Home Again

Angel woke up screaming his brother’s name. He lay in the darkness, trying to control his ragged breathing. The heart ticked away in his chest, completely unaffected by the adrenaline pumping through his body. He felt as if Francis were close enough to touch.

He threw the covers back and stumbled into the kitchen. Wrenching the refrigerator open, he stood in the wedge of yellow-bright light, staring sightlessly at the jumble of jars that Madelaine and Lina had left for him. Without thinking, he reached for the pitcher of skim milk. As his fingers curled around the cold plastic, he snapped. He was about to drink milk, for God’s sake. What was next—humming show tunes?

He flung his head back and stared up at the wood-beam ceiling. “Get out of my head, Franco.” The words brought a wrenching sense of guilt. He slammed the refrigerator door and squeezed his eyes shut. “I’ve got to get on with my life. My life …”

But what was his life—and how did he find it?

He went into the living room and flopped into the Navajo-print chair. “What do I do, Franco? How do I change?”

He waited and waited, but no answer came to him. After a few minutes, he started to feel like an idiot. I’ve gone off the deep end, bro. I’m asking for tips from the recently dead.

His smile faded. It wasn’t funny.

Restless and edgy, he got out of the chair and went to the back door, flinging it open. Outside, dawn was just beginning to break across the water, throwing pink spears across the rippling silver sea. Wind shivered through the trees, and for a weird moment, it sounded like Francis’s laugh. “How do I change, Franco? How?”

You already have.

The words came to Angel from far away, threaded through the wind. At first he didn’t understand, didn’t remember his question. Then it fell into place.

He smiled. “Sure, Franco, go for the easy answer.”

He laughed uneasily and closed the door, going back inside. Now he was talking to ghosts. Could channeling be far behind?

Angel knew he’d changed, but it didn’t feel like anything that mattered much. Little changes—taste in music and food, a new need to be around people. It wasn’t exactly earth-shattering. He hadn’t done anything different, and he was a man who’d always judged himself by his actions, not his words or his feelings. Denying himself one drink and one cigarette wasn’t enough. He had to do something.

He’d been in this cabin for almost a week, and he hadn’t left once. Madelaine brought him food and left it on the porch, as if he were Quasimodo on a low-fat diet. There was a brand-new Mercedes in the driveway—the first time he’d ever owned a car with more than two seat belts and a metal roof—and a brand-new Harley-Davidson Sportster alongside it. He’d yet to drive either one.

He was hiding out here, protecting himself from what would happen when the world found out about his transplant. Now there was confusion about the diagnosis, but that wasn’t going to last.

The world was going to find out, he knew that. Each day the rags offered more money for the inside story. Soon someone would talk.

It should be you, Angel.

He could almost hear his brother’s voice. It was exactly the kind of thing Francis would have said.

Francis would tell Angel to come out of hiding and tell the truth about what he’d been through. Remind him that he could be a role model for someone else, some other poor schmuck who was lying in a lonely hospital bed, waiting for a heart.

He almost laughed out loud at the thought of him him!—being a role model to anyone. He was definitely on too many meds.

And yet he knew the truth when he heard it, knew what he should do.

Before he had time to think about it, he acted. He grabbed the phone and dialed information. He asked for the number for St. Joe’s Hospital and punched it in. A practiced, polished voice answered and put him through to Allenford’s voice mail. Angel left a message that was simple and to the point—please set up a press conference for ten o’clock Thursday morning.

When he’d done that, he felt better, but he knew it wasn’t all he had to do. There was something more….

He had no idea what.

Something about the heart.

For the first time, he thought about his donor’s family, and what they must have gone through. Instead of caring about who his donor was or how he’d died, Angel wondered about the man’s family (he could never think of his donor as a woman), the people who had chosen to give Angel a second chance at life.

All he’d cared about before was the donor’s name. He’d thrown fit after fit trying to get Madelaine to break her blessed confidentiality. He fantasized about the mysterious man, wondered where he came from and how he died and what he believed in. But was that really the important part? Did it really matter whose heart he had, or did it simply matter that he made the best of the gift he’d been given? The miracle.

They deserved something from

him.

A thank-you.