Francis came into the trailer and dropped his book bag on the sofa. “Heya, Angel,” he said.
Ma thumped Francis on the back so hard, he stumbled forward. “You’re just in time for dinner. I’ll go to the kitchen and make sure I got your favorites. Franks and beans for my Frankie.” With a final squeak, she hustled down the hallway and disappeared into the kitchen.
Francis looked at him. “There’s a brand-new Harley-Davidson in the yard.”
Angel shifted nervously. “I’m in trouble, Franco. I gotta leave town. I just …” To his humiliation, he felt tears burn his eyes. “I just came to say good-bye.”
“Don’t do it, man,” Francis said softly, shaking his head. “Don’t just run away. Whatever it is, we can talk about it. Figure out what to do. Don’t go. Please …”
“I have to.” He turned away from the disappointment in Francis’s eyes, and ran out of the trailer. Jumping on the motorcycle, he started the engine and roared out of town. He never let himself look back. He was afraid that if he did, he’d start crying … and wouldn’t be able to stop.
The antiseptic smell returned, sharp and bitter. The hospital lighting stabbed through his watery eyes. He’d stayed away from Seattle for seventeen long, lonely years. Now, after all this time, he was going back.
Going home.
Chapter Two
Angel stared at the pockmarked ceiling.
It was too damned quiet in here; the stillness grated on his overstretched nerves. He wanted suddenly to fill the silence with noise, loud, boisterous noise that said I’m here, I’m still alive. He wanted to take strength from that simple sentence, pleasure from the knowledge that his lungs still pumped air. But it wasn’t enough anymore, not nearly enough. Now there was a vial of liquid nitrogen inside his chest, a dark, ugly splotch that could explode at any second. Any second.
Just a blip on the screen and it was over. Flat line.
He closed his eyes, trying to ignore the headache pulsing behind his eyes. He didn’t want to think about this crap anymore. He wanted it all to just go away.
“You look like shit.”
Angel heard the drawling, southern-fed voice and almost smiled. Would have smiled if he hadn’t felt so damned low. He cracked his eyes open, blinked hard as the fluorescent lighting stabbed through his brain.
’Thanks.” Angel inched his way to a sit. The needles in his veins pinched with every movement. By the time he was upright, he was winded and his chest hurt like hell.
Val stood in the doorway, his thin, designer-clad body angled against the doorframe, his tangled blond hair tucked self-consciously behind one ear. He pushed away from the door and glided into the room in that slow, loose-hipped walk that always drew attention from the media. He reached out, grabbed the bedside chair with long, delicate fingers, and twisted it around, slumping casually onto the hard seat. Leaning forward, he rested his chin on the chair back and dangled his arms over the mustard-colored fake leather. A slow frown pulled at his eyebrows as he studied Angel. “I mean, you really look like shit. Even worse than last time.”
Angel didn’t have the strength to smile. “Give me a cigarette, will you?”
Val reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. Flicking the hard pack’s top, he checked the contents and shrugged. “Empty. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” He pulled a pint of tequila from inside his coat and grinned. “But I’m not completely useless.” He set the bottle down on the bedside table. “I just watched the dailies for yesterday. That death scene of yours was unbelievable—even I didn’t know you were that good. The writer went ape-shit. When you get out of here, we’re going to start the Oscar hype immediately. The publicist thinks…”
Blah, blah, blah. Val’s voice droned on and on, but Angel stopped hearing, stopped listening, anyway.
He stared at the man who’d been his friend, and then agent, for sixteen years and tried to summon a smile—to act like a film performance mattered right now. But he couldn’t do it; he wasn’t that good an actor.
He remembered suddenly the night he’d met Val—it had been in New York, the middle of a winter’s night in a seedy tavern, when they’d both been cold and hungry and lonely. Angel had been just a kid then—barely eighteen and already on his own for over a year.
They became friends almost instantly and spent the next year moving from town to town, running and running until it wasn’t fun anymore—just a series of fleabag motels in towns with no names, swilling booze and eating from Dumpsters.
