She was slow to answer. “Yes. That’s what we’re talking about, Angel. Donor organs come from a body that has been declared brain-dead.”
He shivered at the thought. Some guy lying on a slab of metal, doctors greedily harvesting his organs. “Well, no, thanks.”
She stared at him for another full half minute, saying nothing. Then, finally, she shrugged. “Die, then.”
It shocked him, that response. At first it made him angry, then fear crept in, leaving a sour taste in his mouth. “So compassionate, Dr. Hillyard.”
“Look, Angel, I can’t waste time feeling compassion for a person with a death wish. You smoke, you drink, and there were traces of marijuana in your urine. All of this after two heart attacks.” She leaned toward him, drilled him with a steely look. “You’re going to die—and pretty soon if you don’t make some very hard choices.”
“You think I deserve it.”
She drew back. For a heartbeat, she looked at him through the eyes he remembered. “I’d say you think you deserve it, and I think …”
“What?”
“I have no right to say anything. I don’t know you at all, do I?”
“You did once.”
“No.” She said the word softly, but it seemed to echo in the stillness of the room. “I only thought I did once … but the boy I fell in love with promised to be with me forever.” She laughed—a hard, brittle sound that was nothing like the laughter he remembered. “Forever turned out to be about ten seconds.”
“I guess that’s my cue to apologize.”
She frowned. “I don’t want your apology, Angel. I stopped wanting anything from you a long time ago. Now I’m just your doctor, and as such, I want you to live, but make no mistake about it, I’m not going to waste something as valuable as a heart on a bad-boy loser who isn’t going to change his life.”
“You’ve learned to play hardball, Mad.”
“This is a hardball game, Angel. No cut corners, no fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. You’re going to have to decide how badly you want to live. Only you can answer that.”
He was angry that she could talk about this so matter-of-factly, angry that she didn’t seem to care what he did, and angriest of all that he felt so goddamn alone. He wished for a crazy, desperate minute that he’d never abandoned or betrayed her. She was the only person he ever had really been able to talk to, the one person he could cry in front of. And he needed that intimacy right now, needed a friend.
Angel swallowed the thick lump in his throat. It was too late to be friends with Madelaine, too late for a lot of things.
He needed strength and faith and hope. None of which he’d ever had. He looked at her, saw the momentary flash of pity in her eyes, and he lost it. “You’ll make me into a freak.”
“It may feel that way, Angel, but it’s not true. With a few adjustments, you can live a full, rich life. I have a patient down the hall who fathered two children and ran in the Seattle marathon after a heart transplant.”
“I don’t want to run a goddamned marathon.” Horrifyingly, his voice broke. “I want my life back.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. Living with a transplant isn’t easy. It requires a real commitment, some follow-through.”
She stared at him, and he knew what she was thinking—that he was a flaky asshole who’d never committed to anything or anyone in his life. “You have no right to judge me.”
“You’re right; unfortunately, I have to.” She leaned toward him, and for a second, just a second, he thought she was going to touch him. “A new heart is a gift, Angel. Please, please don’t get in line for one if you don’t really want to change your life. Out there, somewhere, is a father who is dying from heart failure—a man to whom a new heart would mean another chance to hold his daughter, or spend another night with the wife he’s loved for years.”
The truth of her words made him feel sick. He was a selfish prick who didn’t deserve this kind of chance. “Another party at the Viper’s Nest doesn’t cut it?”
“Not in my book.”
He gave her a weak smile. “We never did have the same book, did we, Mad?”
“No.”
He thought for a second about how different their backgrounds were—her, growing up in that mansion behind the iron gates; him, living in a shitty little trailer park on the wrong side of the tracks. No, they’d never had the same book at all. “So how is the great Alexander Hillyard these days?”
She stiffened. “He died a long time ago.”
He immediately felt like an idiot. “Oh. Sorry.”