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Phin in the Healing Garden in June, 2022 |
Neesha calls it “an oasis.”
That’s a good image, a verdant little spot where travelers can rest as they cross the vastness inhospitable, although in this case “inhospitable” and “hospital” might be a bit of an unfortunate conflation. This oasis, the Healing Garden at CHOS, served as a place where Phin could restore himself and play in sunbeams and fresh air during his long inpatient stays for chemo and count recovery.
Nestled between the towering walls of the children’s hospital, the Heart & Vascular Institute, and the parking garage, the Healing Garden held that same kind of allure that all magical spaces hold. Like an enchanted bookshop at the bottom of the mysterious staircase, or a faerie glade beyond the thicket, or a hidden fortress just over the creek, the Healing Garden gave off a special kind of energy. Imagine the feeling of your best friend from childhood whispering a secret in your ear, only now imagine it as a place. Entering it always felt like crossing into somewhere not everybody knew about, where not everybody could go.

Two sides of the Healing Garden are formed by the children’s hospital and the enclosed hallways that connects it to the rest of the hospital complex. One side abuts a walkway between the Heart & Vascular Ifnstitute and the parking garage with the helipad. The other side faces the parking lot, and it was from this side that visitors would approach and gather near the fence to see Phin. Standing along this fence at the Healing Garden was the only way for most of Phin’s relatives and friends to see him for the months he was in treatment.
Plant life lines the perimeter of the Healing Garden--fescue, small bushes, ornamentals, and palms. Here lizards scurry and dragonflies dart between the lower leaves while cardinals and finches flit among the branches. The textures, colors, and smells of the leaves and petals in this hidden corner of the hospital complex remind the children being treated inside of a world that awaits their return.
An encircling pathway provides a boundary separating the foliage and a play area in the Healing Garden’s center, at which point, anchored in a still sea of poured-in-place playground rubber, floats a sturdy ship. We spent many days aboard this vessel (which Phin usually dubbed “The Molly” after his dearest pediatric oncology nurse), and in our journeys of imagination we visited distant shores in every corner of the globe. Some of my most vivid memories from this time revolve around our daring adventures on that ship. The Healing Garden was the backdrop for all of them.
Most days, we had the entire place to ourselves. Occasionally, we would arrive as a nurse or technician was finishing their lunch in the quiet tranquility of the picnic benches beneath the sun shade as the gentle breezes rustled the palm fronts and leaves nearby. Sometimes we would discover traces of other kids--names written in sidewalk chalk next to hearts and flowers and rainbows--but we rarely encountered any kids themselves. One time we did find another pediatric cancer patient there, and we became very close to both him and his mom. Actually, I’m still wearing a bracelet with his name on it, right now, typing this, three years later.
We also found a bird nest with eggs in it a few weeks after we arrived. A few days later, we heard the peeping of baby cardinals. A few weeks after that, we watched the adult cardinals helping the chicks practice flying, calling to them and zipping back and forth as their offspring bounced against the low hospital windows like little fluttering balls of cotton, slid back down, and gradually learned to avoid trying to fly through glass.
A few days after that, they were gone.
Phin and I crept quietly toward the nest to check. It was empty, of course. When we looked inside, we saw that the cardinals had woven medical waste between the sticks and twigs. Hard to tell exactly what it was--some kind of translucent plastic, like a patient’s discarded wristband, or the discarded wrapper from a syringe. That stuff became just another part of the baby cardinals’ childhoods, too. I think about that all the time.