Amazingly, it had turned around in a single day … a day that started with old tuna. Val had gotten violently ill from a tuna sandwich he’d stolen from a hot Arizona lunch counter. At the hospital, he called his parents. Within hours, the two boys were ensconced in the Lightners’ gorgeous New York penthouse apartment.
Val’s mother was the most beautiful woman Angel had ever seen. Cold as ice, hard as diamonds. Val delighted in telling her where they’d been and what they’d done. She was horrified, of course, and Val made her promise to give them an apartment and put them in college.
“But you haven’t even finished high school,” she said in a nasal, white-bread voice.
Val only laughed. “Please, Mother. You’re rich.”
She’d wagged a ringed finger at him. “Life will not always go your way, Valentine.”
He’d given her a disarming smile. “You can always hope, Mother.”
Angel shook his head to clear the memories. Then he looked at Val. “They want to cut my heart out.”
Val patted another pocket, still looking for smokes. “They’ll have to find it first.”
“I mean it, Val. They want to do a heart transplant.”
Val’s smile faded. “You mean, take your heart out and stick in a dead guy’s?”
Angel felt sick. “Close enough.”
“Jesus.” Val slumped forward.
Angel sighed. Somehow, he’d expected more of Val, but he didn’t know what that more was. “I need a donor,” he said, forcing a smile. “A really good agent would offer.”
“I’d give you my brain, buddy. God knows, I don’t use it. But my heart…” He shook his head. “Jesus …”
“Unless you’re praying,” Angel snapped, “try to say something more helpful. I need advice here. Hell, if I’d known a transplant was in my future, I’d have quit smoking and drinking years ago.”
It was another lie, another in the long string of lies he’d told himself. He’d known for years that his heart was bad—and it hadn’t stopped him from drinking or smoking. His only lifestyle change was to drop a heart pill before snorting a line of cocaine.
He had never wasted time thinking about the future. His life had always been a roller-coaster ride, with him strapped willingly in the front seat. The days and nights hammered forward at blinding speed, turning, dipping, plunging. Never slowing, never coming to a bump stop.
Until now, until yesterday, when the coaster had rammed into the brick wall of his own mortality.
And as if death weren’t bad enough, they wanted him to go to Seattle for the surgery. Christ, what a mess …
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. It wasn’t fair. He didn’t deserve this. Sure, he’d been an asshole in his life, he’d hurt people and lied to them. But he was supposed to go to hell for that. He’d been raised Catholic, he knew the rules.
Hell was after death.
Not hell on earth, not a heart transplant, not half a life.
“This is stupid,” Angel said. “I refuse to worry about it anymore. What does some low-rent doctor in a backwater hospital in the middle of nowhere know about cutting-edge technology? He probably wouldn’t know a heart transplant patient if he backed over one with his car.”
“Oh, and you would.” Val crushed the empty cigarette pack. “So when do you have the surgery?”
“I’m not going to.”
Val frowned. “Don’t be a jerk, Angel. If you need a new heart, get one. It’s probably a breeze now.
Hell, they separate Siamese twins and turn men into women. What’s the problem?”
“I may not be Albert Schweitzer, Val, but I think a new heart would change your life just a little.”
“Death might be a harder adjustment.” Val tried to look casual, but Angel could see the fear in his friend’s eyes. It was frightening, that look, for Val was fearless, the only person Angel knew who played as close to the edge and lived as recklessly as Angel did. A dilettante bad boy who handled the careers of some of Hollywood’s most famous people.
Angel wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. “Did you see that movie The Hand, with Michael Caine? The one where he was a pianist, I think, and he lost his hand. They sewed a ‘donor’ hand on the end of his stump. Catch was, it was a serial killer’s hand. Caine went around killing everyone he saw.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Angel.”
“Well? It could be true, it could happen. What if I get some namby-pamby heart, and after the surgery my biggest dream is to dress like Doris Day?”
