Ofelia Torres has spent almost every day of the past month at Lurie Children’s Hospital, where the 16-year-old Lake View High School student is fighting cancer.

After a tough few weeks where the disease spread through her body and doctors inserted a drain in her abdomen to relieve fluid, the Torres family worked with her oncologist to arrange a short getaway over the weekend, where she and three of her closest friends could enjoy a Saturday of simple pleasures and normalcy before a scheduled return to the hospital and chemotherapy.

The girls were getting their nails done as Ofelia’s father, Ruben Torres Maldonado, was at work.

Hours later, he called his wife Sandibell Hidalgo from a number that came up on caller ID as “prison / jail.”

“It’s me,” he said. “They got me.”

In that moment,

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