Let Him Live (3 page)

“Can’t someone else go get it?”

“Time is critical, and I want the retrieval done properly. Nothing’s more frustrating than having a perfectly suitable organ go bad because of improper surgical procedures or storage conditions. It’s best if I use the hospital’s private jet to go retrieve it myself.”

“I’ll tell Mom,” she said. He was already out the door. Meg stood and shook off a chill. Images of her father, Donovan, and the hospital bombarded her, but the sound of the beeper took on a new meaning. One day, it might sound for Donovan. One day, it might mean medical science had located a donor liver for him. Still, she kept seeing the image of Cindy’s face. For Cindy, there had been no hope, not with an organ transplant, not with hospitalization, not with any assortment of new and experimental drugs.

Meg hurried to the parking garage. All she
wanted to do was go home and put the entire day behind her. And also to forget what had happened to her very best friend.

At dinner that night, Meg shoved green beans and broiled chicken around on her plate. She didn’t have much of an appetite. Her sister, Tracy, kept jabbering about her upcoming stay at gymnastic camp for the summer. Meg listened, halfheartedly, still brooding about Donovan.

“How was your first day as a volunteer? Do you like it?” Meg heard her mother ask.

“I’m around sick kids all day. What’s fun about that?”

“Honey, it’s good for you to be active, remember? You were getting too introspective, and your father and I were concerned about you.”

That’s why it’s called depression, Mom
, Meg felt like saying. The phone rang, and Tracy hopped up to answer it. She returned, saying, “Mom, it’s Mrs. Hotchkiss from the Junior League.”

Meg was relieved, knowing that her mother would get involved with her Junior League responsibilities and forget about delving into Meg’s day.

Later, in her room, Meg flopped across the bed. She wondered if her father’s effort to retrieve a donor heart and save a patient under his care had gone well. She thought about Donovan’s need for someone to die so that he could live.

Meg got a sense that she was viewing some kind of low-budget horror film. Maintaining human
parts and flying them around the country for use in dying people sounded so bizarre. But she was able to see the necessity for the process in a new light because a stranger named Donovan had become a real person, not a case.

Sadness engulfed her, and she tried to recall the last time she’d felt happy. Somehow, since the accident, she didn’t feel right about being happy because Cindy could no longer be happy. Her therapist had helped her see that she had to overcome that feeling. She remembered the night Cindy had been with her for a sleep-over and it had been great.

“So, what do you think, Meg
?
Will I always be the tallest girl in our class, or will my hormones give up and leave me in peace for a while
?”

Meg sat upright and looked around her room, half expecting Cindy to be sitting on the floor, complaining about her height. The room was empty. Of course, she’d imagined her friend’s voice. “You’re going to have sporadic periods of renewed grieving,” Dr. Miller, her therapist, had often explained and tried to reassure her. “We call them ‘grieving pangs,’ and they’re normal. It’s when a person can’t rise up out of the spiral and go on with everyday life that he or she gets into trouble.”

Suddenly, Meg realized she was tired of feeling grieving pangs. Agitated, she circled her room. She didn’t want to think about the loss of Cindy. She wanted to forget the pain. What could her father and Dr. Miller have been thinking to suggest
that she work around sick people at the hospital? This wasn’t going to help her. It was harming her.

Meg went to her desk and picked up Cindy’s class photo. The image grinned out at her—a slim girl with a head of wild, frizzy brown hair and freckles on her face. “I wish you could meet this guy I saw today. Even though he’s sick, he’s cute. You’d probably think he was too thin, but that’s not his fault. I wish …” Meg’s voice trailed.

She carefully set down the photograph. It was stupid to be talking to a picture. She glanced at the bedside clock. It was only nine o’clock, but she suddenly felt overwhelmed by exhaustion. “Excessive sleeping is a sign of depression,” the therapist had informed Meg when she’d first started seeing her in April.

“So what?” Meg said to the memory of Dr. Miller’s face. Without a second thought, she flipped off the light and crawled beneath the covers, into the blessed arms of a deep, forgetful sleep.

