Yan Zhou, 8th grade student, International School of Beijing
Her heartbeat had a rhythm, and the oxygen tube around her head sat at her cupid’s bow. On the counters in her hospital room, stacks of books rose, books with drawings of stars, animals, and beautiful landscapes. Her room had an enormous window showing the city of Beijing, the buildings made of glass. Outside the billboards projected images of the new titanium phone that would be coming out the following month: March 2040. Out her window, the sky looked grey and cloudy, the faraway towers nothing but shadows in the smog. Dirty air hung low over the tops of the nearby skyscrapers, like orange-grey mountains. Even though the sun was high in the sky, the clouds gathered together to cover it, making the city look like a black and white image of itself. Everything outside looked dusty and grey, as if the city had lost its color. Only the people on the streets below were shades of pastels.
From her bed, Avery could hear the nurses bustling around the hallways, checking on patients and helping doctors. Not as soft as her quilt at home, the sheets felt a bit rough and cool. She wanted to move around to keep warm, but the feeling of razors in her lungs made her limit her movement. Instead she contemplated a way of falling asleep: by thinking of the night sky and one of her favorite books An Apple on Jupiter.
The quietness in her room was ruined when all of a sudden a man entered her room, another man trailing behind him with a camera in his grip. In their darker clothes, they dressed as though they did not belong here. They looked like two lost businessmen rather than hospital workers.
The first man spoke, “Hi! I’m John, and this my crew, Matt. Are you Avery?”
“Yes,” she replied noticing the camera in Matt’s hand that started to blink red.
“Oh I’m sorry, did I interrupt your meal?” he asked pointing towards the tray of rice and vegetables.
She’d forgotten about the food, which had grown cold an hour before. “No, I’m not hungry.”
“You have a lovely room, with a wonderful view of the city,” he noted pointing towards grey.
“Really? I don’t notice the towers much. The smog tends to block them.”
John pointed at the stack of books next to her and asked, “Are you reading all the books there?”
“Most of them I’ve already read. Only a few I haven’t. Did you come to borrow a book?”
“No, but I appreciate the offer. Actually, I came here for another reason, but tell me a little about yourself first. What’s your favorite color?”
“Blue, like the nighttime sky," Avery said with awe.
“Really? That’s nice. What do you like to do?”
“I like reading. I read a lot of books. They take me away from here.”
“Have you read the new series Zodiac yet? Its very interesting.”
“I haven’t had the chance yet," Avery replied.
“I heard it involves wishes.”
“That's nice.”
“Speaking about wishes, my partner and I are coming around to each of the children here. We wanted to ask you if you have a wish, and if you do, we’ll do our best to grant it.” He smiled. “We’re from the CCTV station, but we also work with an organization that grants wishes to children like you.”
Without hesitation, she said, “So I get a wish, right?”
“Yes, you do.”
“Any wish I want, right?”
“Yes, anything within reason.”
“If I do, I want to see the stars," Avery requested.
At first, he was surprised. Then he chuckled as if it were a joke before replying, “The stars?”
“Yeah, you know those sparkly crystal bits in the sky that people read about in books and see in drawings.”
“No, really, what do you want?”
Once again she repeated slowly, “I want to see the stars.” Her face looked determined.
“Avery, your wish has to be practical, not impossible. Other kids wished to see the final basketball game, to have the newest technology. We haven’t seen the stars in so long that I doubt we will again. What if we bring you the newest Google eyeglasses to help you draw a picture or project drawings of the stars on your hospital ceiling? That would be nice, don’t you think?”
“The stars are real, not projections. I want to see the real thing. The older patients in this hospital say they’ve seen them. They saw them before all this grayness and smog came. I want to see them too.”
Finally, he sighed and thought that this must be her wish. “If that is truly what you want, then my crew and I will try our best.”
Avery heard those words too many times to count. Everybody always said, you’ll be fine, you’ll recover. One more treatment. One more medication. One more IV drip. Those were lies, she knew. So were the reporter’s words, but she watched the two men leave with a confused and hopeful look on their faces. As he left, John shrugged and mumbled something to his companion, something Avery could not hear.
The next time the newspaper came out, the headline read “Can you make this little girl’s wish come true?” The article had written, “At the World Renowned Hospital of Beijing, our Reporter John Xu and his crew went to interview the kids with cancer about their dying wishes. Most of the kid’s wishes were to watch the final basketball game, or go to Disneyland in Shanghai. But the one wish that seemed impossible came from an eight-year-old girl named Avery, who wished to see the stars. We’ve all heard about the stars. We’ve just never seen them. Can we make this one girl’s wish happen?”
