One out in the ninth, and 40,000 people screaming in your ear. The American League pennant is at stake, and your 4-year-old daughter's lips have turned blue because her trachea is clogged. Tell me, are you more impressed with David Price on the mound or Pari Miller in Section 106? Because while Price was getting the final two outs for the Rays in the American League Championship Series' Game 7 on Sunday night at Tropicana Field, Miller was busy saving her daughter's life.
Pari was replacing the ever-present tube in Grace's throat as her sister-in-law Heather Roberts rushed to pump air in the child's lungs with an emergency oxygen bag. The EMTs arrived a minute or two later, and out of the corner of her eye, Pari saw Tampa Bay players storming the field on their way to the World Series.
"I said, 'Little Miss Gracie, you just had to put your own twist on the game, didn't you?' " Pari said Tuesday afternoon. "I told her, 'Now we have to help you with your breathing so we can go celebrate with Daddy.' "
Trever Miller was with his Rays teammates on the Tropicana Field turf, dancing to a tune heard from one side of the bay to the other. The 35-year-old reliever had no idea paramedics were telling his wife that they would feel better if they could get Grace in an ambulance on its way to All Children's Hospital.
You have to understand, the Miller family has survived these episodes before. They made it through the first 18 months of Grace's life, which were spent tethered to a ventilator in a hospital; through the fungal infection that nearly killed her in 2007, and through the double pneumonia that sent her to All Children's this season.
So Pari told the EMTs that everything would be okay once they got Grace stabilized and hooked up to a better oxygen system at the stadium's clinic. And then she told her mother-in-law to take her two older children down on the field to celebrate, and to give Trever some benign excuse about her and Grace being delayed.
"He asked me later why I didn't let him know, and I said, 'You've waited your whole life for this. If I told you what was going on, you would have been up in that clinic in a heartbeat,' " Pari said. "They worked so hard to get to that moment, I wanted him to be able to enjoy it with his teammates."
The mucus that had essentially been choking Grace was finally cleared, and 15-20 minutes later, she was breathing normally. Although in this case, normal is a relative term.
Grace was born with a chromosomal abnormality so rare that only 20 cases have been documented, and it is so deadly that none of the other babies lived beyond their first birthday.
There were times, early on, when Trever and Pari wondered whether it would be best to take her off life support and let nature take its course when she was still an infant. There were days when their only prayer was that she would make it through one Christmas at home with the rest of the family.
There is no long-term prognosis because Grace has outlived her only diagnosis. She is unable to speak but has learned hand signals for about a dozen words. She is in a wheelchair but makes it to her brother Tyler's football games and her sister McKenzie's ballet recitals. She still takes medicine through a feeding tube but is now able to eat baby food on her own.
"God is in control of a lot of this," Trever said in the Rays' clubhouse Tuesday. "That's one thing we've learned with Grace. I know every time I step out the door, it's a crapshoot. We're just rolling the dice. So when the times are good, be sure you enjoy them. When they're bad, just get through them and make it to the other side.
"This is the life of parents who have a special-needs child. We've done our share of crying, believe me. But we're almost five years into this, and we've learned this is just the way it is. Don't feel sorry for us. We don't need any pity. We're just grateful for all the time we've had with Grace."
As scary as the final moments of Game 7 were for Pari, she and Trever have lived through worse. When Grace was sick at the end of last season, Pari implored the nurses and doctors to be honest with her because she needed to know when to tell Trever to come home. He eventually left Houston, where he was playing in 2007, and flew home for several days because they weren't sure Grace was going to make it through another night.
In the end, this is not about them. Trever and Pari have been entrusted with Grace's life, and so they do whatever they can to make it enjoyable for her.
She has never been on painkillers, and that has made it easier for Pari. She could not bear it if she thought her daughter was somehow suffering.
"I have never felt that Grace was a burden in our lives. We feel quite the opposite. We feel blessed to have her," Pari said. "She has totally changed our outlook on life, and it's all for the best.
"She communicates her love to us every day when she smiles. That's all any parent can ask, even with your so-called normal kids. Everyone needs a little assistance in their lives in some small way. … Grace just needs a little more assistance than most people.
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