Peril (8 page)

“That's what she went to radiology for,” Ian clarified.

Morgan nodded her head and began to feel a vibration at the center of her chest, a playback of when she first heard the news of Teagan's brain flow study and what it ultimately meant. Unfortunately, her job knowledge gave her instant understanding, whereas these parents struggled on a thin tightrope—clinging to the hope that somehow their daughter would return to the way she had been.

Morgan pulled her lower lip between her teeth before continuing on. “During a brain flow study, a radioisotope that can be seen on X-ray is injected into the blood. After that, pictures are taken of the brain.”

Straightening her back, Morgan rested her hands over the two pictures she held on her lap. Nursing was about education—about hitting
each individual learning style to somehow let the truth of a situation sink in.

Morgan flipped the first picture up and her stomach began to ache. Even needing these pictures as teaching tools seemed sacrilegious. “This is what a normal brain flow study looks like. This is
not
Zoe's study, but just to show you the difference.” She peered around the front, like a librarian reading to a group of eager children.

Yet the eagerness on these parents' faces was not one of joy but of apprehension. Morgan pointed to the plumes of dye—evidence that it had been pushed through the bloodstream via the body's internal highway system. “You can see here how the injected dye was carried by the blood vessels into the brain.”

A slight nod of affirmation from the father. The mother continued to sit still.

“Wherever blood goes, oxygen goes. That's how organs stay alive. Without blood flow, there is no oxygen delivery and that organ will die.”

Morgan switched to the other X-ray. “This is Zoe's study.” The uneasy vibration had changed to pain, and it traveled along her muscle fibers like electricity. Everything about her body began to feel heavy. “See how there is no indication of blood flowing up to her brain at all?”

As she waited for her statement to sink in, her heart heaved with adrenaline. Morgan placed the pictures side by side. The sting of coming tears threatened to overwhelm her. Maybe what her coworkers said was true.
Why do I keep doing this work? Why do I keep submitting myself to other families' grief when I don't have a handle on my own?

Her voice cracked as she started. “See the difference? Zoe's brain isn't getting any blood flow and therefore has died. Zoe is what we call brain dead. She has died. I'm really sorry.”

Ian dropped his face into his hands. A piercing pain struck Morgan's chest. She quickly blinked back her own tears as she bit hard into the inner side of her cheek to keep from breaking down; the copper taste only increased the roiling in her gut.

The curtain that was pulled closed around the bed wouldn't keep Ian's weeping from the other families who were visiting the unit. Julia's eyes glossed over as she clamped her lips together to quell their trembling.

“How can you say that when I can see her chest rising and falling? Her heartbeat is up on that monitor!”

Morgan set the pictures down. “I know this is very confusing. The breathing machine delivers oxygen to her lungs. Because of that, her heart continues to beat. However, another test we did on Zoe even before we took her to radiology looked at whether she would breathe if the machine wasn't helping her.”

The woman came up out of her seat. “And did she?”

Morgan clenched the pictures on her lap and shook her head.

“You're lying!”

Julia grabbed Zoe's shoulders and began to shake her daughter in the bed. The child's straight brown hair, still with remnants of dirt and leaves embedded in the silky smooth fibers, tousled against her pillow. “Zoe Marie! You wake up right now!”

Ian looked dazed. His own processing of the situation paralyzed any ability he might have had to comfort his wife. Morgan came up off the chair to the mother's side of the bed. She gripped the woman around the waist and began to move her back from her daughter's body. And then it came, the torrential sobbing of grief as the woman latched her arms around Morgan's shoulders, barely able to keep herself standing.

Through the edge of the open curtain, she could see Detective Brett Sawyer waiting in the wings. His eyes widened, and she simply shook her head as she brought her hands up and held them against the woman's back.

Ian's voice brought her attention back. “Can we donate her organs?”

Julia pulled away from Morgan. “How can you think about that right now?”

“Because I want something good to come of what happened. I want part of her to still be alive.”

Morgan assisted Julia back into her chair. “It's possible. We'll have to clear it with the coroner considering the circumstances. They've done it in the past.”

“Why do you have to clear it with them?” Ian asked.

Morgan looked at the detective again and he motioned for her. She couldn't verbalize the answer to Zoe's father's question. Her mouth refused to form the words.

Because now, the detective can amend the charges to murder.

Chapter 7

Afternoon, Friday, June 15

T
YLER PLACED TWO FINGERS
on the inner aspect of Amy Kent's wrist, feeling the pulse generated by her new heart. Morgan bustled around him setting medication pumps, listening to heart tones and breath sounds as another nurse documented vital signs.