Her face was all over the news like that of a missing child. The photo showed her with pale skin and a bald head but she was smiling with all her might. People wanted to interview her but her parents stopped every single one. Her story was something that reporters would love to write and publish. Outside the hospital everybody knew her story, but inside her little hospital room Avery did not know that she was reported on news, and people were inspired and wanted to help. Her story was like something you would read in books, not in reality.
Over the next few weeks Avery’s breaths began to shorten. Her skin grew more pale. The doctors tried to remove the fluid surrounding her lungs as a last attempt to save her, but she coughed up blood and felt pain in her bones and chest.
The doctor pulled Avery’s mother aside and said, “She is very ill, and for her to live much longer it’ll be a miracle. The cancer has spread to her bones, and the best we can do is to give her pain medication to keep her comfortable in her final days.”
“If that is the best you can do, then give her her dying wish,” the mother replied sternly.
“My dear, that is impossible.”
Over the next few weeks, people in Beijing began to hear about Avery’s story. They read her story on the news from their tablets, they watched her story on the television, they heard from their neighbors, and people talked about her. Most people felt so sorry for her because her wish was so impossible. They thought about how clueless this girl was, but at the same time they wanted to help. She was like a dying bird that everyone wanted to rescue.
****
One elderly man named Wang lived in an old high rise building with mini cracks in the paint, windows with wire bars, tiled floors, and a balcony. On his balcony he grew aloe and little baby trees. The plants weren’t as pretty as the willow trees that used to hang over the streets of Beijing, but Wang's trees grew fast and as strong as redwoods.
One afternoon, he brought along a lunch of rice porridge and salted duck eggs, a small shovel, and his baby trees to the bus station. The people riding the bus gave him weird looks. They would steal glances at him. They did not want to be rude, just curious about the baby trees in his hands. People usually just carried tablets or phones or shopping bags.
The bus driver blared the destination “Min Yun,” where the old man needed to go. Holding his plants and shovel, he got off the bus and stood on the dusty road facing mountains, with the city behind him. The once green mountain called Min Yun, now mostly rocks and earth, rose toward the sky like a massive hill of rich brown earth. Yellow wild grasses gathered at the base, shelters for the ladybugs. Up the side of the mountain, he could see the dirt path.
It took three hours for him to climb to his specific spot on the mountain, but he knew his efforts would be worth it in the end. There, right in the center was nice wet patch of dirt. There he planted the mini redwood trees.
“The wait will be long,” he told himself, “but they will make a big difference.” His back ached from planting trees and shoveling, and his legs felt like jelly from walking, yet his pain was only a tenth of the pain Avery suffered. He sat down and mixed the salted duck eggs into his porridge. He ate it while watching the smoky view of the factories in the city below.
On his way down, he took a different path off the mountain in Min Yun. He noticed many rows of holes, big enough to plant trees like his. Walking further down, he then saw people passing him who held bags with little leaves sticking out, shovels on their shoulders. Then he passed dirty-faced people holding small baby trees. Nobody seemed to mind the heat or the dirt on their clothes and skin. It almost seemed normal. Near the bottom of the mountain, Wang’s curiosity got the best of him, so he asked a teenage boy, “Why are so many people planting trees all of a sudden?”
“To make Avery’s wish come true, of course!” the teenager replied. Further down the path, Wang saw more people spewing out of the buses and cars to plant trees, all dressed for a hard day of work, wearing jean overalls or t-shirts and sweatpants.
Meanwhile, at the hospital, Avery hoped her family would be gathering around her. She knew these were her last moments and she almost felt at peace. She wanted to ask one more question. She wanted to ask her mom, “Will I ever get to see the stars?” but her parents had gone to the nurse’s station to fetch a doctor.
She knew the water in her lungs wasn’t going away this time, so she imagined her mother’s response, “Sadly, darling not in this lifetime. You may not see the stars now, but in heaven or in another lifetime, you might see them, and they will be yours to enjoy.”
She might not see the stars now, but she would someday, she hoped. “Thank you,” she said to no one. Her room was empty. Like a runner who has finished a race, her heart rate slowed down. She wanted to say her final “I love you” to her family, and to thank all the nurses and doctors who helped her, but her room was empty. She hoped that heaven would be better and that she could look after people she loved. Her heart monitor beeped when Avery closed her eyes.
On that night, the news reported that she had passed away.
But up on the side of Min Yun, the baby trees had grown a yard taller. Above them, the cloudy sky revealed a small opening in the smog. Beyond the smog in the celestial blue, a tiny little star that could’ve been missed shone just brightly enough to twinkle a little.