Wanda Rodriguez, infirmière dans un hospice du Bronx, le Calvary Hospital à New York, s'apprêtait la semaine dernière à accueillir
un nouveau patient. Elle a constaté, stupéfaite, qu'il s'agissait de son père, qu'elle n'avait plus vu depuis 41 ans.
Wanda était bébé quand son père, Victor Paraza, est
parti après avoir divorcé. Ils n'ont jamais eu de contacts pendant les quatre décennies qui ont suivi. Mais Wanda Rodriguez connaissait son identité. Elle a éclaté en larmes quand son nouveau
patient lui a expliqué en arrivant qu'il avait deux filles aujourd'hui adultes, Gina et Wanda.
L'infirmière et son père ont tous deux expliqué aux quotidiens New York Daily News et Journal News
of White Plains qu'ils profitent désormais de chaque instant passé ensemble. Victor Paraza juge miraculeux que sa fille l'aime encore.
AP Associated Press 04/09/2010
Miracle meeting as nurse walks into
dying patient's room - and discovers he is her long-lost father
He vanished from her life 41 years ago, when she was just a few months old. But when nurse Wanda Rodriguez walked in to a cancer patient's room last week and saw his face, she knew.
In an astonishing twist of fate, the New York woman's father, Victor Peraza, was looking back at her. 'He looks right at me and I realise: He looks like me and I look like him,' she told American media.
Ms Rodriguez, an assistant head nurse at the Calvary Hospital, was consulting with a doctor over the admission of a new terminal
cancer patient.
Then she heard the patient's name - and she froze. "I said to myself, "Oh my God!", she told the New York Post.
It was her father's name - but could it be him ?
Her mother had always said she looked like her father. So Ms Rodriguez took a chance.
'I needed to go to his room. I had to see him,' she said.
I was really shaking. I said, "Hi, how are you? Are you comfortable?"
Then, she told American reporters, she asked if he had any children.
'Yes, I do, but my kids are grown,' he replied. 'I have an older daughter Gina and a younger daughter Wanda.'
Ms Rodriguez put her head in her hands and started to cry. She rushed from the room. 'I thought I was going to faint,' she
said.
But, fighting for control, she walked back in and told her father that she was his daughter.
'I know,' Mr Peraza replied.
Ms Rodriguez's mother married Mr Peraza when they were high school sweethearts in the New York borough of the Bronx.
She had no idea that he was still in the city and had moved to Queens as a bank employee.
She confirmed what both father and daughter already believed.
Hospital officials said the pair had been incredibly lucky. There are seven other units at Cavalry, and had Mr Peraza been
admitted to any of them, they never would have met.
Now Mr Peraza has met three of his five grandchildren and been reunited with her mother.
Though he had to be shifted to another unit because of the family conflict, Ms Rodriguez is still seeing him before and after her
shifts.
She often sits with him even if he is asleep.
'He keeps begging me for forgiveness and says, "I wasn't a good father," she told reporters.
'I tell him, the past is in the past. You can't change the past. I love you.'
Her father is dying - but she is hoping he will reach his 61st birthday next week.
'He's at peace,' she said. 'He said, "Wanda, I've met you. I'm OK. I'm ready to die.'
