The day before Leslie Hughbaker traveled to Chapel Hill, she decided to sew a new pillow.
It was not to adorn the beds at UNC Children’s Hospital, which have occupied so much of her past three weeks, or because her lung surgery might keep her there two weeks longer.
It was because even as doctors were finalizing her surgical procedure Friday, she was handing a football-print pillow to UNC running back Shaun Draughn.
“That’s all she’s talked about,” her mother, Tonia Hughbaker, said. “She made that pillow so she could get the football players to sign it.”
Draughn colors with Morgan Robles. Draughn and a dozen other volunteers from UNC’s football team visited the hospital Friday. DTH/Andrew Dye
A dozen members of North Carolina’s football team filed into the UNC Children’s Hospital on Friday for its annual drawing party to color with patients.
Unlike the team’s regular hospital visits, the players sat in chairs too small, at tables too short and appeared to fit in just right.
“I’m real with crayons,” Draughn said. “Might quit football.”
The event has been held the last four years, said Crystal Miller, director of N.C. Children’s Promise.
“Coloring is one way of sitting down and talking with the kids,” she said. “For the patients we have, art expression is a really strong way to deal with their illness.”
Hughbaker stood along the wall, watching her daughter approach a dozen players. Occasionally she retreated into a doorway, wiping a tear from her eyes.
Leslie was diagnosed with pneumonia three weeks ago. Doctors discovered a collapsed lung and pockets in one of her lung’s air sacs that will require surgery.
“They don’t know what procedure they are going to do,” Hughbaker said. “They were sitting at the round table debating when we came here.
“All they know is that they are going to do it sometime today.”
‘Coach Davis would love you’
When Morgan Robles, 10, arrived, she already knew exactly what she was going to draw.
And so despite an IV line running from her right hand, she produced her masterpiece: a football flying through the air.
Next to her, a similar picture evolved.
“Go Tarheels,” it read. Underneath it was signed, “Shaun Draughn, #20.”
“I feel like I’m taking this way too seriously,” Draughn said. “Did you see that? I had my focus face on while I was shadowing there.”
Morgan sat at one of the tables with Draughn and linebacker Kennedy Tinsley, exchanging conversation, compliments and critiques.
None of it centered on Morgan’s pancreatic illness or her pending diagnosis.
“That’s good attention to detail,” Draughn said. “Coach Davis would love you.”
Conversation digressed from drawing to Disney Channel. Morgan and Draughn bonded over Hannah Montana and exchanged subsequent high fives.
Minutes later, event organizers visited the table to oversee the trio’s progress.
“She said Shaun draws better than me,” Tinsley said.
A hungry artist
Leslie approached her mother to show off the picture she had drawn in the company of her new friends.
It depicted a pink dog carrying fruit and chocolate milk — precisely the luxuries Leslie wasn’t allowed to have that day.
In fact, she had not eaten at all in preparation for her surgery. But for two hours, she appeared happy to be a hungry artist.
“At this point, she doesn’t really know what’s going on,” Hughbaker said. “When we leave from here the doctors are coming down to the room to work that out. To work with her on it — she’s going to know what’s going on.”
Hughbaker leaned down to hear her daughter, whose voice was muffled by an animal-print face mask.
She received Leslie’s outreached pillow — and an important reminder before her surgery.
“So now I can’t ever wash it,” Hughbaker said. “She told me I can’t ever wash it.”
Contact the Sports Editor at sports@unc.edu.
