“I need to tell you something. Something that I should have told you a long time ago,” she said, then cleared her throat. “It’s about the first time we met, well that’s where it starts, I guess.”
“At the hospital?” David asked, his eyes searching hers.
“Yes, but no,” she said, and then held her hand up a moment before he could speak. “Well, actually we didn’t meet exactly. I’m doing this all wrong. Let me start again.”
“Okay,” he said. She watched as his hand started toward his neck, then following her eyes he lowered it back down to the bench.
“That day in the hospital when Dr. Benton introduced you wasn’t the first time I had seen you.” She forced her eyes away from his troubled ones. She was doing such a bad job of this.
“No?” he asked. “Where could you have seen me? At another conference?”
“No, it was at the hospital, just not that day. It was earlier. Over three years earlier. The night before Davey’s transplant.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t really remember a lot of the people that night. Were you part of the team then? Dr. Benton told me you’d only been working with the cardiac group for a couple years,” he said. She could see a trust in his eyes now that she was going to shatter.
“That’s right. It wasn’t till after I lost my family, after that night I saw you that I decided I wanted to change my focus to the transplant team.”
“I don’t understand,” he said as he moved closer to her. She felt the heat of his body before he took her hand in his. The night was turning cool and she turned into him, finding comfort in his touch as he placed his other arm around her. Even through her nervousness she could feel that connection to him that had begun to form. He’d known she needed his touch even though he hadn’t understood why.
She took a deep breath, and then let it out. A cleansing breath they had taught her in birthing classes and that was exactly what she needed. She needed to be cleansed from this secret she had been carrying around with her since he had come back into her life. There was something changing between the two of them, something that scared her as much as it fascinated her, but this had to be dealt with first. Suddenly she knew where to start the story that had changed all her life and maybe David’s too.
“I was at work on the surgical hall of the hospital when I got the call from the emergency room that my husband had been in a car accident and they needed me to come as soon as possible. Of course I didn’t believe them at first. No one wants to believe that something like that can happen to them. They’d taken Kolton to another hospital, a hospital closer to the accident, so I had a friend drive me. I knew it was bad. I’d given bad news to family members enough myself that I knew, but I didn’t think he’d be gone. Not like that. He was so young and alive. And there he was lying so still on the stretcher.” She wiped a tear that had streaked down her face. She’d never shared the whole story of that day with anyone, not even Jack.
“I didn’t think about Cody, at least not at first. Kolton was to drop him off at day care that morning on his way to work. I’d assumed the accident had taken place afterward. And then a police officer came into the room and told me that my son had been taken to the children’s hospital. The one I’d just left. I don’t remember much after that. I think it was the police officer who drove me back, I’m not sure.
“The next thing I remember was seeing Cody lying in the hospital crib. He was so quiet, so still. Just like Kolton. The doctors and nurses were great, but there wasn’t a lot they could do. The car had been T-boned by someone who had tried to make the yellow light. I guess Kolton didn’t see them when the light turned green. It was a useless accident that shouldn’t have happened.” She stopped and paused for a second trying to gather her thoughts. “And that’s how I ended up in the hospital waiting room the night that I saw you there.”
“You’re the woman who almost passed out,” he said, his voice a little shaky. Was it possible he had figured out where her story was going?
“Yes. I’m not surprised you didn’t recognize me. I’d been at the hospital for three days by then and they’d just told me that Cody was brain-dead.” Oh, God, it hurt to say those words. Even after all this time it physically hurt. Her stomach churned with the pain that griped her and she fought against the nausea.
“Sarah, stop. You don’t need to put yourself through this,” David said as he pulled her even closer till her back rested against his chest and both of his arms.
“No, I want to tell you. I need to tell you so that you’ll know,” she said as she willed her stomach to relax so she could continue.
“Like I said, I had just been told that Cody...was gone. I knew of course, but I didn’t have to face the reality of it until the doctors had run all the tests. I’d held out for a miracle, but I didn’t get one.”
“Of course I knew the people from Organ Procurement would be notified by the staff and then they’d want to talk to me about donation and even if I didn’t want to donate, the doctors were going to want to talk about the next step. I already knew the next step. They were going