“I hope I’m not interrupting, but we’ve got an ETA from Dr. Dreaden and Anesthesia is about to take Lindsey back to the OR,” Dr. Benton said.
David looked from the doctor to Sarah.
“I’ll be right there,” he said, then waited till the doctor had closed the door.
“I’ll take care of him, David. Go help with the surgery. You know you want to. We’ll both be waiting for you when you get back,” Sarah said before taking a seat next to his son’s bed.
He couldn’t understand what was going on. He thought he had made it clear to Sarah that he couldn’t allow himself to make another mistake like he had the night before, but here she was offering to help him once more.
“We’ll talk when I get back,” she said.
Moving to where Davey slept, David ran his hand through the boy’s curls.
He knew he needed to go change into his hospital scrubs, but he couldn’t seem to pull himself away from his son. He’d been so scared when Davey had been lost. He had almost lost the boy twice before he had received a transplant and the helplessness he had felt then had been paralyzing. The possibility that he could have to face that again was very real and he had no control over that, but to lose his son because he hadn’t been there when his son had needed him was unforgiveable and he wouldn’t let that happen again.
“If he wakes up, tell him I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said, then left the room.
Sarah sank into the chair David had occupied earlier. This had sounded much easier while she had been talking to Jack, but coming here and putting her heart back on the line again while she waited for David, while she acted like everything was fine, was the scariest thing she had ever done.
“Sarah,” Davey called from the bed. “Where’s my daddy?”
Sarah leaned over the bed and smiled down at Davey. David wasn’t the only one who had been scared the night the little boy had wandered off and gotten lost. “He had to go help a sick little girl. But he told me to tell you that he would be back as soon as he could. Until then you’re stuck with me.”
“That’s okay. Is my daddy helping the little girl get a new heart like the doctor helped me?” he asked as he sat up in bed. “He says it’s very important that you get exactly the right heart.”
“It is important and that’s exactly what he’s doing. Now what do you feel like eating this morning? I have it on good authority that the pancakes are the best thing on the menu,” she said as she hit the nurse call button so that she could let the nurse know that Davey was awake.
“Pancakes are my favorite,” he said.
“They’re my favorite too,” she said. “Now the two of us are going to have a long talk about taking horses without permission.”
“Am I in big trouble?” he asked. She wanted to tell him no. She had been so happy when she found him that she would have forgiven him for anything, but things could have turned out differently. Davey had to learn that wandering off at any time without letting an adult know where he was going was not acceptable.
“It’s not that you’re in trouble, it’s that you put yourself in danger and you scared me and your daddy.”
By the time his pancakes had arrived, they had gone over all the rules of not taking off without telling an adult and not taking an animal that he didn’t have permission to take. And he had told her all about his adventure with Humphrey when he’d gone out to find his daddy. An adventure that had caused him to tire.
“And then I saw this big house, but there wasn’t anybody there,” Davey said, then yawned. “I don’t know where all the people were. Do you?”
“I’m afraid there hasn’t been anyone living in that house for a long time,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked. Sarah watched as his eyes began to close.
“Let’s leave that story for another day,” she said, and wondered if after the way she and David had left things if there would be another day?
The door opened and she recognized one of the case managers with the organ procurement program as she slipped into the room.
“I don’t want to disturb you, but the unit coordinator on the floor told me I could find you here,” she said as she looked over at Davey with more than a little curiosity.
“Did you hear that they received a heart for Lindsey?” Sarah asked her.
“I did and I checked on her mother. She’s holding up,” the woman said.
“The secretary at the office heard I was coming by and asked me to drop this off,” she said as she held out a small envelope.
Sarah stared at the envelope. Except for her discussion with Jack, she hadn’t thought about the notes she had mailed out to Cody’s organ recipients in days.
She took the envelope and thanked the woman then stared at it after the door shut. She didn’t recognize the writing on the outside, but that didn’t mean anything. She’d decided to mail notes to all the recipients so that didn’t mean that this one came from Cody’s heart recipient. It could have come from any of the other recipients. There was only one way to find out.
David walked through the waiting room door with Dr. Benton at his side, exhausted but happy. It had been a difficult operation but successful and he was glad that he had been there.
Looking around the waiting room at the families grouped together throughout the room, it took only a minute to pick out Lindsey’s mom sitting by herself. He knew that Sarah would usually have made time to sit with her if she hadn’t offered to sit with
