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The last rebellious act of Emily Ann Field involved ink and a tattoo artist.

“I don’t think that it was very popular with her doctors,” said Tammy Field, smiling, of the day last spring when pediatric oncologists gave her daughter 24 hours off scheduled chemotherapy treatment to celebrate her 18th birthday. The Southeast High School lacrosse player and honor student inked on her feet the names of brothers David and Daniel across birds in flight.

Just as touching to those around her was the concern of the girl struggling to stay alive for the families of younger children also on the oncology wing at Brenner Children’s Hospital. They agonized over having to leave their little ones alone at times during treatment or with the costs of being there and not at work. She wondered how to start a fund that would give families in need gas cards and help buying food.

But “Emily-fierce,” as they knew her, got too weak too fast to do anything on her own. Her parents would be left to see the idea of an expense fund through.

“She said, 'Why should you have to worry about getting out of the parking deck when your child is sick?’” her dad, Craig Field, recalled of the seed Emily planted.

* * *

Back in middle school, Emily was “the presence” among classmates.

“I just wanted to be in the shadows,” said Greyson Hardin, Emily’s closest friend through preteen angst. “Emily was never in the shadows, and she wouldn’t let me hide there.”

High school brought lacrosse, a place in the Miss Southeast pageant — and senior superlative for “Best Shoe Collection.”

“She always had the most outrageous shoes you could ever think of — yellow stilettos!” Hardin said

Largely bald until the age of 3, she seemed to make up for it with the constantly changing hair colors — a zest for life that included blasting through mud in a six-wheeled motorized Gator through the back of the family’s property.

“Her mind was just open,” her father, Craig, said of a daughter who had Bob Marley and Elvis Presley posters on her bedroom walls. “She wanted to taste everything.”

Which made it harder to accept the doctor’s words right before Christmas break 2007, that the nagging back pain, triggered, they thought, by Emily lifting a younger cousin a month before, was actually cancer.

Craig Field, a Duke Energy relay technician, burst into tears with his daughter at the diagnosis, which came during what they thought was a routine examination. Tammy Field, a health professional, stood in shock.

Tests that night showed a softball-sized mass on her left kidney, which brought good and bad possibilities. If it was contained to the kidney, it could simply be removed.

But Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer, had already begun to spread to her liver and lymph nodes and was in her bones. Dr. Thomas McLean, one of her two primary doctors at Brenner, told them it was serious but there was a chance.

“Emily never really wanted to know how bad it was,” Craig Field said. “We knew she was a fighter, and she chose to concentrate on how to beat it.”

* * *

After the next 23 days alongside her daughter at Brenner, Tammy Field spent just two days back at her job in the lab in a medical practice before taking family leave.

“I couldn’t imagine not staying in that room,” she said.

Even if it ate up their savings, the family was on the journey with Emily.

Craig Field’s supervisors tried to plan the assignments at the end of his 12-hour workdays as close as possible to Winston-Salem.

Big brother David, 25, in Charlotte, constantly told Emily by phone, “You are a walking, talking inspiration to me.”

The youngest, Daniel, 16, then a sophomore, could mimic all the voices on the cartoon comedy “Family Guy,” one of their favorite shows.

“I would do these voices to watch her smile a little,” Daniel said.

Back at home, Daniel tried not to be needy.

“God must have put the strength in them because I don’t know how else they got it,” said longtime family friend Sylvia Dumont. “There were moments when Tammy broke down and was unhappy and upset, but she was in the mode of, 'This is my child, I must do everything I can, and the strength will be there when I need it,’ and Craig was the same way.

“It was, 'What do I have to do next? What comes next? Don’t think about yesterday, don’t think much about tomorrow — what can I do to make Emily feel better right now, to make Emily happy right now?’”

* * *

The hair stylist placed the tiara, purchased with Emily’s gift money, atop the wig of chestnut brown hair. The prom wig was one of many purchased through the donations of staff and patrons at the shop where her granny, Betty Gregory, got her hair done.

The chiffon silk dress with patterns of orange, pink and yellow matched brother David’s tie.

Doctors also planned treatment around graduation.

Emily marched into the Greensboro Coliseum with her class, sat in the same hard fold-up chairs as everyone else, and climbed the stage on her own to accept her diploma.

“When she walked across the stage, everyone stood up in their chairs and were clapping and cheering and crying,” Greyson Hardin recalled. “We thought we didn’t have to worry anymore.

* * *

That summer, Emily worried more and more about the children on her floor and what she could do with her own gift money.

Her own family had put more than 16,000 miles on their vehicles and spent $9,000 out of pocket on co-pays and related medical costs. Co-workers and friends of the family and even strangers had held fundraisers and pressed money in their hands.

But Emily was dying.

Shortly before 1:30 p.m. on Nov. 22, she took her last breath.

Emily was eulogized in the prom dress, with the pink and white roses she wanted on the top of her casket.

“We took her breath to breath,” Craig Field said of also cutting her umbilical cord March 31, 1990. They buried her at the foot of where her paternal grandparents rest — an unplanned spot between plots for him and Tammy.

“No parent should ever have to do that,” Craig Field said.

* * *

The day after Emily’s burial, Tammy and Craig Field sat in a Wendy’s parking lot to take in the silence, just watching the traffic go by.

“Emily’s Kids” had begun taking root.

“At first we thought they meant doing something for the hospital 'in lieu of flowers and contributions,’ which others have done, where after a few weeks, the donations trickle off,” said McLean, the oncologist. “But they want a perpetual fund that will live on.”

Meal vouchers and gas cards have already been purchased — even parking passes — with the money collected after her funeral.

“It would make her so happy to know ... that she’s giving back, even if it meant giving back from the grave,” Tammy Field said.

Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com