Daniel

A wooden boy sits in a sterile drawer,

Bound by strings of strings

of numbers, genes, and lore.

They paint a label on his fragile chest,

Close the file, and say they’ve done their best.

But beneath the paint, a quiet pulse is beating,

A fragile chest where heavy air is fleeting.

The formula goes in, the signals scream

A wild, rushing heart, a suffocating dream.

A drop of Pedialyte to slow the pace.

That heavy dilution hid the burning scent,

And masked the broken path where energy went;

It watered down the storm within the cell,

So standard eyes could never read the hell.

The buffer’s no longer enough,

His nostrils flare, his body tries to speak,

To flush the toxic sugar from the weak.

They bring the blocking drug to mute the sound,

While underneath, the fire burns the ground.

But you cannot cure a poison with a chain,

Or heal a starving child by masking pain.

Once, in a brighter house of glass and white,

They ran the fluid slow into the night.

The engine cleared, the wooden strings were still,

He thrived on care, and not a heavy pill.

But now the gut is raw, the markers rise,

The sulfur of old told the truth the script denies.

The mast cells gather at the lining’s edge,

While science stands upon a narrow ledge.

"A rare defect!" they cry, to clear the room,

And throw him in a spiral of quiet doom.

A place where "broken" children lie,

Where standard care and healing go to die.

A normal infant would get specialized tests,

Their duty to hold heart Medications

To check the urine stool and blood,

the failing chest.

But Daniel’s trap is being called too grand

For extraordinary tools to understand.

The mother stands beside the pit's dark rim,

Holding the factual map she built for him.

She offers up a prayer, a fierce, deep plea,

To turn the wooden puppet real and free.

Do not just drug the warning lights to sleep,

While cells erode and hidden crises weep.

Take Pinocchio out from the drawer and string

Give him the care that real boys bring

The doctors walk away and turn the key,

Blind to the reality they refuse to see.

They leave him in the dark to fade away,

And call his forced stillness "stable" for the day.

I dreamed of a northern Star, Stanford. Just a dream

Deep inside the drawer, a vision clears,

Softly cutting through the mother's tears.

A dream awake begins to softly bloom,

Breathing life into the sterile room:

The heavy strings of numbers start to break,

As Daniel's sleeping limbs begin to wake.

He steps out of the bed, no longer bound,

And plants his living feet upon the ground.

He walks right past the ledger and the file,

With strong, clear breaths and a real boy's smile.

The rushing heart grows quiet, full, and deep,

As all the painted labels fall to sleep.

The puppet-wood turns warm with real-world skin,

And a brighter, active life can now begin.

Daniel 1 day before being admitted into the ER at Stanford. 120 heart rate dancing in the bathroom at the RH restaurant:

https://youtube.com/shorts/gTKbuAS9KSo?si=FH9sRCmPlNgRTdbf

Daniel 3 days later, admitted at Stanford sitting in bed on half dose formula, diluted so much more than the 1:1 ratio… 3 part Pedialyte, 1 part formula. They aren't going to stop and his heart rate keeps rising.

Heart rate 132 sitting, 160+ standing