All my thoughts had been about Emily from the moment I’d left home that morning, starting with my memory of the first time I held her in my arms and believed that my little girl could do something that would change the world. I sensed her strong heart and, even as a baby, I saw her joy, and in her eyes that spark of mischief. When Kari and I married in 2001 we struggled at first to start a family. Emily came along in 2005. We had expected Emily would be like Kari: thoughtful, observant, and shy, lover of Disney princesses and the pink and frilly parts of girlhood. I wanted to be the best dad I could be to her, to give her every opportunity, and to protect her. Yet I wasn’t sure how to be a good dad to a daughter, having been raised as I was, with two brothers. Right from the start, Emily was her own person: bright, funny, and with a lot to say, even as a toddler.
Like me, she loved the outdoors and had an easy way with people. She was a daddy’s girl who laughed at all my jokes, the dumber the better, and, like her dad, she was a prankster. When she heard my car pull in to the driveway, she’d scurry to hide, ready to jump out of a closet or from behind the sofa to startle me or douse me with a squirt gun. Even errands were fun when she was a passenger, strapped into her safety seat, explaining the world to me. She was tender and loving, too, though. When I had to have surgery for my Crohn’s disease, she was just three. She decided to sleep on the steps next to the room where I was recovering so she could be there if I needed anything, and she pledged she would grow up to be a doctor so that she could be the one who fixed her daddy.
Emily also inherited her mother’s grace and beauty. Often when I got home, I’d find them doing crafts at the kitchen table or curled up in Kari’s favorite chair, books stacked on the armrest, because Emily, like Kari, always wanted to read more. Kari and I agreed that we had been blessed with a child who was a perfect balance of the best of Kari and me, and that our family was complete.
As these memories of my beloved little girl flitted through my mind, I tried to stay positive and hope for the best, but all that time something was whispering to me that the news from the doctor was not going to be good.
Two nights before, when Kari got home from work, her mom, Pam—who took care of Emily during the day—said she’d noticed lots of bruises on Emily’s arms and legs. Pam said the bruises on Emily’s arms could be from the Nerf sword battle she had had with her cousins that afternoon, and the large one on her shin probably was from the stumble she took on our flagstone steps. Emily was strong and full of energy, so we were used to seeing scrapes and bruises on our little girl who was so eager to take on the world. But as Kari dried Emily after her bath that night, she saw more bruises than her mom had seen. Kari counted twenty-one.
Earlier in the week, Kari asked me if I’d noticed that Emily’s gums were bleeding when she brushed her teeth. Then Kari remembered that recently Emily had had several nosebleeds. She searched the internet to find a reason for these symptoms. When the online search results highlighted leukemia, Kari didn’t think much of it because, other than the bruises, Emily was healthy. She texted her sister Brenda, a nurse, who immediately said these were signs of leukemia. Kari became alarmed. That evening on my way home from work, Brenda called me in tears, saying we had to get Emily to the doctor right away so she could get checked for leukemia.
As I opened my car door in the driveway, I heard Emily’s laugh, high and light above the western Pennsylvania birdsong. I followed that sound to the backyard, where I saw her pumping her strong legs on the swing set I’d built for her there. When Emily had said she wanted a swing set, I’d looked in all the big hardware stores but I hadn’t found any that seemed strong enough. I wanted a swing that could hold me. That was how I’d know it would be safe enough for her. Finally, I decided to make it myself. When our crews at the electric company switch out the cross arms, we don’t throw them away but toss them in a discard pile so the linemen can use them for home projects or contribute them to the community. I picked through that discard pile to find the strongest cross arms to serve as the beams, and sank the swing set’s four corners into concrete. Emily came with me to the hardware store to pick out green swing seats and the chain to hold them. I loved watching her swing in them, swooping so high up in the air that I had to reach to give her a push.
When Emily saw me walking toward her, she kicked a flip-flop off the tip of her toe and it smacked me on the shoulder. I staggered around, mortally wounded, a man felled by the weight of her flip-flop. Emily was giggling and I was grinning, but my eyes were on Kari. Her posture was withdrawn, closed in on herself. She was as worried as I