Val let out a bark of laughter. “I don’t know. You’ve got a hell of a pair of legs. I could probably book you in some La Cage aux Folles nightclub. You could be Liza Minnelli.” As soon as the words were out, Val stopped smiling. Then he leaned forward and drilled Angel with a hard look. “The point is, your heart’s a goner. That’s a fact.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Easy?’ Val echoed the word, a small frown tugging at his full lips. “You’re my best friend. None of this is easy.”
“What about my career? The New York Times said my acting had heart.”
Val didn’t look away, though Angel could tell that he wanted to. “Acting is the least of your worries. I got you more money than God for that piece-of-shit action picture.”
Angel stared at the empty cigarette pack in Val’s hand. He wanted a cigarette, a shot of tequila. Anything that would magically take this moment and transform it into something else. He wanted it to be yesterday, last month, last year.
He wanted not to be dying.
But with every breath, every aching, pain-riddled breath, he felt the truth. His heart was throwing in the towel. The realization brought a gnawing sense of loss and frustration. “I don’t want to go public with this, man. I’ll feel like a freak.”
“I’ll leak a story that you’re exhausted—they’ll think you had a drug overdose, but that’s no big deal.” Val waited a minute, obviously thinking, then he leaned toward him, looking as serious as Angel had ever seen him. “But, Angel, you’ve gotta get your head straight. Image is not your biggest problem.”
An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Angel didn’t want to say anything, didn’t know what to say, but the quiet ate through his nerves until he couldn’t stand it. “I want to be mad at God, you know? But if there’s a God, there’s a hell. And if there’s a hell, my whole life has been a race into the fire.”
Val winced. “Let’s not get philosophical. I’ve got two women and a bag of coke in the limo downstairs.” He smiled, but the look in his eyes was sad.
And suddenly Angel knew what Val was thinking. The two of them had done the same drugs, screwed the same women, walked the same razor’s edge. If Angel was dying, Val wouldn’t be far behind.
What would this do to their friendship?
Angel felt a fluttering of panic. Suddenly he understood the price of his recklessness, and for a second he wished he could take it all back, change the way he’d lived. Anything so that he had friends right now, real, honest-to-God friends who cared about him….
“Sorry, pal,” Val said in a quiet voice. “But it’s over. Over. The booze, the drugs, the parties—they’re gone. I don’t care if you have the operation or not, those days are gone. I’m sure as hell not going to party with you again. Christ, you could snort a line and drop dead on the coffee table.” He shivered at the thought, then moved closer to the bed. “I know you’re scared, and when you’re scared you get belligerent and pissed off, but you need a clear head about this, Angel. We’re talking about your life.”
“Some life. And you haven’t heard the best part—they’re sending me to Seattle for the ‘procedure.’ Seattle.”
“Good.”
Angel frowned. “What the hell is good about it?”
“You’ll have your brother. I was afraid you’d be alone. I have to go to the film festival, and I have the Aspen house booked for two weeks.”
“By all means, don’t let my death screw up your vacation plans.”
Val flashed a guilty look. “I could cancel….”
Angel had never felt so alone. He was world-famous and it didn’t mean shit. His life was like his star on Hollywood Boulevard. A beautiful, glittering thing to behold, but frozen in the pavement and cold to the touch. “No, don’t bother. I’ll be fine.”
Finally Val said, “You’re stronger than you think you are, Angel. You always have been. You’re gonna make it.”
“I know.”
After that, there was nothing left to say.
Dr. Madelaine Hillyard entered the ICU in a breathless rush, her name still crackling over the paging system.
The room was bright and impersonal. A single bed cut through the center of the small, private room. Beside it stood a table, its surface heaped with pitchers and cups.
Her patient, Tom Grant, lay in the narrow bed, a pale, motionless body, eyes closed, throat invaded by tubing that connected him to the life-sustaining ventilator. Intravenous lines flowed from his veins. Two huge chest tubes stuck out from the skin beneath his ribs, suctioning blood from his surgical wounds to a bubbling, hissing cylinder.
