Fear welled up inside him, spilling through him in wave after wave. He started to shake, felt his insides knot up smaller and smaller.
Then he looked back at the monitor and it showed only one heartbeat. It should have calmed him, the realization that it had been a hallucination, but it didn’t.
He could feel the drugs whirring through his bloodstream, dulling this moment, blurring his vision, but it didn’t matter. The stranger’s heart kept beating, beating, beating….
“Oh, God,” he whimpered. He’d never been so sick or afraid in his life. “You should have let me die.”
“Just relax, Angel. Relax. We’ll talk later.”
He felt her squeeze his hand, felt her stroke his tear-soaked cheek, and he wanted to take comfort from her, ached to take comfort from her.
But he couldn’t. It didn’t matter what she said later, what she told him was normal or to be expected. He knew the truth, knew it with every beat of the stranger’s heart.
Someone was living inside him.
It was cold along the shadowy streambed where Lina stood alone, waiting for her friends to drift down the loose embankment. They’d appear on the rise like they always did, one by one, their bodies silhouetted against the cool blue of an autumn sky, their hands jammed in their pockets, cigarettes hanging limply from their mouths. She’d hear them talking before they reached the crest of the ridge, their voices high and exuberant.
It always brought a swift stab of longing, that first sound of their laughing conversations. She’d rise to her feet, craning her neck to see the first familiar face, hear the first called-out “Hey, Lina! Hold that spot for me!”
Whenever they came careening (town the ravine toward her, their tennis shoes skidding and sliding through the wet autumn leaves, their backpacks thumping against their bodies, she felt—for a few brief, shining moments—as if she belonged.
The crowd met here every morning before school, collecting like lost souls, drawn together to share cigarettes, booze, pot, and a sense of togetherness.
They were the “bad” kids, the problem ones. Everyone knew it, from the teachers to the counselors to the principal himself. Once a semester, one of the new teachers would come tearing down this crumbling bank, pointing an accusing finger and rousting them all. But by the end of the year, that teacher would be tired, and there would be more and more days when they stood here alone, talking among themselves, laughing at their own bravery, believing they were invincible.
But Lina didn’t feel invincible anymore, and nothing as easily obtainable as a few cigarettes would ease the ache that pressed on her lungs until sometimes she didn’t think she could breathe without starting to cry.
She jammed her hands in the baggy, linty confines of her jeans and sat down on a mossy rock. Two towering cedar trees stood stoically on either side of her, their graceful branches collapsing downward like an umbrella that had been left half-open after a rain.
“Hey, Lina!” It was Jett, standing at the crest of the hill, wearing all black, his buzz-cut hair dyed to match. He jumped over the edge like a skier, knees up, arms flung wide. His shoes hit the earth hard and skidded out from underneath him. With a whooping holler, he ran all the way down, leapt across the creek, and came to a breathless stop beside her.
She stared at him, this boy whom she’d had a crush on for almost two years, and felt suddenly as if she’d never seen him before. It made her feel a bit sick to her stomach, unsteady on her feet.
He grinned at her, flashing a set of white teeth. “Can I bum a smoke?”
It was always the first thing he said to her. “Sure,” she mumbled, reaching into her leather pocket, pulling out a pack. She knew the second she touched it that it was empty. A frown darted across her face. When had she smoked them all?
Then she remembered the other night, when they’d landed back at SeaTac Airport. Mom had put Lina into a taxi and sent her home.
To that empty house with pictures of Francis everywhere. It felt as if every place she looked, she saw him, felt him, heard him. Finally she’d raced from her room and curled onto the porch swing—the one he’d bought them for Christmas last year—and cried and smoked until her mother came home.
“Sorry,” she said, glancing up at Jett. “I guess I’m out.”
His disappointment was obvious. “No prob.”
They stood there a second longer, waiting for the other kids to arrive. Yesterday she would have tried to talk to him, would have pulled conversation from the chilly air around them and clung to each word he gave her, but today she was too tired to expend the effort.
She heard the magpie chatter of distant conversations and looked up just as five or six kids lurched over the crest of the hill and skidded downward. Within seconds they were all standing alongside the stream, cigarettes going, talking loudly and laughing.
Lina looked at them, from one face to another, and felt a dawning sense of confusion. Why, when she was standing here among her friends, did she feel so lonely that she wanted to ciy?
It took her a second to realize that no one was talking to her, a second more to realize she didn’t care.
Jett pulled a thermos out of his backpack and twisted the lid off. With a grin he said, “Kahlúa and Coke, anyone?”
Everyone cheered and reached for the thermos. But before Jett could take the first swallow, another silhouette appeared on the rise.
“You kids get back to school. The first bell rang five minutes ago.”
As one, they looked up and saw Vicki Owen, the new guidance counselor, standing above them. Beside her, Principal Smithson looked ragged and tired, and Lina wasn’t surprised by his expression. Smithson had raided this ravine a couple of thousand times too often to believe it would make any difference.
