The eyes of the entire country are on Fort Worth, as a family fights a hospital to keep their 9-year-old daughter alive.
Payton Summons has been on life support at Cook Children’s Medical Center since last week, after she went into cardiac arrest. The hospital believes she’s brain-dead, but the family is not ready to take her off life support, believing she still may have a chance to recover. "Her heart rate was still great," her mother Tiffany Hofstetter told us earlier this week. "Her organs were functioning. She's still alive. Give her a chance."
Hofstetter was able to get a temporary restraining order against the hospital this week. Friday, attorneys on all sides gathered in court to discuss the restraining order and the case itself; but after hours of deliberation, the hearing was postponed until Wednesday.
Friday, Judge Melody Wilkinson appointed an attorney ad litem to the case. Attorney David Cook is now representing the girl herself. “Of course, we would like for Payton’s best interests to be represented by her mom and her dad,” said attorney Justin Moore, who represents Ms. Hofstetter. “But that wasn’t the court’s decision today. Although we look at that as something that might be negative, it’s still a positive nonetheless. Because when we were attained on Sunday, Payton’s ability to live past Monday was in question.”
Moore says in the meantime, the family is still trying to find another hospital that would be willing to take Payton—and today’s hearing postponement bought them more time to do that. “We’re close,” Moore said. “We have a couple of options and we’re still going to explore those. So if the options are viable and remain open, we still believe we’re close so we’re going to be positive."
“Still have hope, still have faith,” he said.
As for Cook Children’s, they’re no longer allowed to speak about specifics of this case due to privacy, but they released a statement which read, in part: “What we can tell you is that when a child is brought to Cook Children’s for treatment, we recognize that the family is putting their trust in us… It is our continued pledge to do the very best for each and every child, with compassion for each and every family.”
The hearing is now scheduled for Wednesday at 1:30 p.m.; however, attorneys will continue deliberation at 10:30 a.m. that day to see if they can avoid the hearing altogether.