Skye was just two years old when doctors found the cause of her fatigue: juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia.
She needed a bone marrow transplant, and in 2016 a compatible donor appeared: Hayden Hatfield Ryals, a young woman who had never seen her and decided to save her anyway. The first transplant was not enough. A cell transfusion followed and, in April 2017, a second transplant. This time, Skye’s body responded. The leukemia disappeared.
Two years later, when Hayden got married, she sent an invitation to the girl who owed her life to her bone marrow. It was not a symbolic gesture: Skye walked down the aisle as the flower girl, at three years old and with a story that most of the adults at that wedding could not fully understand. They met at the rehearsal before the ceremony. Since that day, those around them say, they have become inseparable.