CORTLANDT, N.Y. - Wanda Rodriguez rarely works Wednesday nights, but she was on duty at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx when a new patient was admitted to the medical institution where terminally-ill cancer patients spend their final days.
She couldn't believe it when she heard the patient's name: Victor Peraza, just like her father, a man who had walked out on her and her family when she was just an infant, remaining a stranger for more than 40 years.
It was him, and he's not a stranger any more.
After a tearful reunion that Wednesday night, they've been drawn together as father and daughter even as their time together runs out. The years they've spent apart have been put aside, they said, by compassion and a bond they both can feel, and inside the room where her father lies, Rodriguez has been feeding him meals of rice and beans, bathing him and speaking in soft tones about the times they missed together.
"I welcomed him with open arms," Rodriguez said.
A nurse and a married mother of three young children who lives in Cortlandt, N.Y., Rodriguez, 41, said she never expected to meet her long-lost father on an otherwise quiet night at work Aug. 25.
"I overheard the name, 'Victor Peraza.' The second I heard that name, I froze," she recalled, then decided to see for herself who the man was. Yes, the same complexion. Yes, the same hazel eyes that run in the family, and those strong features she has, too.
"I quickly asked him if he had any kids," Rodriguez said. When he responded that he had two daughters named Wanda and Gina, "I couldn't help myself, I ran from the room and started to cry."
After collecting herself, she went back in and told him that she was his daughter. "He looked at me and said, 'I know,' " she recalled, and it became clear that he, too, had sensed quickly that fate had brought them together.
Though it would be understandable to turn her back on the man who left her when she was in diapers, Rodriguez said she never thought of spurning him.
"For 41 years, I've always wondered where my dad had been. Maybe he passed me in the street without me knowing. He's here now. He's terribly ill. It's not my nature to hold a grudge. I want to appreciate the valuable time we have left. You can't change the past, and he's begged me for forgiveness. . . . I'm cherishing every moment," she continued.
Peraza, 60, though racked with pain and sedated with medication, speaks clearly when asked about his daughter.
"I've been waiting for 41 years. When we embraced each other, it was a miraculous moment," he said, speaking with effort and emphasis. "I thank God for my daughter, and for being here."
Other members of the family have been reluctant visitors.
Rodriguez notes that her mother, Esther, a retired mail carrier, and her sister, Gina, are conflicted about the sudden reappearance of Peraza. Esther and Victor Peraza married when they were very young, high-school sweethearts who went to the altar. He was overwhelmed by parenthood, his daughter said, and took the easy way out.
Peraza was working in a bank before being diagnosed with cancer about 18 months ago. He did not start another family.
That was one question posed early on. Wanda Rodriguez has a million others for her father, but she knows as a nurse who works with the terminally ill, that the role of interrogator is not compatible with the role of caregiver.
They've found out they have quite a bit in common. They both like classical music, and they're both dog lovers - he had a Labrador retriever for many years, and she has two Maltese. She hopes to bring her two dogs to the room on his 61st birthday on Sept. 12.
"It makes me feel good to be with him," she said. "When I said good night, I called him 'Daddy, Papi.' I said 'I love you.' I couldn't believe it, it sounded so natural."
The story of their unlikely reunion, with its overtones of the biblical parable of the prodigal son, has astounded those who have heard about it.
"I think it's a wonderful, heartfelt story," Judy Getz of Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., a good friend of Wanda Rodriguez's, said Friday. "My eyes tear up just thinking about it. It's an unbelievable story of fate, forgiveness and the most priceless gift of all, the gift of love."
