“Once Lisa realized what life with Davey was going to be like, she took off,” David said. Anger dripped from every word, but if what he said was true, she couldn’t blame him for being angry. How could any woman leave their child when they were the most vulnerable? She could understand why David didn’t like to drag out memories of his wife. It had to be painful for him. And here she had been the one to cause him to relive those memories while she hadn’t had the courage to share her own with him.
“I’m sorry, I know that couldn’t have been easy for you. I know it might seem strange that I’m asking all these questions, it’s just that I need to tell you...”
Suddenly Jack and Davey joined them at the fence, chattering animatedly. For a few minutes Sarah had forgotten that the two of them weren’t alone. Now a bittersweet feeling filled her as she saw the light in her father-in-law’s eyes. A light that had been missing for so long now. She looked down at the little boy at Jack’s side. A miniature copy of David.
Jumping down from the fence she and David followed as Davey and Jack headed back to the stables, where Davey insisted on saying goodbye to all the horses individually.
And later as she watched David load a reluctant Davey into his car seat, she found herself pitying the little boy’s mother who was missing so much by not being there with her son. She couldn’t help but wonder about the woman who had walked away from a man like David. He had everything to offer a woman but somehow it seemed that hadn’t been enough for his ex-wife.
And that was the problem when you became too involved in someone’s life. Her obsession with knowing if Davey had her son’s heart had her becoming more and more involved with David. She needed to mind her own business, but that was hard to do when she felt that her and David’s lives had somehow been tied together that night three years ago. Still, she had no business being concerned about David’s private life. It wasn’t like she was interested in the man, at least not that way. She hadn’t thought about another man since she lost her husband. She had accepted that that part of her life was over when she had buried her husband and son. There was no reason for her to waste her time thinking of the good-looking doctor. His being married or divorced wasn’t important. The only thing she was interested in was learning more about Davey and finding out if he had been the recipient of her son’s heart.
A tiny voice inside her head called her a liar, but she refused to listen. She and David had a good relationship as co-workers, and they were becoming friends and that was all the two of them could ever be. How that friendship would fare when he learned that she had been keeping her suspicions concerning his son’s heart to herself she didn’t know, but she would have to face it soon. She couldn’t keep living this way, dodging every opportunity to come clean with David.
She made herself a promise that she would come clean with him the next time they were alone. She would open up to David about everything and somehow the two of them would work through this together.
Sarah walked into the unit early Monday morning to find the nurses rushing around the room of one of the toddlers that she had been involved with assessing for the transplant waiting list several weeks earlier. The eighteen-month-old had been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy are there had been little hope that there would be an available match in time to save him as he had been deteriorating at a faster pace than they had expected. And unfortunately, the little boy had antibodies that they knew would make it even harder to find a donor match. The call that there had been a match found had come unexpectedly and both the staff and the parents were thrilled.
Sarah took a minute to say hi to Tyler’s parents then started her examination of the little boy.
“Hey,” she heard from behind her. Turning she saw that David had arrived. Dressed in scrubs and with his hair bushed out wildly around his head, he looked as excited as a kid on Christmas morning.
“Hey,” she said, relieved that David seemed to be as comfortable with her as he had been before she had started prying into his business.
She introduced David to Tyler’s parents as they waited for the operating team to arrive to take the toddler to the operating room.
“How far out is the team?” she asked as she watched Tyler’s parents say goodbye. Their fear for their son was almost palpable in the room and she and David stepped out of the room to give the family some privacy.
“They called a few minutes ago and they were loading the plane then. It’s an hour flight. They’re as surprised as the rest of us that they found a match for Tyler this soon,” David said.
She saw David look back into the room. Was he remembering how he had felt the day he had turned his own son over to the operating team as she was remembering the day they had taken her son away to the operating room? She had learned to accept the loss of her son and over the years she had seen many young patients who had survived because of the gift of life another grieving mother and father had helped give, but there were times that the
