Home Again

Madelaine sighed, feeling old. “They’ve got a few more tests to run, and I’ve got to call Chris.”

Madelaine went back into Francis’s room and picked up the phone, dialing Chris’s home number.

He picked up on the first ring. “Allenford here.”

“Hi, Chris, it’s Madelaine.”

There was a moment’s pause. “Madelaine?”

“I’m down at Claremont Hospital in Portland.”

“Oh, Jesus, Madelaine … what happened?”

Her voice trembled. “It’s Francis.” She tried to say more, go on, but she couldn’t.

“The donor is your priest? Angel’s brother?”

“Yes,” she whispered, trying desperately to keep her focus. “Third EEG was flat. No spontaneous activity off the ventilator, no response to pain tests. He’s… he’s gone. I’m the executor of his estate, Chris. I want to authorize the… donation.”

“Okay, Madelaine,” he said quietly. “I’ll take it from here. Maybe you should come home, get some sleep.”

“No,” she said more sharply than she intended. “I’m not leaving him. I don’t want anyone else near him.” She realized how stupid and childish she sounded—she knew the teams that would descend on this hospital within the hour. Surgeons from all over the country, taking bits and pieces from Francis’s body to save other lives. She tried to cling to that grain of hope—Francis’s beautiful blue eyes still seeing the world, his kidneys saving a child’s life, his bright loving heart still beating….

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember that this was a miracle. And yet all she felt was dead and hollow and hurting. “I’ve got his durable power of attorney, Chris. I’ll sign a waiver to donate Francis’s eyes, heart, kidney, pancreas, everything. It’s what he’d want.”

“NOPA and UNOS faxed me the stats—kidney and liver functions are good, dopamine level is acceptable, hydration okay. I knew he was a perfect match for Angel.” His voice fell to a whisper. “Now I know why.”

“Yes.” It was all she could say.

“Madelaine.” He said her name softly, and with an unusual intimacy. “He’s going to save his brother’s life.”

She choked back a tiny sob. “I know.”

“Will Angel accept—”

“I don’t want Angel to know. What if …” She hesitated. “What if he thinks I did the wrong thing? What if—”

“The policy is confidentiality, Madelaine. I’ll let you make the call. You can tell Angel or not—it’s up to you.”

The words were like tiny nicks from a razor blade, and she flinched at each one. “Thanks.”

“Nusbaum knows how we want the body—” At her gasp, he cut himself off immediately. “He knows how we want Mr. DeMarco taken care of?”

“Francis,” she corrected him softly. Then, “I’ll make sure they do it right, Chris. How long until you can be down here?”

“I’m on my way. I’ll contact UNOS and they can alert the rest of the teams across the country.”

He didn’t say good-bye, and neither did she. They both knew there were no words for a time like this, nothing but cold practicality and pain that would never go away.

Angel felt like he was in the middle of Safeway—the produce aisle with its glaring lights and gleaming silver metal bins and bland white ceiling. Here, in OR 9, the walls were colorless. Stainless steel tables were draped in surgical green fabric, their flat surfaces covered with precisely placed metal instruments. A television set hung from the ceiling, its screen a gaping black square. Computers and machines were everywhere, ticking, buzzing, whooshing. There were people all around him, none of whom he could see, of course, because they were masked and draped and gloved.

Not that any of them seemed to care about him—he was just the patient. Plain old Mark Jones. They didn’t care that he was here, in this sterile room, stretched out on a steel table, naked, his body invaded by needles and tubes, his blood infected with medications. In the hour he’d lain here, no one had even spoken to him. Instead, they talked around him, checking their gauges, monitoring his vital signs, looking at the clock. Every few minutes some new masked person would rush in with flight information, and some nurse would recheck the surgical instruments on the table beside him. All the while the big clock on the wall kept ticking.

He was shaved—again—from chin to foot and had been bathed in a stinging red-brown solution that made him look as if he’d been dipped in caramel sauce. More blue-green fabric draped his naked body.

This is it. This is when they cut your heart out.

He squeezed his eyes shut at the thought, fighting panic. He tried not to think about the surgeon’s first cut, or his second, or the instruments that would crack his chest open, or the gloved hands that would take a few snip-snip-snips with the scissors and then reach deep, deep inside his chest.