Let Him Live

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Alana smiled. “Anytime.”

  Two days later, Meg could visit with Donovan. Even after he was brought down from ICU, he was still incoherent. Meg spent time with Mrs. Jacoby during one of her visits to the hospital. They met in one of the pediatric playrooms, where Brett, well out of earshot, was building a spaceship with giant snap-together blocks.

  “The night the hospital called me, I almost went delirious with joy,” Donovan’s mother told Meg, sighing. “I thought it was finally happening for him. I bundled up Brett and took a cab to the hospital. The two of us waited and waited. Brett fell asleep—thank heaven—but I couldn’t think about anything except Donovan’s surgery.”

  “And then there was no surgery,” Meg commented. “You must have really felt cheated when you found out.”

  “I felt both disappointed and relieved at the same time.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Disappointed for the obvious reasons. Relieved because the unknowns are so scary for me. I mean, once he has the transplant, he has a long road of recovery ahead. Also, once it’s done, there’s no turning back. If his new liver rejects, or if something goes wrong, Donovan will certainly die. I know I shouldn’t borrow trouble, but that fear always lurks in the back of my mind.”

  Meg swallowed her own taste of fear. “I guess you’re right. Even though he’s sick, even though his own liver’s failing, at least he’s alive.”

  Mrs. Jacoby patted Meg’s hand. “I shouldn’t dump my doubts and fears on you. Forgive me. There are people here at the hospital—psychologists—I should be talking to.”

  “I don’t mind,” Meg said quickly.

  “No, it’s not fair to you. My only excuse is that you’re so genuinely concerned about my son.”

  “I am, Mrs. Jacoby. I care about him so much.” Meg felt her cheeks redden after her impassioned words. Donovan’s mother must think she sounded like a moonstruck child.

  Mrs. Jacoby smiled with understanding. “He had a girlfriend back home. I wish she’d been half as caring and sensitive as you. I’m afraid she really hurt him.”

  “It was her loss,” Meg said, realizing she wasn’t Donovan’s girlfriend in the sense Mrs. Jacoby meant. Still, she truly cared about him.

  “I agree. Have you heard anything more about building that special house where parents can stay and be near their kids while they’re being treated here at Memorial?” Donovan’s mother changed the subject. “Believe me, I sure wished for one the other night. I think that cab ride back to the apartment after I learned there would be no transplant was the longest ride I’ve ever taken. All I wanted to do was tuck Brett in and curl up and go to sleep myself, but I couldn’t. We had to traipse all the way back across town first.”

  Meg shook her head. “Sorry … I haven’t heard anything yet.”

  “Oh, well … It is a big undertaking.” She made a face. “Poor choice of words.”

  Undertaking. Meg caught the meaning. Undertaker. She shivered, even though the playroom was sunny and warm.

  The next day, when Meg went to Donovan’s room, he was sitting up in bed, flipping through TV channels. Seeing him upright and alert caused a rush of relief. “You must be better,” she said, coming inside. “You’re scanning the TV wasteland.”

  He flipped off the screen and held out his hand to her. “I’m better,” he said. “Whatever that means.”

  She took his hand, noticing that his color looked strange—somewhere between yellow and pasty white. But his voice sounded strong and lucid once more. “It means that you’ll be hanging around until another potential liver donor comes along,” she said.

  “I was pretty out of it, wasn’t I?”

  “Do you remember anything?”

  “I remember being awakened in the middle of the night by some nurse promising me a wild and crazy time.”

  Meg giggled. “She didn’t lie, did she?”

  “They put me on a gurney and wheeled me down to the operating room. They did a bunch of tests and forced a Krom’s cocktail down me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The most foul-tasting stuff ever invented by medical science. It’s a decontaminant for your intestinal area, you know—to kill off all the nasty germs lurking inside the body. That way, once you have the transplant, your body has a better chance of accepting the new organ.”

  “Too bad it was for nothing,” Meg said.

  “Yeah … too bad. But, then, I never did have much good luck.”

  She braced herself against a wave of pity for him. She’d learned that patients don’t want pity, they want understanding. “You’ve had some good luck. You met me,” she quipped.

  A smile softened Donovan’s face, and in spite of his gauntness, she felt her pulse quicken. “Okay, so I’ll give you that one.”

  “What else did they do to you?”

  “They gave me a preop shot that sent me off to never-never land, so I was kind of spaced out. I remember my mom coming in to see me. Then I don’t remember anything else for the next twenty-four hours. I just woke up in ICU. It took me a while to figure out that something had gone wrong with the transplant, because I knew I’d have big staples in my side from the operation and I didn’t.” He shook his head, as if clearing out the memory.

  His grip had tightened on her hand. She wanted to say so many things to him, but recalled Alana’s advice to simply listen. “I was disappointed in a major way,” he said. “And mad. I was trapped in medical purgatory, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. There’d been no operation, and what was worse, I have to go through the whole thing all over again when they do find me a liver.”

  He glanced up at her, and his intense inner struggle with self-pity was written on his face. “Anyway, here I am. Still waiting.”

  “All of us felt bad for you,” Meg said softly. “I talked to your mother, and now more than ever, I think we need that family guest house.”

