Home Again

Hardly the best role model for a confused sixteen-year-old girl.

There was no doubt that he would let her down. No doubt at all.

Depressed by his own inadequacy, he reached toward the bedside table and flicked on the radio Madelaine had given him. Heavy-metal music blared out at him, and he winced. Without thinking, he spun the dial until the rich melody of “Phantom of the Opera” spilled through the tiny speakers.

He felt a shiver of peace move through him. The anger and fear that had tightened his stomach since yesterday began to go away. He lay back in the pillows, letting the music fill the room and calm his ragged heart.

Be her friend, Angel.

It was his brother’s voice, threaded through the music.

Angel sat up wearily, wedging his elbows beneath him. Be her friend.

It was exactly what Francis would have said if he were still alive. Francis always knew the right thing to do in life, and he’d always done it. Quietly, without hoopla or soul-searching or questions.

Could Angel be like that? Could he even try?

In the old days—before the surgery—the answer would have come with blinding speed, crushing any inkling to be good. He would have known that he couldn’t live up to a commitment like this. He would have laughed at the very idea of trying.

But now, lying here, listening to this music, he wondered. Maybe this heart of his had come from someone good. Maybe it had given him a chance his old heart wouldn’t have allowed.

He ought to laugh at the absurdity of the idea. He knew that the heart was just an organ, not the storehouse of the soul or any of that nonsense. And yet, no matter how often he told himself that, he couldn’t quite believe it. Since the surgery, he’d begun to feel different. He had different tastes in music, in food. One minute he’d be his angry self, and then something would happen—he’d hear a sad song or look out at the rain—and he’d know that there was something new inside him. A tiny thread of goodness that lay curled within the bad. It scared him, that feeling that he wasn’t alone in his body anymore, but it also mesmerized him. With every beat of the stranger’s heart, he felt a tiny surge of possibility, of goddamn near magic.

He wanted all of his pain and suffering to mean something. Madelaine and Chris and Hilda and Tom Grant had all told him that he’d been given a second chance at life. Maybe he could finally make a difference.

He wanted it suddenly, wanted it as much as he’d ever wanted anything.

It felt good to want something, to have a goal. Frankly, he hadn’t had too many of those in his life. He’d never wanted much beyond the next movie role or the next woman or the next drink.

He felt, amazingly, as if he were growing up at last.

He was so deep in thought, it took him a second to realize that someone was knocking at his door. “Come in,” he said.

Madelaine walked through the door. For a split second he almost didn’t recognize her. She was wearing baggy Levi’s and an oversized green cardigan that had seen better days. Her hair was limp around her face, and no makeup relieved the pallor of her cheeks.

“Heya, Angel,” she said quietly, coming up beside the bed.

He looked up at her and felt a tightening in his chest. She looked sad and lost, not her usual self at all. In the old days he might not have noticed the ravages of grief, but his new heart knew things his old heart hadn’t.

He gave her a big, fake smile. “Hey, Doc. How ya doin’?”

She pulled the chart from the foot of the bed and studied it quickly, then put it away. “I’m sure Sarandon told you that the biopsy showed no rejection at all. You’re doing well.”

“That’s one of us.”

A frown darted across her pale face. “What do you mean?”

“Have a seat.”

She pulled up a chair and sat down beside the bed. When she noticed how he was staring at her, she pushed a hand through her hair. “It’s my day off.”

He wanted to cut to the chase and ask how she was feeling, but it made him feel awkward and uncertain, that kind of intimate honesty. So instead he cocked a head toward the television that hung on the wall. “I just saw my picture on some tabloid show. Seems I’ve got AIDS. You should have told me.”

A quick smile quirked one side of her mouth. “I didn’t want to depress you.”

“What else are they saying, my beloved jackals of the media?”

“One of the supermarket tabloids reported a few days ago that you’d had a heart transplant—baboon, I believe, or maybe it was an alien. Another show is certain that a stripper in Boca Raton gave you AIDS.” She looked at him. “It appears you had quite a sex life.”