Susan Grant sat huddled against the bed, her arms uncomfortably looped over the silver metal bed rails, her hand curled tightly around her husband’s limp, unresponsive fingers. At Madelaine’s entrance, she looked up. “Hello, Dr. Hillyard.”
Madelaine gave the woman a gentle smile and moved toward the bed. Wordlessly she checked the tubing, made a note on his chart that the canister needed to be emptied more often, and checked his medications. Pressors, immunosuppressants, and antibiotics—they were all working overtime to keep Tom’s battered, cut-up body from rejecting the new heart.
“Everything looks good, Susan. He should come to any time.”
Tears squeezed past the woman’s lashes and streaked down her cheeks. “The children have been asking about him. I … I don’t know what to say.”
Madelaine wanted to tell her that everything would be all right—would be better than all right—that Tom would wake up and smile at his wife and hold his children, and life would be good.
But Tom was a very special patient. This was his second heart transplant. In the twelve years since his first operation, he had proven that transplants could truly give a patient a new lease on life—he’d fathered two more children, become a marathon runner, and been active in spreading the word nationwide that transplantation was an ever-increasing success. Still, the heart had finally given out, and now he was a pioneer again. One of the few patients ever to get a third chance.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Susan said softly.
Madelaine didn’t answer; it wasn’t necessary. Instead, she pulled up a chair and sat down. She knew that her presence would comfort Susan, give the woman an anchor in the silent, terrifying world of post-op recovery. Her gaze shot to the wall clock, and she made a mental note of the time. She had forty-five minutes before her next appointment. She would be able to stay with Tom for a while.
On the bed, Tom coughed weakly. His eyelids fluttered.
Susan lurched forward. “Tommy? Tom?”
Madelaine hit the nurses’ button and got to her feet, leaning over the bed. “Tom? Can you hear me?”
He opened his eyes and tried to smile around the endotracheal tube. Reaching up, he pressed his hand to his wife’s face.
Then he looked at Madelaine and gave her a thumbs-up.
It was the kind of moment Madelaine lived for. No matter how many times sh
e stood at a bed like this, she never got used to the adrenaline-pumping thrill of success. “Welcome back.”
“Oh, Tommy.” Susan was crying in earnest now. Tears dripped down her face and plopped on the pale blue blanket.
Madelaine performed a few quick tests on him before easing out of the room to give the couple their privacy. In the hallway she stopped the head transplant nurse and quietly gave her an update, then grabbed her coat from her office and raced from the building.
She drove out of the parking lot and sped down Madison Street toward the freeway. For the first few moments she was flying high, exhilarated by Tom’s progress. Soon he would be getting out of bed, kissing his children, holding them on his lap, twirling them in the air on a bright spring day.
She, the other members of the transplant team, and the donor’s family had all done their part to make that miracle. No matter how often it happened, she never failed to feel an incredible, humbling sense of awe. When a patient woke up after surgery, she felt on top of the world. Oh, she knew that it could end tomorrow, knew that his body could reject the heart and turn on itself like a rabid dog. But she always believed in the best, prayed for it, worked for it.
She glanced up, saw her exit sign, and the good mood fled as quickly as it had come.
She was on her way to a meeting with her daughter’s high school guidance counselor. She did not expect it to go well.
Madelaine sighed, feeling the first telltale pulsings of a migraine headache. Yes, the Tom Grants of the world were the reason she did what she did, why she’d spent years in college, years without sleep or a social life, working herself like a demon to become a cardiologist. But there had been a price. As she got older, it was the truth she’d come to understand. There was always a price.
She was losing her daughter, watching Lina drift further and further away. Madelaine tried to be the perfect mother, just as she tried to be the perfect physician. But being a doctor was a snap compared to being a single parent. No matter how hard she tried, she failed with Lina, and it had gone from bad to worse. Lately their relationship had been hanging by a thread.