W
HEN
M
EG ARRIVED
at the hospital the next morning, she headed straight to Donovan’s room. Once there, she skidded to a halt, seeing a woman and a young boy beside Donovan’s bed. “Meg,” Donovan greeted her. “Come meet my mom and brother.”

“Donovan’s been talking about you,” said the woman with hair the same color as her son’s.

“He said you were pretty,” the young boy blurted out. “You are, but I don’t like girls very much. I think they’re mean. Bonnie Oakland’s mean. She’s in my class, and she always butts in line and my teacher doesn’t do anything about it.”

“Brett, that’s not polite,” his mother scolded. “Excuse Mr. Chatterbox here. Today’s teacher conference
at his day school. I asked my boss if I could come in late so that I could meet with Brett’s teacher.” She patted Donovan’s arm. “And on our way home, we stopped to see Donovan.”

“Nice to meet you,” Meg said, her mind still dwelling on Brett’s comment about Donovan’s thinking she was pretty. She’d struggled with her weight most of her life, and boys had never seemed to notice her the way they did slimmer girls.

“I’m glad you didn’t go right home,” Donovan told Meg. “I wanted you to meet each other.”

“It’s
not
home,” Brett interrupted. “It’s an apartment. And I hate it.”

“It’s home for now, big guy,” Donovan said. “Come on and climb up on the bed with me. I’ve got something for you.”

Eagerly, Brett scrambled up on the bed. Meg knew she should say something about its being against the rules for anyone other than a patient to be in the bed, but she couldn’t bring herself to spoil the look of delight on Brett’s face.

Donovan reached under his pillow and pulled out a toy laser gun. Brett’s eyes grew large. “Wow. Thanks.”

“Where’d you get that?” his mother asked.

“I coaxed one of the night-shift nurses into buying it for me.” He offered his melting smile, and Meg realized that he could probably coax Eskimos into buying ice cubes. “Don’t worry—I paid for it.”

“But the money—”

“I’ve been saving what you give me.” He ruffled Brett’s hair, while the younger boy busily removed the packaging from the bright plastic pistol.

Meg noted that Mrs. Jacoby seemed genuinely concerned about the expense. Meg couldn’t imagine not having enough money to buy a small toy.

“I only want you to have enough for the things you want and need for yourself,” Mrs. Jacoby said.

“What I need, I can’t buy,” Donovan replied.

The expression on his mother’s face tore at Meg’s heart, and after Meg’s conversation with her father, she understood exactly what Donovan meant. “Let me see that,” Meg said, lifting Brett off the bed and bending down to examine the gun.

While she kept Brett occupied, Donovan and his mother had a low, quiet discussion. Minutes later, Mrs. Jacoby said, “We need to be going, Brett. They’re expecting you at the day-care center.”

“I
hate
that place.”

“What’s worse? The center or school?” Donovan asked, distracting Brett.

“School,” the boy answered glumly.

“Then lucky you,” Meg inserted. “No school today.”

Brett looked thoughtful, and Mrs. Jacoby smiled warmly at Meg. “We can’t get back until Sunday,” Mrs. Jacoby told Donovan. “I get paid time and a half if I work on Saturday.”

“No problem,” Donovan assured her, but Meg could see he disliked being alone.

Once they were gone, even Meg felt the hollowness in the room. She could go to work, but Donovan was stuck with another long day to face by himself. “Do you like to read?” she asked. “I’m supposed to go to the hospital library and pick out books for the patients. Maybe I could choose something just for you.”

“Reading’s all right, but what I’d really like to do is get outside on the grounds.”

“You can do that?”

“If someone takes me in a wheelchair.” He made a face. “I hate being pushed around, but if it’s the only way to get outdoors …”

“I could take you down after I finish my shift today.”

“What happened to you yesterday? I thought you were coming by to see me?”

“I did, but you were asleep.”

