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She'd heard the story of her birth a dozen times, and it always brought her comfort. Hope. Maybe her mother was right. She sat back in the sofa and focused her attention on her mother. “Tell me.”
    Lucy's smile grew. Isabelle could see in her eyes that she was drifting back in time, back to a day when no one thought Isabelle would survive the first year of her life. Back to a time when doctors thought she'd never walk, let alone dance.
    “It was 1984,” Lucy began, “and I was expecting a child. Pregnancy had never been easy for me. Especially after Charlie and Chase.”
    Tears moistened Lucy's eyes as she reminded Isabelle of her small sisters who had died before they were big enough to be born. The miscarriages meant that when Isabelle's mother got pregnant with her, the doctor was very con cerned.
    “Your father told me that since the boys had been fine, there was every reason to believe God would grant us a healthy baby, even after the miscarriages.” Lucy's chin quivered. “But I was worried anyway. I wanted you so badly, Isabelle.”
    At the time, the Sims had lived twenty minutes north of Beloit, Wisconsin, and Isabelle's mother planned to de liver her without pain medication. As long as she could carry the baby to term, the doctor did not expect any problems.
    “I prayed daily that you would survive the pregnancy and that God would give me the wisdom and peace to cope if problems developed.”
    Lucy drew a deep breath and continued the story. As the pregnancy progressed, she had developed a constant low backache. But she told herself this was normal, since most pregnant women had back pain. One morning, though, when she was twenty-four weeks pregnant, she had been at work when she realized she was having regular mus cle contractions across her abdomen.
    “False labor, I told myself. Don't worry about it.”
    But when the contractions continued throughout the morning, steadily increasing in intensity, Isabelle's mother telephoned the doctor.
    “ ‘Sounds like a false alarm,' he told me. ‘Rest a bit and they should stop.' ”
    Instead the pains got worse. This time the doctor told her to go straight to the hospital. An hour later tests con firmed that Lucy was indeed in labor.
    “They told me you couldn't survive if you were born then.” Quiet tears ran down Lucy's cheeks. “While the nurses set up an IV with drugs to try and stop the contractions, your father took my hand and prayed out loud with me. We prayed for a miracle.”
    Isabelle imagined how her mother must have felt. “Were you scared?”
    “No. I was sad at the thought of losing you, but I wasn't scared. I knew God would do what was best. And even though no one else believed, I knew in my heart you were going to live.”
    Isabelle's mother continued the story: minutes had be come hours and Isabelle's father had fallen asleep. About that time the medication took effect and Lucy's heart began to race.
    “Suddenly I couldn't draw a breath. I tried to stay calm, but when I opened my mouth to yell I couldn't force out enough air to make a sound. Finally I found the nurse's but ton. While I waited for help, I pinched off the intravenous line to the medication. About that time your father woke up and realized the crisis. He shouted for someone to come quick.”
    Lucy shuddered at the memory. “Nurses came immedi ately and realized I was having a rare side effect to the med ication.”
    One of the nurses had placed an oxygen mask over Lucy's face and ordered her to breathe. In ten minutes the danger had passed for Isabelle's mother.
    But not for Isabelle.
    “Without the medication, my labor pains grew worse. An hour later they flew me to Chicago where the hospital would be better equipped to deal with that type of extreme premature birth.”
    A technician had performed an initial examination and checked Lucy's labor. Afterward, a neonatologist met with her and did an ultrasound. On the screen appeared a small body, perfectly formed. It appeared