FedEx Flew Little Girl in Need of Liver Transplant To Hospital in Middle of Snowstorm
When Nicholas and Jesse Faris welcomed Brooklyn into their lives, they knew she would need some extra care. Adopted from China in 2015, the little girl was suffering from a condition that had compromised her liver — but the Farises felt called to make Brooklyn part of their family.
“We knew ahead of time that she had liver failure, and that the orphanage wanted a family to get to her as soon as possible,” Jesse Faris told Today. “We thought the Lord was telling us to go and take her.”
“Born on December 27, 2013, Brooklyn was diagnosed with Alagille Syndrome,” a Facebook page started for Brooklyn states. “The doctors at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, have recommended a life-saving liver transplant.”
The family was in Memphis, Tennessee, but the hospital they needed to go to for treatment and checkups was in Chicago. That meant a lot of travel, a lot of prayers and a lot of money — especially because the little girl was only given a 50 percent chance of surviving the following six months.
But she survived. And she got on a liver transplant waiting list, where she stayed for nearly a year.
Her parents waited hopefully for a call that would inform them of a donor, and finally in February 2016 they got the news they’d been praying for: there was a liver for Brooklyn in Chicago.
“I don’t know any other way to say this, but we got the call,” Jesse told her husband, according to NBC News.
“They told us there was going to be a blizzard and asked if we’d still come,” Jesse told Today. “I thought that was a ridiculous question, because, after all, who knew when another liver would come our way? We said we’d come no matter what it took, and began trying to find a way to get there.”
Finding transportation proved to be a little more problematic than they’d thought: Flights were being canceled, traffic would make driving risky at best and a train wouldn’t arrive in the timeframe necessary to get Brooklyn the organ.
Family friend John Carroll tried to help the family figure out how to get to Chicago, even suggesting they charter a private jet for $10,000 (which a gracious donor offered to cover), but even then they’d be cutting it close to being too late.
Then Carroll came up with a new possibility: FedEx.
“Our friend John had a connection that led him to the company,” said Jesse. “Apparently, they sometimes use corporate jets to help St. Jude (Children’s Research Hospital) in really extreme emergency situations. The person who makes those decisions about who gets an emergency flight had the information about Brooklyn handed to her, and she said, ‘Yeah, let’s make that happen.'”
The woman they spoke to, Susan Carey, approved and helped arrange the last-minute trip.
“They said, ‘Well, if they can get to the airport in 30 minutes, we can pick them up,'” Jesse continued. “So that’s what we did. We grabbed our stuff and went to the airport and they had a corporate jet waiting for us.”
The flight took less than an hour from take-off to touch-down. They were there a half-day before the operation would need to take place.
“I do remember looking at Nick, and we were just shaking our heads because it was just completely surreal, the entire afternoon and evening events,” Jesse told NBC.
The next morning, Brooklyn went in for the 10-hour surgery, which turned out to be successful.
“She’s progressing and recovering so nicely,” Jesse said a few days later. “We’re hoping to be free of most of our tubes and wires today.”
“I feel like in addition to just feeling like the hand of God was with us in this situation, we also felt a tremendous amount of support from our community,” she said. “The way the story has resonated with people and inspired people — we’ve just been really overwhelmed with the way people have cared about Brooklyn and about our family.”
This year, FedEx made the story into a short video featuring all the key players, including Brooklyn, who is now 5 years old.
“When two-year-old Brooklyn needed a lifesaving liver transplant, her parents Nick and Jesse had less than 24 hours to find a way from Memphis to Chicago in the middle of a snowstorm,” they wrote. “Find out how a phone call sparked a chain of events, #MadePossibleBy Susan, that cleared the way for a successful surgery.”
Jesse shared the story on her Facebook page along with her gratitude for Susan and FedEx.
“God writes the best stories,” she posted. “(I almost typed “God rights the best stories,” and isn’t that true as well?!) We are forever thankful to Susan and FedEx for helping us in a critical time. How is God using you in someone else’s story?”
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