On Friday, State District Judge Melody Wilkinson postponed a hearing on temporary restraining order issued earlier in the week preventing Cook Children's Hospital in Fort Worth from removing a young North Texas girl from life support.
Payton Summons, 9, was brought to the children's hospital last week after she went into cardiac arrest and stopped breathing.
Her doctors were able to revive her heartbeat. However, because her brain went without oxygen for more than an hour, they said she no longer has any measurable brain function -- and so they declared her brain dead.
The hospital initially planned to take Payton off of her ventilator Monday, but a Tarrant County judge granted her parents a temporary restraining order to keep her alive for at least two more weeks while they looked for another facility to care for their daughter.
Her parents are still holding out hope for a miracle and want to keep her alive to see if she can recover.
After court Friday, the family's attorney, Justin Moore, said all sides tried to reach an agreement on what to do next, but could not. He said the family is close to finding a facility to care for Payton.
"There are some preconditions that we have to work out with the hospital, but that's just something that we gotta sit down at the table and have a discussion about," Moore said.
Payton's family, their attorneys, and attorneys representing Cook Children's, returned to the Vandergriff Civil Courts building Friday for what was initially supposed to be an injunction hearing.
The judge, instead, announced that she was going to appoint an "attorney ad litem" to the case -- an outside lawyer who will represent the best interests of Payton while her family and Cook Children's continue to hash things out.
David Cook, a family law attorney who is also the Mayor of Mansfield, was named as the attorney ad litem.
Neither side objected to Cook's appointment, but before they proceeded with the injunction hearing both sides wanted to meet with him in private to discuss the case.
"Of course we would like Payton's best interest to be represented by her mom and her dad, but that wasn't the court's decision today," Moore said.
Cook asked the court for more time to prepare, so the injuction hearing was postponed until Wednesday, Oct. 10.
