I reached beneath my seat and found a square of white cardstock.
On the front, someone had drawn an airplane in blue crayon. One wing was larger than the other. Three round windows floated above the body.
Across the top were the words: BOARDING PASS TO SOMEWHERE BETTER.
No name.
No destination.
No explanation.
On the front, someone had drawn an airplane in blue crayon.
Mike unfolded his.
The easy smile vanished from his face.
“I’ve made these.”
Stella turned toward him.
“What?”
The captain began telling a story.
“I’ve made these.”
***
Months earlier, on the pediatric oncology floor of a hospital several states away, a little boy named Nolan stopped speaking.
He refused food.
He fought the nurses when they touched his IV.
His mother sat beside him each afternoon, holding a sandwich he never ate.
One day, another patient dragged his infusion pole into Nolan’s room.
That patient was Mike.
One day, another patient dragged his infusion pole into Nolan’s room.
Mike stared at the boarding pass in his hands.
Captain Harris continued.
Mike had brought crayons and folded paper. He sat on the floor and drew two crooked airplanes.
He handed one to Nolan.
“Pretend we’re already on vacation,” he whispered.
He did not tell Nolan to be brave. He did not say the medicine would stop hurting.
He simply asked where they should go.
He did not tell Nolan to be brave.
Nolan pointed toward the ceiling.
“The moon,” he had said.
It was the first word he had spoken in three days.
Mike looked at us.
“I remember him.”
I did too.
It was the first word he had spoken in three days.
I remembered the thin boy in the room beside Mike’s. I remembered seeing paper scattered around the hallway and asking a nurse why every child suddenly had one.
She had smiled.
“Travel documents.”
I had been too tired to ask more.
I remembered the thin boy in the room beside Mike’s.
Captain Harris explained that the next day, another child wanted a pass.
Then another.
Soon nurses began keeping crayons at the desk. Before difficult treatments, frightened children received boarding passes to beaches, castles, dinosaur parks, and planets no adult had ever heard of.
The passes did not make the needles hurt less.
They gave the children somewhere else to place their minds.
The passes did not make the needles hurt less.
Mike leaned toward the aisle.
“That was just our game.”
The captain seemed to answer him.
“Mike never realized what he started.”
A pediatric nurse shared the story with a volunteer. The volunteer passed it to a charity that worked with airlines carrying Wish families.
“Mike never realized what he started.”
Flight crews began hearing about the boy who gave children boarding passes before he had ever boarded a real plane.
Then came the part none of us knew.
“For several months,” Captain Harris added, “one handmade boarding pass has traveled in the cockpit of every Wish flight operated by our program.”
Dana opened the cockpit door just far enough to lift a laminated paper.