The kids laughed at getting caught and tossed their still-burning cigarettes into the stream. Lina watched the white butts swirl together, mix with the fallen leaves, and float downstream. It occurred to her that a bird could see that little white cylinder and swoop down on it, swallowing the deadly man-made thing before it realized what had happened.
“You, Lina Hillyard, I want to talk to you.”
It was Miss Owen’s voice. Lina looked up and realized that she was the only one left at the stream. The other kids and Principal Smithson were gone; the only evidence that they’d been there was a skidding trail of loose mud that cut through the leaves and ferns.
With a sigh, Lina jumped over the stream and climbed up the embankment. At the top she stopped alongside Miss Owen, and saw her mother standing a few feet away.
Lina rolled her eyes. “Great.”
Miss Owen stepped aside, then retreated wordlessly. Lina watched the counselor walk across the football field and disappear into the school.
Finally she turned and looked at her mother. She stood about ten feet away, her hair unbrushed and unkempt, her eyes puffy and red. It was the way they’d both looked in the two days since Francis’s death. The walking wounded.
“Whaddaya want?” she said harshly, knowing what her mother wanted—knowing it was what they both wanted. Comfort, relief from the staggering grief. But there was no comfort. Lina had learned that the hard way. It just kept coming back, sneaking through your thoughts like a snake, pouncing at the most unexpected times. Every time the phone rang, Lina thought it was Francis—then whap! the snake bit.
There was a long pause before her mother spoke, a quiet in which Lina heard the squawking of the crows and the distant whine of a leaf blower. “Vicki Owen called me this morning, told me where you were. I thought… I thought we should talk.”
Lina swallowed heavily. “Is that gonna bring him back, Mom?”
She shook her head. “Come on, baby. Walk with me.”
She stared at her mother, watched as Madelaine turned and walked slowly toward the bleachers. Lina thought about not following, about just splitting and going somewhere—anywhere. But she didn’t want to be alone, and her mother was the only person who really understood how Lina
felt.
She followed her mother across the football field and up into the bleachers. They sat side by side, far enough apart that they weren’t touching, but still somehow together in all the empty seats.
Lina glanced around, at the black scoreboard with the unlit entries for home and guest. A prowling black cat crawled across the wooden fencing, his tail wrapped through the sign that proudly proclaimed this place the home of the Panthers.
Lina had been here, of course, but never for a game. She’d never heard the crash of the helmets or the roar of the crowd, never met with a group of friends to watch their team battle another.
Years ago she’d wanted to, back when she was in seventh grade and Cara Milston was her best friend in the world. She’d tried to get her mother to take her to a game, but that was the beginning of Madelaine’s “busy days.” Days and nights and more days that blurred together in hospital shifts that never ended. There had only been a few home games that year, and Madelaine had been unable to go to every one of them. By the next year, Lina had collected a group of friends who wouldn’t be caught dead at a football game. Instead they’d spent their Friday nights down by the stream, sucking up whatever booze someone could get a hold of and chain-smoking.
Maybe if Lina had had a brother, or a boyfriend, it would have been different, or if she and Cara had stayed best friends. Or if her mom had gone to high school, maybe that would have made a difference, too.
“You never ask to go to football games anymore,” Mom said quietly.
“Yeah, well, I got better things to do.”
“Like smoking down by the creek?”
Lina shrugged and glanced around the bleachers, noticing the film of wrappers and old popcorn and spilled Coke that lay in sticky heaps on the metal flooring. “I thought you wanted to talk.”
There was a long pause, then slowly, quietly, her mother began to speak. “I was six years old when my mom died. One night I kissed her good night and went off to bed…. When I woke up, she was gone. No one wanted to tell me how sick she was—my dad thought it didn’t matter, I guess, preparing a little girl to lose her mother. But there were so many things I never got to say.” There was a surprising bitterness in her mother’s voice, a hardness she’d never heard before. She frowned a little. “After that, I saw the world differently. I knew it wasn’t a safe place.”
Lina felt the tears come back, stinging, burning. She thought about wiping them away, but didn’t bother. “H-He was always there for me.”
“He still is, baby.”
Lina snorted and smeared a hand across her eyes. “Don’t get into that God stuff. It doesn’t help.”
“You can call it God or Jesus or Allah or mumbo jumbo; it doesn’t matter. What matters is looking inside yourself and discovering what you believe. If you don’t, you’ll have nothing to cling to, nothing to believe in, and everything will start falling apart. Trust me, I know.”
“I don’t want to think about that stuff now,” she said in a tiny, broken voice. “If I do, all I end up thinking about is how gone he is, how he’s never coming back, and how much I miss him.”
“If Francis were right here, right now, what would he say to you?”
For a split second she could almost feel him beside her, whispering in her ear. A sad little smile plucked at her lips. “He’d tell me to ditch that loser bunch of friends and go home.”
“You see? He’s there, inside you. He always will be.”
Lina wanted to smile, wanted it badly, but she couldn’t. “He hated my friends. He thought they weren’t going anywhere.”
Madelaine didn’t respond, but her silence seemed to say it all.
“I know he’s right,” Lina said shakily, “but I don’t know what to do about it. I never did.”
