On Wednesday Paige had a feeding tube put down her nose.  This narrow bit of white plastic provided her first nourishment in four days.  It did not get high marks from the girl who heads straight for Cindy the dessert chef, revels in the variety of boarding school food, and was a leading competitor in the school pie eating contest.

Paige had improved enough by evening to be moved from the intensive care unit to the special care unit.  She became increasingly restless as evening wore on into night, and she was fitted first with large white mittens, and then with arm restraints to keep her from removing her many wires and tubes.  Her doctor told us that her agitation was an instinctive flight response to waking in a frightening environment.  

At one point, a new nurse asked if we could do anything for her.  Paige responded, out of the blue, "Make me fly".   

We hope that Paigey rests well tonight and soars in her dreams.  We are thinking of her following John Gillespie Magee's High Flight:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled  and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence.  Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue,

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.