There is a place in Phoenix where the stakes are high and the hallways are quiet, but the kids inside are not. They are patients at Phoenix Children's hospital, but that is the least interesting thing about them.
They have dreams, opinions, and plans for their futures that go well beyond hospital rooms.
Jacquie is nine years old. She wants to be a scientist, and if she could control the weather for one day, she knows exactly what she would do.
"I would make it snow. I honestly have never seen snow. But that would be a miracle if that actually happens!" she said.
She has already made a few of those miracles.
Jacquie was diagnosed with sickle cell disease less than a month after being born.
"We truly are blessed," said her mother, Danielle Okezie. "And a lot of it is because of the care and the responsiveness and the attentiveness that they give her."
Then there is Dalton. He is eight years old, very good at math, and has already figured out exactly what he wants to do with his life.
"The owner of the Diamondbacks," he said.
When asked if he would help them win another World Series, his family did not hesitate.
"One day! One day."
We are going to hold him to that.
Dalton was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, meaning the left side of his heart does not work. He had his first open-heart surgery at six days old.
Doctors gave him a 15% chance of surviving outside of birth.
Over the last three months alone, he has had three major heart procedures. He takes more than a dozen pills a day and does two injections every single day.
But even then, "here he is...Playing baseball, doing such cool things with his life," said his mother, Krista De Micheli.
She wants other families in similar situations to know something: "There is hope. And there is normalcy outside of the hospitals. And if you can look past that, it is well worth it."
Dalton was nervous before his first take on camera as a Kidcaster. He asked to do it again.
"With round two, I think he did so well," De Micheli said. "That's what surprised me the most. His willingness to go back and try it again."
The doctors at Phoenix Children's give out their personal phone numbers, the nurses remember every name in every hallway, and the families find each other.
"You just form bonds easier," Okezie said. "You just know how to hold space for one another. And in the ten minutes that you may meet them, you feel like, okay. I'm seen. And I'm taken care of. And there's people that care."
And the kids find themselves.
Reginald did not need any prompting. He just stepped up and started dancing. No one told him to — that is just Reginald. And for just a moment, you could see it on his face. This was not a hospital — this was his stage.
That is what Phoenix Children's does. It gives kids like Reginald, Jacquie, Dalton, Sophia, Laine, and Evelyn, and every other Kidcaster in that room, a place to be exactly who they are.
Not patients.
Just kids.