  “Maybe so. But now more than ever, I think she needs a home of her own. How’s your search coming along? Any prospects yet?”

  Crossing her fingers and hoping he didn’t see how she was hedging, she mumbled, “Not yet.” In truth, she hadn’t looked at all. So many things were going on that she’d not done a thing about her promise to him.

  “I don’t want this Wish Foundation money to go to waste,” Donovan insisted. “If anything, this check from JWC is what’s keeping me from going nuts.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Because I know it’s there. Because I know it can buy my mom and Brett a future. It was all I thought about when my head started to clear in ICU. I kept telling myself to hang on so that I could get well enough to get out of this place and take my mother to the house I’m going to buy for her.”

  Meg swallowed guiltily. She was holding up his dream by not following through with her promise to find a realtor and go house hunting. “Well, you keep getting stronger, all right? I swear I’m going to find some houses for you to pick from.”

  “Just think, I don’t have to recuperate from transplant surgery before I buy, do I? All I have to do is survive until the next time.” He looked directly into Meg’s eyes. “If there is a next time.”

  That evening, as Meg wearily let herself into her house, her mother hurried up to hug her. “I’ve been waiting for you to get home. Guess what, honey? The Junior League board has approved your project. We’re going to work on raising money to build a home away from home for patients’ families. Isn’t that exciting?”

  Thirteen

  MEG SET DOWN her purse and car keys on the marble-topped table in the spacious foyer. “The project’s been approved? That’s great, Mom. We need the house so much.” Meg kept thinking about Mrs. Jacoby and all the parents like her.

  “I knew you’d be pleased. It was your brainchild.” Her mother hooked her arm through Meg’s. “We’ll have a meeting Friday morning with an architect. He’s a relative of Betty Hotchkiss’s and is willing to donate his services. That’s the key, yo
u know—to get as much donated as possible. I think it would be nice if you could attend the meeting.”

  “I’ll be working at the hospital.”

  “You’re only a volunteer. You may have to reexamine your priorities now.”

  Meg didn’t want to reexamine her priorities. She wanted to be around the hospital. Around Donovan. “People are counting on me up in pediatrics.”

  “This idea was yours, and your presentation to the Junior League board was so persuasive. I naturally assumed you’d want to be a big part of it. I’m proud of you, Meg. This is such a good idea, but it will require a lot of work. We can do it if we all pull together.”

  Meg had assumed that once the Junior League took it over, she wouldn’t be involved. She remembered the ideas she and Alana had joked about regarding fund-raising. “I had thought about a fund-raising letter,” she said tentatively.

  “A letter! We’ll do many of them. You know, a project of this scope needs the support of the entire community. We have to get everyone involved, from schoolchildren to high-level politicians. However, if you have an idea for such a letter, go ahead and work it up.”

  Meg felt a growing respect for her mother. All her life, Meg hadn’t taken her mother’s charity work seriously. Perhaps it was because she was always going off to some luncheon or party, hardly work to Meg’s way of thinking, but now Meg saw how significant all her mother’s contacts were. Without the help of important Washington people, the project would never materialize.

  “You’re needed at the planning stages also, Meg. Your ideas are important,” her mother said.

  My ideas? Meg thought. All she had been interested in was a place near the hospital where Mrs. Jacoby could stay close to Donovan.

  Her mother continued, “We’ll be having a brainstorming session Sunday afternoon. I’ve invited some of the hospital personnel, several community and business leaders, and some politicians. I’m certain we’ll select a special board of directors from this group, since they’ll be people with a vested interest in our project. Each one of them has a special link to Memorial—a few have lost someone they loved.”

  Meg thought of Cindy’s parents. Too bad they lived so far away. “Will big foundations support us?” Meg was thinking about Donovan’s Wish money and the “invisible” One Last Wish Foundation. Perhaps it could be flushed out into the open and asked for a major donation. Perhaps she could learn the identity of JWC, maybe even meet the person who had written Donovan’s letter and been responsible for authorizing his check.

  “There’s lots of competition for charitable dollars, but we have a very valid project that will benefit the whole community. I don’t see how foundations and corporations can refuse. They require a special touch, however. Fortunately, some of the people attending Sunday’s meeting have experience in that area.”

  “And you want me to attend that meeting?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “How about my friend Alana? Her brother had a transplant.”

  “Bring them both. Your father also thinks we should ask Mrs. Jacoby. She’s got a son in need of a transplant. Who better to speak up about the project?”

  “Mom, thanks for all your help.” The words sounded inadequate.

  Her mom smiled. “I think our family is extremely blessed, Meg. Your father, myself, our children. I truly believe that giving something back to show appreciation for our blessings is our duty. I know you’ve had a rough year, but it does my heart good to see you pulling out of it.”

  A rough year … you could say that, Meg thought. And yet, her mother was right. Whole days now passed by when she didn’t think about Cindy. A momentary twinge left her feeling disloyal, then the feeling passed. She had others to think about now. She had Donovan, and she wanted to keep him. More than anything in the world, she wanted him to live.

