet?
I couldn't get past one sentence.
"We could be looking at far less time than we'd hoped."
When we walked back into Noah's room, a game was already playing on the TV bolted to the wall. Mark sat beside him. Their team scored, and for one glorious second, Mark shot out of his chair.
"YES!"
Noah burst out laughing.
Then Mark leaned over him immediately, all business. "You okay, Rookie? Not too much?"
Noah's smile faded, just slightly.
"Dad. I laughed. I'm allowed to laugh."
"I know you are."
"Then let me."
Mark sat back down slowly. "Okay. Okay, you're right."
I lifted my phone and took the picture before I'd even decided to.
Noah looked over. "What?"
"Nothing," I said.
But from that day on, almost everything became something I wanted to keep. Noah eating cereal in his pajamas. Noah asleep with one sock still on. The face he made at hospital Jell-O. The hour he and Mark spent arguing about a stat neither of them could actually confirm.
Pictures. Videos. Voice memos I never played back.
I told myself I was just holding onto our life. I didn't realize my son was watching me do it.
A few days later, a woman from a wish foundation sat down beside Noah's bed with a clipboard and a soft voice.
"If you could do one really special thing, Noah — anything at all — what would you pick?"
I braced myself for something enormous. A trip. A celebrity. Something we'd have to explain to relatives for years.
"A football game," Noah said instantly. He named the Hawks. Then, almost as an afterthought, "With Mom and Dad."
Mark squeezed his shoulder. "Obviously, Rookie."
The woman laughed and made a note. She worked with Noah's medical team to arrange accessible seating, transportation, everything that would make the day easy on his body. We thought we understood the whole plan.
We didn't know Noah had made one more request when we weren't in the room. He had no idea anyone would actually take it seriously.
On game day, I understood why he'd picked that stadium the second we walked through the gates. He just stopped, right there in the concourse, and stared.
Thousands of voices bounced off the concrete. Vendors shouted. Music thumped through speakers the size of refrigerators. A river of blue jerseys moved past us in every direction.
Mark leaned down. "Too much, buddy?"
Noah shook his head, eyes huge. "It's awesome, Dad."
Then he saw the field, and I watched my son's whole body light up in a way I hadn't seen in months. For weeks his world had shrunk down to hospital hallways and waiting rooms and carefully timed trips home. Now there was grass in every direction, real players, real noise, and none of it cared that he was sick.
He booed the other team like he'd been doing it his whole life. He yelled until his voice cracked. He ate half a pretzel, then stole three bites of Mark's hot dog after swearing up and down he wasn't hungry.
I documented every second of it.
At one point Mark leaned over. "You tired, Rookie?"
"No, Dad."
"Cold?"
"Nope."
"You need water?"
"Dad."
"What?"
"Watch the game."
Mark laughed. "I am watching it, bud."
Noah pointed a finger straight at him. "No, you're watching me watch it."
Mark's smile flickered, just for a second, like he'd been caught at something. Then Noah turned back to the field like he hadn't said anything at all, and I snapped another picture.
By halftime he was exhausted but refused to leave.
"Ten more minutes," he kept negotiating.
"You said that ten minutes ago," Mark told him.
"That was a different ten."
That's when the camera found us. The screen. The announcement. And then Gus — a hospital maintenance guy who somehow appeared every time Noah needed a light fixed, a TV rebooted, or someone to argue football stats with him for twenty straight minutes. Noah called him "Coach Gus." Gus insisted his real title was "Commissioner." They'd been fighting about it for months.
I had no idea why the man was hauling my son's cheap plastic football set through a professional stadium.
Behind him came four more familiar faces — the nurse from Noah's floor, a teenage patient named Marcus, Marcus's mom, and a man named Danny.
Mark saw Danny and looked away fast.
Months earlier, Danny's son had been on the same hospital floor as Noah. One afternoon, Danny's family got good news — really good news. Danny had cried right there in the hallway, laughing and hugging a nurse. Mark, who had just come from a meeting where Noah's doctors delivered the opposite kind of news, walked past him and snapped, "Could you celebrate somewhere else?"
The hallway went dead silent. Danny apologized immediately. Mark regretted it the second it left his mouth but never went back to fix it.
Noah had seen the whole thing from his doorway. So had Danny. The next day, Danny stopped by Noah's room, got destroyed at tabletop football, and never once asked how Noah was feeling. Noah liked him instantly.
Now Danny was walking down the stadium steps with the rest of them.
Noah leaned toward his dad and whispered, "Don't be weird."
Mark blinked. "I'm not weird."
"You're weird sometimes."
Even with my stomach in knots, I laughed.
Gus reached our row and held up the tabletop game like a trophy. "Rookie."
Noah groaned. "You snitched."
"Commissioner," Gus corrected. "And I prefer 'strategic informant.'"
"You cheat."
"Unproven."
A few people nearby laughed along, not even sure what the joke was.
Gus set the game on Noah's lap. Then the announcer's voice returned.
"Noah told our wish team that if this was going to be his football day, he wanted his hospital league to be a part of it too. What he didn't know is that a few members of that league decided watching from home just wasn't good enough."
The section around us cheered.
Noah covered his face with both hands. "I'm never going back to that hospital."
The nurse leaned in. "You have an appointment Tuesday."
"Cancel it."
"Not happening."
Then the announcer added, "Noah has one rule for his league."
Gus pointed straight at him.
"Don't," Noah warned.
Gus grinned and said nothing, but the announcer finished it anyway.
May you like
"Everybody plays."
The crowd applauded. I smiled, then glanced at Noah — and he wasn't smiling anymore. He was looking at me, and something in his face was harder than I expected from a ten-year-old.