“You should have awakened me. Really. I hate sleeping in the daytime. That means I’m awake half the night. You know how long the nights can be around this place?”

“Twelve hours—same as the daytime?”

“Technically, that’s true, but it feels like a hundred hours when you’re alone with nothing to do and no one to talk to.”

She didn’t dare admit that she knew exactly what he was talking about. Her periods of excessive sleeping were often followed by bouts of sleeplessness. “I guess the nights can seem pretty long in this place.”

A lab technician strolled through the doorway.
“Time for my bloodletting,” Donovan said with a grimace.

Meg backed away as the tech put down the basket filled with syringes, swabs, and glass tubes for blood samples. “Doctor’s orders,” the tech said.

“I’ll see you later,” Meg promised, and slipped out of the room. She didn’t want to watch needles poked into him.

At the nurses’ station, Alana greeted her, and together they went over the schedule for the day’s activities. “I’ll do the bookmobile,” Meg said. “I already know my way around the library downstairs.”

“And I already promised Mrs. Vasquez I’d handle the afternoon reading time in the activity room,” Alana said. “See you for lunch?”

“Sure thing,” Meg said. But she never made it to lunch. The hospital library was so devoid of appealing books for kids that Meg called her mother and asked if she could go through some of the Junior League book donations stored in their basement.

At noon, Meg rushed home, rummaged through boxes and sacks earmarked for the store the Junior League ran to raise money for charity, and chose an armful of new reading material. She came across a set of
The Chronicles of Narnia
by C. S. Lewis and decided to offer them to Donovan. By the time she returned to the hospital, lunch was a memory.

The hospital librarian seemed delighted with the new books, but Meg had to promise to help
her catalog them on Saturday before she’d put them out on loan.

The afternoon passed so quickly, Meg could scarcely believe it when Alana told her good-bye for the day. Meg remembered her promise to Donovan, checked out a wheelchair, and was on her way to his room when she met her father in the hall. He looked tired, but was freshly shaven, and she knew he’d probably ducked into the upstairs doctors’ lounge for a shower and a change of clothes. “How’s your heart patient?” she asked.

“The transplant went smoothly, and she’s in intensive care now. The next forty-eight hours are critical. If she hangs on and doesn’t have a serious rejection episode, I think she’ll make it. I’m hoping we’ll hit on the best combination of immune-suppressant drugs right off the bat.” For the first time, he noticed the wheelchair. “Going for a stroll?”

“I promised Donovan I’d take him outside.”

“That’s nice of you. The nurses are so busy, we’re always shorthanded. And the patients need these extra touches.”

His approval pleased Meg more than she cared to admit. “Will he ever be well enough to go home and wait for his transplant?” she asked.

“We’re trying to stabilize him. He’s much better than he was when he checked in a week ago. Even if he does leave, he must stay close to the hospital. He’ll wear a beeper so that we can page him if a suitable donor is found. Dr. Rosenthal, his
primary physician, and I aren’t ready to release him quite yet, but I will give him a pass.”

“A pass?”

“I’ll let him check out of the hospital for a few hours to go have some fun. Unfortunately, there’s not too much for kids his age to do up here. Too bad his mother doesn’t have a car. I’d release him for an afternoon to her care.”

“I met her and Brett this morning.” Meg hesitated, then asked what had been on her mind most of the day. “They don’t have much money, do they?”

“No.”

“Then how can they afford a liver transplant?”

“Money, or lack of it, isn’t a criterion for transplant consideration. Need is. There’re federal funding programs for those who can’t afford a transplant. It’s complicated, and the paperwork’s a headache, but I saw to it that Donovan would be covered financially.”

“
You
did?”

Her father gave her a tired smile. “Don’t look so shocked. I do it frequently. I want to save him, Meg. I want him to get the transplant and live a long time. I want to save everybody who needs a new organ. Unfortunately, sometimes the money’s easier to get than the organ.” He squeezed her shoulder. “You’d better get going. I know Donovan well enough to know he’s sitting on his bed, dressed and ready to get outdoors.”