It was these moments when his once strong faith stirred for revival inside of him. Amy's blood type had matched that of the, officially now, murder victim. Was it God's providence or his restoration through an evil act? Was God good in all circumstances? Why did one family have to carry tragedy at the same time another family rejoiced? Zoe Martin's heart was now beating in Amy Kent's chest.

There wasn't any feasible way for those two families to avoid crossing paths in the PICU. It was an inherent flaw in the building design. An open unit. A large waiting room. Harried parents with nothing better to do than to share their experiences with the other families in the same holding cell.

And it was that scene that broke his heart. Not from sadness, but from a vacuous awareness that he had missed out on such a moment. The possibility that he could have used his daughter's organs to save the life of another parent's child.

Instead, Teagan was a mire of nothing in the cold, dark earth.

He'd witnessed the moment this time. The curtains had been pulled away from Zoe's bed as the organ team was getting ready to take her to the OR. Joanna Kent had waited for Zoe's parents to emerge from the cocoon of their corner.

She'd raced across the unit and enveloped Julia Martin in an embrace that only two mothers in that circumstance could understand. A quiet hush settled over the unit. People bowed their heads, the only way they
could offer privacy in such an intimate, emotion-wrought stillness in time shared between two souls passing on either side of life and death.

And the words that Joanna Kent whispered to Julia Martin over and over were simply . . . I'm sorry.

The idea of sacrifice had always been close to Tyler's heart. It was what amazed him about Christ's death. No matter what you could say about his life on earth—that he was crazy, that he was a liar, that he was in fact God—didn't matter when what the man believed led him to give up his life in the most horrendous way: voluntarily.

Just as Zoe's parents had given up her heart, voluntarily, so another child could live.

Tyler wondered, in a soulful, universe-gazing way, if these earthly lessons were designed by a good God to give humanity glimpses of what he'd done for each of them.

And he wondered if Morgan still believed it anymore.

Death and life in the same day. One family's grief is another family's joy. The best and the worst day tied up in one messy, bright bow.

He watched Morgan as she busied herself with her coworkers to get Amy settled. Common procedure was to admit a transplant patient directly to the ICU after surgery instead of going to the post-anesthesia care unit. These children required more than one-on-one nursing care. They typically had two or more nurses in attendance for the first few hours after surgery, watching the monitors closely, assessing their patient's body systems for the slightest signal that something was going awry.

Really, it still amazed him to watch nurses in action. There was something about them. They could be both compassionate and stern in the same moment. They could laugh and cry with a family as they moved from one bedspace to another, all the while watching for those subtle clues that their patient was taking a turn for the worse. Forget about the complexity of pediatric nursing. Caring for an infant, a toddler, a teenager, each required a different approach. Plus, the appropriate medication dose for a high schooler would kill an infant.

And he'd been lucky to find Morgan.

They'd first met at the beginning of his pediatric cardiothoracic fellowship. She'd been singing softly to a child who'd just received a pacemaker, trying to entice the youngster with toys, the ultimate assessment of a child's pain level. Active play—excellent. Not interested in playing—the child wasn't feeling well. She'd been straightening the girl's stray curls with her fingers, offering up her own curly, blond locks as entertainment when it seemed the child got a sudden burst of energy from her sugary, orange Popsicle and grabbed Morgan's hair, entwining her sticky fingers in the locks and pulling hard.

Morgan cried out and stayed the girl's hand as her vibrant green eyes searched the unit for help. Yelling in the PICU was reserved solely for emergencies, and toddler's sticky-fisted hair-pulling was a definite nonemergency.

Tyler raced to help her. At first he drew his trauma shears from his pocket to cut her free but she offered a look of
Are you kidding?
and he'd raced to shield them back in his pocket.

The first words his future wife ever uttered to him: “Why is it you surgeons always want to cut something up first?”

He couldn't help but smile. “It's the fastest way to a cure.”

Morgan laughed in return. Ten minutes later, he presided over a pile of orange, gooey washcloths that had separated fist from hair. The patient was smiling and playing. He'd patted the bundle of dirty cloths at the end of the bed. “Cutting would have been faster than this, but I do like your long hair better than the short cut I would have given you.”

“Surgeon and hairstylist?”

“Where do you think Scarlett Johansson gets her great style from?”

“Scarlett Johansson?”

He'd held his hands up in mock surrender. “All right, you know my darkest secret. Now I can take you out for dinner.”

“Where?”

“I might be able to afford the cafeteria.”

Amy's monitor toned and brought his attention back to his current patient. A jealous tug pulled at Tyler's heart as the attending cardiac surgeon
sidled up next to Morgan at the patient's computer, reviewing the initial numbers. He nodded and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. One thought crossed through Tyler's mind.

I want to be that close to her again. Have that easiness.