“Tyson woke up early crying his tummy was hurting. My wife rubbed his tummy to comfort him and felt a hard lump in his stomach. We dropped the kids off at school and took him to the ER. The conversation was short, ‘I’m sorry.'”
‘Okay mama?!’ Tyson would check on her. ‘Mama, sad.’ He’d tell me. Our lives changed that night. I tried to comfort her as she went through all the same emotions.’
‘This is the moment my sister met the woman who saved her life. She got caught in traffic and arrived literally minutes before my sister was about to walk down the aisle.’
“When she arrived, my sister didn’t know her name, didn’t know her face, didn’t know her story… but she knew this was the woman who had saved her life.”
‘She was perfect, the kind of baby other mothers are jealous of. Until she wasn’t. We felt lost on how to ‘fix it.’ I quit my job. My husband ran out of sick days.’
“She had a diaper rash we couldn’t control. I knew there was nothing normal about it. I thought, ‘Funny thing. I ALWAYS washed Kinsley’s clothes before letting her wear them.’ ALWAYS. But on this day, I blamed myself.”
‘It was 6 a.m. I froze. ‘That’s weird. She never calls this early.’ When I arrived, he kept holding his stomach. Mom’s ALWAYS know what’s wrong, but she couldn’t figure this one out.’
“He didn’t say much. I couldn’t get any words out. He ran up and gave me a light little poke before running away. All I could think was, ‘Why? He’s only 14.'”
‘I really messed up Will. I’ll call you soon.’ Nothing prepares you for this. I pulled over and lost it. I look back at conversations I had with my sister and tears run down my cheek.’
“Emily was such a gifted kid. I was the jealous older brother. I always thought she would be going places. Until things changed. We received a large inheritance from our grandmother’s passing. It was like a switch. ‘I never want to see or speak to you again,’ I said to my sister.”
‘She and her brother are both adopted, so we couldn’t even do a half match! That call was devastating. How could we come this far and not have any matches?! We felt hopeless.’
“We searched for weeks, and came up empty handed. I remember so vividly sitting in the waiting room thinking this is just a bad dream and we would wake up!”
‘IT’S A BOY!,’ they said as they held him up over the sheet. She turned and looked at me. ‘That’s your baby.’ It was the most incredible moment of my life.’
“The next day I walked into our apartment building to find Evan on his knees sobbing. The doctor had called.”
‘He was 6 months old and only 9 pounds. I am a living nightmare. They knew it was all a tremendous f*ck up. They knew he was like this because of them.’
“I got the call around 3:30 a.m. I spent 9 months preparing for that call. 9 months worth of nights obsessively checking the volume on the phone, making sure it was charged, that it was close by, that I hadn’t somehow missed any calls. Well I got my call. Loud and clear.”
‘I saw the fear in his eyes. He knew. His heart knew. His girl wasn’t ok. Both his beautiful girls were in the fight of their lives.’
“We sat there watching our beautiful, vibrant, sassy girl waste away. The shower was for sobbing. Then Kylie’s mother got an urgent phone call. The labs taken revealed something unimaginable. I held that 6-foot, 175-pound boy. I rocked him as he asked if he would lose her.”
‘I was punched in the face by a man who claimed to ‘love me so much.’ Then he said, ‘Now I’m going to call my mom to let her finish the job.’’
“He said, ‘Something is wrong with Wyatt.’ I open the shower curtain and see him holding my son out. I thought his neck was broken.”
