Help Atticus & Athena start their new life

Atticus, my great-grandson, was born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome on July 19, 2025 — a heart missing its entire left side.

He has never known a home. Since the day he was born he has been at UF Shands Pediatric Hospital in Gainesville, Florida. He has already survived open heart surgery. The doctors are doing everything they can, but Atticus may still need a heart transplant to live.

His mother, Athena, is our granddaughter. She has not left his side. She lives at the Ronald McDonald House so she can be there every single day, and his father Isaiah works without stopping to keep them afloat. They are 20-something years old, holding a baby's life together in a hospital corridor.

Here is the part that keeps us up at night: when Atticus is finally cleared to leave that hospital, there is nowhere for him to go.

They need a safe place to live. They need a bed, a crib, furniture, the basic things that make a room a home. Athena needs a reliable car, because a child with half a heart does not get to miss appointments — the drive to the cardiologist is not optional, it is his life.

This is what your help buys: $20 covers gas for one trip to the hospital. $50 buys essentials for the nursery. $100 goes toward the first month's deposit on a safe apartment. $250 puts real furniture in an empty room so a fragile baby has somewhere to come home to.

We are not asking for luxury. We are asking that after everything this baby has survived, he gets to leave the hospital and go home — to an actual home.

If there is anything you can do, it would mean the world. And if you cannot give, please share this page and keep our family in your thoughts. Thank you for reading Atticus's story.

— Atticus's great-grandmother