“We’d be happy to have them. We run the program on the second Saturday of the month and all the staff is welcome,” Sarah said. A smile lit David’s face and she couldn’t help wondering who this someone was. A wife? She looked down at his left hand and saw that he wasn’t wearing a ring. Maybe a girlfriend? It wouldn’t be surprising that a man like David had someone special in his life.
As they left the room Sarah texted Hannah and asked her to call as soon as she had a minute. She didn’t want to scare the girl’s mother but she did need to get consent from Hannah and tell her that Lindsey’s condition was getting worse. Hannah needed to know.
“How long has she been waiting?” David asked as they headed back to the doctor’s workroom.
“Five years. She’s been in and out, though mostly in, of here for the last two and a half years,” Sarah said.
“Family issues?” David asked.
“Hannah’s young and a single parent. I know this had been hard on her and I worry about her. She’s been through a lot with Lindsey. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty when Lindsey was born. When Lindsey gets a heart transplant—” she refused to consider that there was the possibility that the little girl wouldn’t get a donor heart “—it’s going to be a lot more responsibility.”
“I hope for that child’s sake that her mother is up for the job, but an overabundance of toys and the lack of a parent present is a sign... Let’s just say I’ve had some experience as far as missing-in-action parents. It’s a lot harder to be the parent at the bedside than the one that sends the prettiest packages.” Again the hint of bitterness she heard in David’s voice surprised her.
“Hannah’s not like that. It will be a lot for her to handle, but she’ll do it,” Sarah asserted.
“About your ranch,” David started as they turned back toward the nursing station.
“David? David Wright? Is that you?” Melody, one of the older staff nurses said as she jumped up from her seat and came around the desk to the two of them. “It is you. How’s Davey doing? I’ve thought about him so much over the last few years.”
“Mel! I didn’t know if you still worked here or not. I meant to ask Dr. Benton, but I haven’t had a chance,” David said as he beamed down at the gray-haired nurse. “Davey’s great. I’ll have to bring him up to see you one day when I’m off.”
Sarah watched as the nurse turned around and announced to the other staff members that were looking curiously at the three of them, “David was here with his son, was it three years ago now?”
Sarah’s heart stuttered then sped up to a dangerous rate as she waited for David’s answer. Had she been wrong to dismiss that feeling of familiarity? Was this truly the man she’d seen over three years ago in the waiting room?
“Davey’s ‘new heart birthday’ was three years in January,” she heard David say.
That was all the confirmation she needed. It was him she remembered seeing.
The shock sent her spinning backward toward another time. A time when her perfect life had ended, only it hadn’t. Life hadn’t been that kind. Instead it had been heartbreaking and life shattering, made only bearable because of the man standing in front of her now.
Suddenly she was back in that waiting room, running from the terrible news the doctors had just given her and hiding from a family that would be as devastated as she was at the news that her little boy’s brain had lost the ability to function. How could she face them with this news? Then she had seen the dark-haired man hunched over in his seat appearing to bear a burden just as heavy as her own. Immediately she had felt a connection to him, a compassion that only someone who was traveling the same path as she could feel.
But was David really that man? The man she had seen that night in the waiting room, the one who had broken down when the organ transplant case manager had told him that they might have a heart for his son, the one that she had wondered about for the last three years, the one who may have been given back his son because of the gift of her own son’s heart?
It had to be more than just a coincidence that this man’s son had been given a heart in this hospital around the same time of her son’s accident. Around the same time that she had chosen to donate her own son’s organs. A decision she’d made because of that man in the waiting room.
It had been David’s eyes that had first sparked her memories of him, but now she could see that there was more. While he certainly looked much younger than the defeated man she had seen back then, the build and dark hair matched what she remembered of that night.
Sarah forced herself to stand there while the rest of the staff excitedly asked him questions concerning his son and his recovery. While the staff knew that she had lost her husband and son due to a car accident, Houston General was a big facility. She had been working on the adult surgical floor at the time of the accident and since her transfer to the pediatric cardiology service she had never discussed the donation of her own little boy’s organs with the staff here. It was too personal and still too painful.
And what did she do now? What was she supposed to say to a man who had helped make the hardest decision in her life? How was she supposed to work next to David and never mention that time in her life when just looking at him brought
