Home Again

Allenford squeezed Angel’s shoulder and headed for the door. Sarandon followed him, the two physicians pushing through the swinging doors like Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp striding into a saloon.

The minute the doctors came into the reporters’ view, the lights started flashing, cameras clicked.

Allenford went to the podium, tapped his microphone to test it, and began to read his prepared statement.

Behind the doors, Angel heard bits and pieces of Allenford’s statement.

“… Angelo DeMarco was admitted to St Joseph’s Hospital, following his third and most severe heart attack…. Only a heart transplant could save his life…. Mr. DeMarco was placed on the UNOS—United Network for Organ Sharing—list as a potential recipient.”

Someone asked a question that Angel couldn’t quite hear.

“No,” Allenford answered, his voice more strident than usual. “Mr. DeMarco did not receive special privileges because of his fame or financial status. He was put at the top of the transplant list because he was critically ill.” Allenford folded up his prepared speech and shoved it in the pocket of his white lab coat. “He waited for a heart like anyone else. Longer than some, not as long as others. I performed the surgery, which went very well. Mr. DeMarco remained in the hospital for an undisclosed amount of time, and then was discharged. He is now beginning this new phase of his life. Thank you.”

Questions came from the crowd like bullets. Reporters jumped up, hands waving in the air, microphones thrust forward. Angel couldn’t hear the questions—they were just a droning buzz of static and confusion but he knew they didn’t matter. Allenford could say whatever he wanted; the feeding frenzy wouldn’t end until Angel stepped forward.

Madelaine squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to go out there, you know.”

“It’s a little intimidating,” he admitted. “I can hear the Jaws theme song playing in my head. Either Francis is singing or I’m in danger.”

She laughed. “You’re a sick man, Angel DeMarco.”

Beyond the cloudy glass, he saw Allenford step to the left of the podium—their signal for Angel to appear if he wanted to.

He turned to Madelaine. “Come with me.”

“Of course.”

He felt a sudden urge to kiss her. Instead, he smiled. Just knowing that she would be beside him, urging him on, believing in him, gave him the power to do anything. It surprised him—how good it felt to have someone to lean on. In all the times he’d been afraid in his life, he’d been alone. He wondered now if he’d been afraid because he was alone. “You’d better go first. If they see us together, there will be hell to pay. Tomorrow the tabloids will be digging through your trash looking for my underwear. Some stripper in Deadwood will describe it.”

He waited for her to laugh, but she didn’t. She just stood there, staring at him. “You’ll do great.” She gave his hand a last squeeze, then left the kitchen in front of him. She slipped around the podium and took a seat in the back of the room.

This is it. He took a deep breath and prepared himself, exactly as he would have done for a role. With an ease born of practice, he slipped into the public persona of Angel DeMarco.

Smiling, he strolled out of the kitchen. He knew he looked like he didn’t have a care in the world. He walked up to the podium and stopped.

“It’s him!”

Cameras flashed like lightning through the crowd, popping and hissing. Questions erupted all at once, so many he couldn’t draw a single one from the tangle.

Someone started to clap, then before he knew it, the questions had stopped and they were all clapping.

For the first time in two months, he was Angel DeMarco again—not anonymous Mark Jones, not the heart transplant in 264-W, not a screw-up younger brother, not an insta-father. He was Angel DeMarco, bad-boy actor of Hollywood, and he loved it.

The old feelings came back, filling him. The sound and fury of the applause pumped air into his ego until he thought he would burst from it. How had he forgotten this rush, this mesmerizing moment when he felt loved and adored by the world?

Grinning, he raised a hand. “Now, now, I didn’t perform the surgery, I just lived through it.”

Laughter rippled through the room. The applause died slowly away, and when it was gone, Angel noticed the sudden silence, the way they were watching him with unveiled curiosity.

It wasn’t how they used to look at him. The long red scar that bisected his chest started to itch.

The air seeped from his ego, leaving him feeling hollow and ordinary. He wondered suddenly if he could survive this way, being just an average Joe.

He’d never thought so. In the old days he used to look at men with wives and families and nine-to-five jobs and laugh at them.

He’d always thought life was a party—either you were invited or you weren’t. And if you weren’t, you were part of the great cleanup crew that never had any fun.

But he was beginning to understand that fun was only part of what life could be. He thought of last night, the time he’d spent with Lina on the porch, the way she’d hugged him. And of Madelaine at Francis’s grave, the tender words and smiles she’d given him to help him through the staggering grief. He’d felt more emotion in those few minutes with the two of them than he’d felt in the whole thirty-four years that came before.