  “Two million dollars, Alana! Mom said the architect estimates that the house will cost close to two million dollars. How can we raise that much money?”

  “It is a lot.” Alana was sitting out on the hospital patio, licking an ice-cream cone. “More than in this girl’s piggy bank.”

  “We’ll be old ladies by the time this house gets built.”

  “At least out of high school.”

  “You’re not taking this seriously.”

  “Yes, I am. I just know it won’t help to get all worked up about that sum of money. You’ve got to think in bite-size pieces.” She took another lick off her cone. “All we need is two million people to give one dollar. Or one million people to give two dollars apiece. Or four big corporations to give five hundred thousand dollars each. Two million doesn’t seem so overwhelming when you think of it that way.”

  Meg opened her mouth to argue, but stopped. Alana’s logic made sense. “The other thing Mom told me was that the architect was concerned about the site, the place to build the house.”

  “Do they have a site?”

  “Right now, land’s pretty scarce around the hospital. Most of it’s already been bought by developers, and it really is expensive. There’s a place here on the Memorial property, but it’s been designated for a new parking lot.”

  Alana wrinkled her nose. “A house for parents is more important than a parking lot.”

  “We know it, but the hospital board has to approve the change. It’ll go into a committee for study—I swear, this is going to take forever.” Feeling glum, Meg slouched in her chair.

  “But it will happen,” Alana assured her. “It may seem like it’s taking forever, but one day, you’ll look out across the grounds,” she gestured with her arm, “and you’ll see this wonderful house full of parents with kids up on our floor. And you and I will say, ‘We helped get this house off the ground.’ ”

  “Okay. I won’t get too discouraged this early in the project. Will you and Lonnie be at the meeting Sunday?”

  “We’ll be there. You want to go to the mall with me tomorrow? I need something new to wear if I’m going to be with all those important people.”

  Meg shook her head. “I can’t. I’ve already made plans.” She didn’t explain, even though Alana was looking expectant. How could she tell her that she was going house shopping? Especially when it was Donovan’s secret?

  “May I help you?” asked the woman behind the front desk of the real estate office when Meg entered.

  Nervously, Meg licked her lips and smiled. She had spent two hours trying to make herself appear older than sixteen. She had selected her finest designer clothing and accessories and donned her best gold jewelry. She was glad that her mother had taught her how to dress for a strong first impression. While she certainly felt more comfortable in jeans, she knew the best way to be believed was to appear believable. “I have an appointment with Ms. George.”

  The receptionist buzzed an inner office, and soon a tall woman with blond hair came out to greet Meg. If she was surprised by Meg’s youth, she didn’t show it. Stepping into Ms. George’s office, Meg took a seat on a sofa.

  “I’m positive I can find you just the right home, Miss Charnell. After our phone discussion, I’ve chosen several houses I think you will find satisfactory,” Ms. George said.

  Meg cleared her throat. “As I told you, I’m doing this for a friend. He trusts my judgment for the preliminaries, but he’ll be making the final choice.”

  “Don’t think a thing about it. I understand completely. I’ve done many real estate transactions via third parties. Just last month, a wealthy foreign businessman sent his daughter to me. It seems that she’ll be starting at Georgetown University in the fall, and he wanted her to buy herself a house near the campus rather than live in the dorms. It’s not only a place for her to live, but an investment for him.”

  Meg returned the agent’s cheerful smile. “You understand that my friend needs to be around the Memorial Hospital area.”

  “So you said.” The agent frowned thoughtfully. “I must tell you that it won’t be easy. That area rarely has houses on the market.” She brightened. “Bu
t I have many alternatives to show you. Lovely homes that are only minutes from Memorial via the Beltway.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Meg said. “My friend wanted to get this house business settled as quickly as possible.” She didn’t add her deepest concern: “Because he might not have too much longer to live.”

  They spent several hours looking at prospective homes. Meg liked some, yet found only two she wanted to show to Donovan, and they weren’t perfect. Frankly, she thought the residences were too far from Memorial in spite of their proximity to bus routes.

  When they arrived back at the real estate office, Ms. George told her, “Don’t be discouraged. Finding the right home takes time. It’s not like buying a dress you can take back if you don’t like it.”

  Meg agreed. “Keep looking, please. And call me anytime you think you have something to show me.”

  “I shall. Your friend won’t be disappointed. We’ll find something that’s just right for him.”

  Meg drove home, disappointed that she hadn’t done better in her search. She was feeling the pressure of time more acutely than ever. Donovan was stable at the moment, but she knew that could change in the blink of an eye. She gripped the wheel and prayed his health would hold until his dream was accomplished to buy his mother a home with his One Last Wish money.

  Fourteen

  “HOW CAN I help?” Donovan asked once Meg explained her idea to him.

  “As soon as Alana gets here, I want the three of us to work on a fund-raising letter together.”

  “What kind of a letter?”

  “It was an idea I had when I heard all those people sharing ideas at Sunday’s meeting. Everyone agrees that we need some letters to get public support. Did I tell you that several of the TV stations are carrying the story on their six o’clock news shows throughout the week?”

  “My mom told me. She’s pretty excited about the project. It’s all she talked about when she visited me last night.”