Tears welled in my eyes. I didn’t know this child’s name. I didn’t know how long they had. But I knew one thing—they remembered. For two years. A moment I barely thought twice about had stayed with them, had shaped them, had become a seed of hope in the middle of something unimaginably hard.
I had to go. I had to find them.
The next morning, I brought the letter and drove two hours to the hospital listed on the envelope. I wasn’t even sure if they’d let me in, but when I showed the receptionist the envelope, her face softened.
“I think I know who this is for,” she said quietly. “Wait right here.”
A few minutes later, a nurse came to get me.
We walked down a quiet hallway lined with painted butterflies and handmade rainbows. And then we stopped at a door with the name “Isabela” written in glittery letters.
Inside, a little girl lay in bed, pale but smiling, with a stuffed giraffe in her arms. Her mother sat beside her.
When the girl saw me, her eyes widened. Then she whispered, “You’re Miss Emily.”
I nodded, trying to keep it together. “And you must be Isabela.”
