Video After The JumpWhat are the odds?Wanda Rodriguez, a 41-year-old assistant head nurse at New York's Calvary Hospital, had not seen her father since she was a baby.
Raised by her mother in the Bronx after her parents broke up when she was less than a year old, Rodriguez didn't know much more of her father than his name, Victor Peraza, and her mother's recollection that Rodriguez looked a lot like him.
But as fate would have it, on Aug. 25 a new cancer patient was admitted to Calvary, a hospital that administers care to the terminally ill. When Rodriguez learned his name while discussing his case with a colleague, she froze up.
"I thought, if he's my complexion, if he has green eyes, he could be my dad," Rodriguez told ABC News.
Summoning her courage, Rodriguez decided she had to find out if the man in the hospital bed was indeed the father she had never known.
"I needed to go to his room," she told the New York Post. "I had to see him. My mom said I resembled my dad very much. I go into the room. He looks right at me and I realize: He looks like me and I look like him."
Shaking from the revelation, Rodriguez asked Peraza if he had any children. Yes he did, Peraza told her: two grown daughters, one named Gina and the other named Wanda.
After composing herself, Rodriguez decided to lay her cards bare. "Hi, I'm Wanda," she told him. "I'm your daughter."
In fact, Rodriguez says Peraza seemed to have already realized who his nurse was. "I know you're my daughter," she recalls him saying.
Later, Rodriguez's mother confirmed Peraza's identity and even visited his bedside. It was their first meeting since the couple, who had married when they were in high school, split up.
In his visits with his daughter, Peraza, 60, has expressed his guilt for being an absentee father. Rodriguez has remained more focused on the present.
"Then he asked for forgiveness," Rodriguez told ABC "He said, 'I know I wasn't a good father. I regret the mistakes I made.' I said, 'I forgive you. Let's not talk about that now. I want to enjoy this time.'"
In a tragic twist, Peraza may not have long to live, but since his unlikely reunion with his daughter, the two have been spending a lot of time catching up. Peraza has been able to meet his three grandchildren and Rodriguez's husband.
"He's at peace," Rodriguez told the Post. "He's had closure. He said, 'Wanda, I've met you. I'm OK. I'm ready to die'."
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