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Alegria Ordinario grabbed the hand of her 10-year-old daughter, Alysson, who lay on a hospital bed gasping for breath.
"You come back to me," Ms. Ordinario said. She needed a promise - some sort of sign - before doctors at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children sedated the little girl in an attempt to stop her from choking.
"I won't leave you," Alysson said.
Only six days earlier, on Jan. 26, Alysson had stepped off a plane from the Philippines with her eight-year-old sister, Alyanna. Their mother had worked for two years at a Toronto-based call centre to save enough money to sponsor their immigration.
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On their first full day in Canada, the girls had doled out gifts to relatives, and later let loose at Chuck E. Cheese.
On the second day, Alysson came down with chicken pox. A doctor at a walk-in clinic recommended an oatmeal bath and Aveeno lotion, but soon Alysson was crying from the pain in her legs. Tylenol didn't help, nor did codeine that an emergency room doctor later prescribed before sending the family home to the single bedroom they shared in a Brampton, Ont., townhouse.
By day six, Alysson was admitted to hospital for observation. Less than 24 hours later, her lungs collapsed when the chicken pox virus attacked them. She remained sedated for eight days, to ease pressure on her lungs. During that period, Alysson suffered a stroke.
Your daughter is critically ill, doctors told Ms. Ordinario.
"They said, 'We'll do our best,' " she recalled. "But they didn't tell me that she will be fine."
After 10 days in intensive care at SickKids, Alysson graduated to a constant care unit, then to rehab at Bloorview Kids Rehab hospital in March. Her entire right side was disabled, and she could not use her normally dominant right hand.
Every night for two months, Ms. Ordinario, a single mother who had polio and now walks with a cane, slept in a cramped pullout chair next to her daughter's bed. Every afternoon, she took a bus to Brampton - three hours each way - so that she could be home when her youngest daughter, Alyanna, returned from school.
In late May, Alysson left Bloorview. There was a graduation ceremony, and on her certicate, under what she was going to do first after going home, Alysson wrote: I'm going to ride my bike!
Like many children with acquired brain injuries, Alysson still bears physical signs of her ordeal. Her right side is weak because of the stroke, but she has learned to write with both hands.
Now Ms. Ordinario's biggest concern is finding subsidized housing, so she can move her girls out of the townhouse, which they share with another family. She must also come up with $90,500 in hospital bills, because Alysson was not in Canada the three months required to be covered by Ontario's health-care plan. The largest bill is currently under appeal.
Mentally, Alysson is "almost back to normal," her mother says. She's signed up for summer swimming lessons, and in September she will begin Grade 4.
