Home Again

He woke with a start, and found Madelaine standing beside his bed. He stared up at her, his breath coming in great, wheezing pants. “H-Hi, Mad.”

She pulled up a chair. “You okay?”

“No,” he answered without thinking, throwing his vulnerability on the blankets between them. He almost yanked it back and said Yes, hell yes, then he looked into her gray-green eyes and realized that he was tired of lying, tired of covering up the truth. Yesterday he’d felt as if he’d seen a glimpse of the promised land, but today he felt lost again. Lonely and forgotten and sick. The dreams about Francis were killing him.

“No,” he said again, quieter this time. “I’m not all right I keep dreaming of Francis. It’s not normal. It’s like… like he’s inside me. I feel him all the time, I hear him talking to me. Sometimes I even think like he used to.”

“You couldn’t have anyone better inside you, Angel.”

“I know.” He sighed. “Yesterday, in my dream, he said ‘live for me.’” He swallowed hard. “How could I do that—live for a man like him? He was so much better than I’ll ever be.”

She scooted closer to the bed. “You’ve been given the second chance he never got, Angel. Only you can decide what to do with it.”

“Oh, great, now pile a little guilt on me.”

“Not guilt. Hope.”

He grabbed the three-ring binder beside the bed. “How much hope can I have when this is my life?”

“Quit being so melodramatic. That notebook isn’t your life—it’s just your routine. The schedule of your new life. The medications you take—daily, I might add, if you want to see each new sunrise—and the foods you should eat. The exercises you’ll have to begin. The dates of each checkup and test for the next six months. A plain old schedule. Ordinary people follow them all the time.”

“Oh, I can’t wait.”

“It’s too bad you’re in such a foul mood today, because I have a surprise for you. Someone I want you to meet.”

“If you put me in a room with that damn shrink again, I’m going to blow your recovery stats through the roof.”

“No shrinks, no physical therapists, no nurses. Just a single sixteen-year-old girl.”

Angel froze. He heard his heartbeat thudding in his ears, and the sound made him panic. Then came Francis’s words, Be her friend.

He wanted to. Christ, he wanted to, but he was afraid. He was such a screw-up, and this was important. Not the sort of thing you could go into half-cocked and ready to run at the first sign of trouble. “I can’t do it, Mad. I don’t have it in me to be her father.”

She started to say something, then, instead, she did the strangest thing. She reached out and placed her hand on his chest. He felt the warmth of her touch through the flimsy cotton of his hospital gown, through the layers of gauze that covered his scar. “Oh, Angel,” she said, leaning close, so close he could see the silvery streaks in her green eyes, so close he could smell the subtle fragrance of her hair spray. “You have it in you, believe me.”

He was mesmerized by her eyes. He thought, crazily, that he’d seen her look at him like this before, but that would have been years ago. He couldn’t possibly remember…

“I’ll screw up,” he said, forcibly breaking the spell.

“Then I’ll beat the shit out of you.”

He knew she was serious this time, and he understood suddenly the risk she was taking here. She loved Lina, and she was scared that Angel would screw up and hurt their daughter. He knew, too, that if he did, there would never be a redemption for him. Never be a second chance.

“I don’t want her to know about the transplant—she’ll treat me like a freak.”

“No, she won’t. But it’s your decision when—and if—to tell her about the surgery.”

“How do I act? What do I do?”

“She loved Francis like a father, and she’s grieving over his death. She needs someone to listen to her, to care about what she thinks and feels. That’s a place to start. Be her friend.”

He gave her a nervous smile. “That’s what Franco … would have said.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She gazed down at him expectantly, her eyes bright.

Be her friend.

Chapter Twenty-one