There are stories in hospitals that most people never hear about.
Some are tales of fear. Some stories of hope. And every now and then there are stories so sweet and so emotional they stay with all who hear them.
One of those stories.
Ethan was seven years old and had been living for several weeks in a children’s medical center on the fourth floor. He was being treated for leukaemia. The doctors were hopeful. But the treatment was tough. Like many children on chemotherapy, Ethan was often tired, cold and weak.
Every day he would wear a navy blue hoodie over his hospital gown. His mother Sarah was rarely far from him and he had a stuffed dog called Biscuit that he kept close to him. She slept in the recliner next to his bed, drank coffee from the machine down the hall and waited for any word from the doctors.
The nurses adored Ethan. They described him as sweet, polite, and kind. He was sick but he knew there were other people. He thanked the nurses. He’d been concerned about his mum. He tried to be brave, even on the bad days.
But one night Sarah saw something weird.
She had gone out of the room for a few minutes to get coffee. When she returned, Ethan lay on his stomach on the bed, reaching down to the floor. He was pushing something carefully under the bed frame.
Sarah watched for a moment, standing in the doorway.
It was a box of grape juice.
"Ethan," she said softly.
He looked up quickly, surprised at this. Then he lowered his voice and whispered, "Don't tell the nurses.
Sarah got up and looked under the bed. What she found shocked her.
There were more juice boxes than one. There were a number of them neatly arranged along the wall. The majority of them were grapes. There were also crackers and pretzels and a couple of cookies all neatly wrapped in a serviette.
Sarah looked at her son and asked him why he was hiding food.
Ethan replied plainly.
He said that the girl in the next room got hungry at night.
He told his mother the girl liked grape juice best. He said sometimes she couldn’t find snacks when the lights went out, so he was saving some for her.
Sarah didn’t get it at first. She glanced toward the wall between Ethan’s room and the next room.
The room had been empty for weeks.
When Nurse Hannah heard what Ethan had said, she went very quiet. There was something she knew and Sarah did not.
Next door was a room that used to belong to Lily.
Lily had been nine. While being treated for a serious illness, she had remained on the same floor of paediatric oncology. “While she was there she was very well liked by the nurses and doctors. She was funny, she was bright, she had character.
Everyone on the floor remembered one habit of hers too.
Lily used to be a snack hoarder.
The treatment affected her appetite and she would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night hungry. Instead of calling the nurses or waking her mother, she kept crackers, cookies, and juice boxes handy. Her favourite drink was grape juice. Not an apple. Not the orange. Grapes.
The nurses remembered it well.
Lily had died a few weeks ago. Her room was cleaned and emptied, but not forgotten by those who cared for her. Some of her drawings had once hung on the walls. They could still hear her laugh, her jokes, and all her little ways.
So when Ethan, who had never met Lily and had never even been told about her, started talking about a girl next door who loved grape juice, the nurses were very touched.