“The biggest journeys start with a single step. Maybe you could go to the Christmas dance. You’ll see a whole different crowd of people there. A girl as pretty as you could get a date in a second.”
Lina rolled her eyes. “As if Mom. Jett Rodham wouldn’t be caught dead at something as dopey as a school dance.”
“What about you, Lina? Would you like to go?”
It was exactly the sort of idea Francis would have come up with. Lina thought about it, and wished immediately that she hadn’t. The idea of attending a school dance was oh, so seductive. She thought about dressing up, fixing her hair, coming down the stairs and getting her picture taken with a boy who smiled shyly for the camera. She thought about her mother, grinning from ear to ear, slipping her arm around Francis’s waist—
No. Francis wouldn’t be there. He’d never be there again….
Lina jerked to her feet. “Don’t talk to me about these things,” she hissed. It hurt so badly, missing him; she hadn’t thought anything could hurt this bad. “I don’t have that kind of life, damn it. It’s too late for me to become some idiotic homecoming queen. Just leave well enough alone.”
“Oh, baby …” Madelaine said on a sigh, reaching for her.
Lina could feel her mother’s love—a heat that was inches beyond her grasp. But she couldn’t get rid of the picture of her going to the prom, of Francis and her mother waiting up for her.
The thought of him twisted her insides into a tight, throbbing knot. Wordlessly she spun away from her mom’s sad face and ran across the football field. She didn’t know where she was going. It didn’t matter.
She just knew she had to run.
Chapter Eighteen
Madelaine slipped on her mask and paper slippers and headed for Angel’s room in isolation. As she glanced through the glass observation doors, she saw the nurse standing alongside his bed, monitoring his every heartbeat.
She stepped quickly through the doors and stood beside the nurse. He lay completely still, his face pale and slightly gray, his body hooked up to a dozen machines and intravenous solutions. Two huge chest tubes lay alongside his new heart, sticking out from wounds at the base of his rib cage. Blood bubbled through the clear plastic and collected in a huge canister at the foot of the bed.
He looked peaceful now, but she knew it was an illusion. Every thirty minutes the special-care nurses turned his weakened body from side to side, pounding on his back to keep his lungs and swollen, hacked-up chest clear. They forced him to breathe into a tube to work his lungs. The massive doses of immunosuppressant drugs that he’d been given in the first twenty-four hours had been diminished somewhat on this, the second day after surgery, but the antibiotic dosage had been increased.
She reached for his charts and studied them, looking for anything that might be problematic. “How’s our patient doing?”
The masked nurse gave her a wry look. “He’s not very happy about all this. Physically his new heart is a winner. His body is reacting as well as can be expected to the meds.”
“I’ll sit with him for a while. Go ahead and take a break.”
When the nurse was gone, Madelaine pulled up a chair and sat beside his bed. Reaching out, she gently took hold of his hand. “So, Angel, you’re not playing well with others.”
He lay there, unresponsive, his breathing slow and steady and unaided by machine.
She couldn’t help but think of the other day, when he’d gone ballistic after surgery. She’d seen the fear in his eyes, the dawning horror as he felt the rhythmic beating of the new heart. The realization that someone had died to give him the chance at life.
Not someone, she thought. Francis.
What would Angel say if he knew the truth?
She frowned. She hadn’t known Angel in years—maybe she never really had—but she knew him well enough to know that he would throw the mother of all tantrums if he knew what she had done. What she had authorized.
He wouldn’t know how to grieve for something like this. In fairness, she knew that no one would. He would be plagued with regret and self-loathing. He would wonder if Francis was really dead before the surgery, or if Madelaine and her team had done the unforgivable.
She knew she could make
the argument to anyone that Angel shouldn’t know the truth—that it would hinder his recovery, that donor confidentiality could only be breached after massive discussion with the bereavement counselor, that it was best all the way around to keep Angel in the dark. It was standard policy to keep the donor’s identity confidential.
But there was so much more here than just standard hospital procedure.
She was afraid to tell him the truth, afraid of the look that would cross his eyes, afraid of the words he would say to her. Words that, once said, could never be unsaid.
Because she also knew another truth. She didn’t know when it had come to her, when it had become a part of her, but sometime in the last few weeks, Angel had crept under her skin again. It was his spirit—that great, larger-than-life spirit that dared the world to take him on. She’d fallen in love with it as a young girl, and she found that even as an adult, there was something almost magical about his strength of personality, his defiant will to forge his own path.
So unlike her own watered-down, Milquetoast will.
When she looked at him, even now, when he lay at death’s door, she saw a shooting star of a man.
Behind her, the door opened. She turned just as Chris walked into the room. His eyes squinted in a smile above the mask. “How’s our patient?”
Madelaine smiled. “Better than most. He’s reacting well to the meds.”
Chris pulled up a chair and sat down. He took a second to flip through the charts, then dropped them back into the sleeve at the foot of the bed. He looked up at Madelaine. “What are you going to do?”
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I’m going to remove myself as his cardiologist. After the … decision to donate, I don’t have much choice.”
“You could bring it up before the ethics committee—it’s kind of a gray area.”