Home Again

“I’m not going to stop believing in a miracle,” she answered quietly, knowing it wasn’t the answer he wanted, knowing, too, that there was nothing else to say.

“Tell me about this miracle,” he said, “tell me about life with another man’s heart. What will it be like?”

He said the words easily, as if he were asking for a bedtime story, but she saw the truth in his eyes, the fear he was asking her to assuage. He did want a bedtime story, something to cling to in the darkness of his pain, a reason to keep believing.

She moved closer to the bed. “I had this patient once, his name was Robert, and he came to us as broken as you are. He waited four months for a donor, and when finally one was found, he almost wouldn’t go through with it. He probably wouldn’t have, except that his wife insisted.” She smiled softly. “Afterward, he moved back to his small Oregon town, and I didn’t hear from him for two years. Then, one day, he came by to see me—and he brought his newborn baby girl with him. They’d named her Madelaine Allenford Hartfort.”

It was a minute before Angel spoke, and when he did, his voice was ragged and hoarse. “How will it really be?”

The simple question hurt. He’d known that it was a fairy tale, that endings like that were for people who believed in them. “You’ll be on medication for the rest of your life. You’ll have to eat a heart-healthy diet and you’ll have to exercise. Millions of Californians live that way by choice.” She tried to smile, but found that she couldn’t. She leaned closer, allowed herself to stroke the damp, sweaty hair from his eyes. “But you’ll be alive, Angel. You can still act in movies, still throw temper tantrums, still be your larger-than-life self. Everything that matters in life will still be yours for the asking.”

“What about children?”

It took her a second to respond. “Did you want children, Angel?”

He gave her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Please don’t talk about me in the past tense. I’m particularly sensitive.” He allowed a silence to slip between them before he finally answered. “Yeah, I wanted kids … once. I used to wonder sometimes … used to see myself playin” ball on an autumn evening with a blond-haired little boy. Course, now …”

Madelaine couldn’t breathe. The silence stretched between them, lengthening. Madelaine finally said, “Don’t do that to yourself.”

He turned his head slightly, stared at a place just to the left of her head. “Next time.” His voice fell to a harsh whisper. “Next time don’t save me. I don’t want to …” He squeezed his eyes shut, but not before she saw the glistening of tears. “Not like this …”

And in that moment, so many things fell into place. She gazed down at him, remembering and forgetting everything in the space of a single breath. This man she once loved was hurting, and though he didn’t know it, wouldn’t admit it, he was reaching out to her just like she’d always secretly prayed he would. Some part of him was counting on the candy striper girl to care about him again.

He was the old Angel, the boy who’d taken her hand and showed her a whole new world, the boy who’d cried when he told her he loved her.

This man, with his secret dreams of a lost son and his quiet admission of defeat, this man maybe she could trust….

She lurched to her feet and turned away from the bed. Chewing on her thumbnail, she walked over to the window and stared outside, watching the silver rain fall.

She was afraid of her own emotions right now, afraid she was feeling instead of thinking and every time she’d done that in her life, it had cost her dearly.

“You know, Mad …” His voice drifted softly toward her. Almost against her will, she turned back to face him.

He lay there, looking w

eak and broken. “You haunted me,” he whispered, trying to give her a smile.

She saw the wrenching emotion in his eyes, the regret and the sorrow, and she realized that her own fear was nothing compared to his. He needed her now, needed her more than he’d ever needed that sixteen-year-old candy striper—and she needed to be strong. To face her fear of abandonment and do the right thing.

“You can’t die, Angel,” she said softly, so softly she wondered if he could even hear her. She swallowed thickly, feeling as if she were walking out on a narrow, shaky ledge, but there was no turning back. She couldn’t let Angel die without giving him the one gift that might make him believe in the fairy tale.

He gave her a shadow of that famous grin. “Watch me.”

She drew her hand back and gazed down at him. “If you died, your daughter would never forgive you.”

It had to be the drugs. He couldn’t have heard what he’d thought he heard.

Your daughter.

The words twisted deep. For a split second he felt a flash of pure, white-hot hope. “Sorry, Mad. I lost track of what we were talking about.”

“I said you had a daughter.”

“Is this a joke?” he whispered.

He thought he saw a sparkle of tears in her eyes, then they were gone. She shook her head slowly. “You think I’d be that cruel?”

“No. But…” He stopped, not knowing what to say or what to feel. “A daughter,” he said slowly, trying to make it sink in.