“Why do you think my washing pile is so huge?” Lucy grumbles half-heartedly.
She’s not joking either – I do at least two loads every time I come over and it barely makes a dent in the huge mountain.
Harper is still sleeping peacefully in my arms and she’s just so unbelievably beautiful. It’s hard to believe she’s real – until she’s exercising the strong set of lungs she’s got on her anyway.
I run my finger lightly over her cheek and smile at her total perfection.
I hear the click of a camera. I look up and Lucy is smiling at the picture she’s just captured of me and her little girl.
I scowl at her, photos have never really been my favourite thing, but I don’t bother complaining, it would only fall on deaf ears.
“It suits you, Letty.” She looks between her daughter and me.
A lump forms in my throat the instant the words leave her mouth and I have to fight to swallow it down.
I don’t know why I’m getting so emotional about it, but all of a sudden, I can feel tears forming in the corner of my eyes.
The fact that I’ll never have my own baby isn’t a new revelation; in fact, it’s something I’ve thought about a lot over the years. Especially lately, after I’ve spent time with my goddaughter – it’s a topic that’s been pretty front and centre in my mind.
It’s not that I want a baby right now, because I don’t – not yet… but one day I would have loved to be a mother.
I know there are other options like adoption and surrogacy, but I also realise that those are easy things to talk about, but unfortunately not so easy to make happen. They’re expensive and time consuming, and even then, there’s no guarantee.
“I’m not sure it’s on the cards for me.”
“You saw a baby, Vi.”
“That doesn’t mean it’ll happen.”
I’m aware that I saw Rylan, and I got him – but that doesn’t mean this will work the same way.
A baby is in no way promised to me because of something I conjured up in my mind in a near-death experience.
I’ve been given so much; I know it’s not fair of me to expect anything more. I already owe so much more than I’m owed in return.
“Violet,” says the voice I’d recognise even in my sleep.
I had no idea Rylan was listening to us, so when he speaks it startles me.
He steps into the room and the sight of his intense stare on my face takes my breath away.
“If you want a baby, I’ll do anything I can to make it a reality for us.”
He crouches down next to me and wraps his arms around my body. It makes me feel safe and while he’s right here, holding me close, I believe what he’s telling me.
He rests his forehead against mine and glances down at the precious little girl in my arms.
“I can’t promise you a baby, but I can promise you we’ll try every option there is, if that’s what you want, okay?”
I know he means it – babies and reproductive organs are literally his speciality, but I can’t allow myself to get my hopes up where this is concerned.
“And if it doesn’t happen?” My voice cracks.
“If it doesn’t happen then we’ll get through it together. I don’t know how many times I have to say this before you’ll believe me, but you are all I need.”
I do believe him, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel guilt or worry over it.
I know I’m enough for him, and he’s enough for me too.
I do want a baby one day, I want one so badly, but deep down I know that he’s enough.
We’ve got each other and that’ll always be everything I need, but I can’t help but wish that it wasn’t another sacrifice he has to make because he’s fallen in love with a broken woman.
Rylan
“Tell me about your sister.”
Violet’s lying on the couch, with her eyes closed and her head in my lap, and I honestly thought she’d nodded off.
I have a feeling she’s been up all night painting while I slept because she’s been totally exhausted all day.
“What do you want to know?” I ask as I twirl a strand of her hair around my finger.
“Anything,” she breathes. “Just tell me anything.”
I feel guilty for not being more open with her – ever since I told her about losing my sister we have talked about her, but it’s been those types of conversations where you do a lot of talking but at the same time, say nothing at all.
Violet knows my sister’s name and that she was a doctor… she knows that after she died I moved here and into her house.
I’ve told her about my dad passing away when I was a teenager and about my now elderly mother who suffered early onset dementia back home.
She doesn’t know anything about who Daisy was as a person or the fact that she basically raised me at times. She doesn’t know that we shared a mother, but not a father and that we were all each other had for a good portion of my life.
I want to tell her everything, I really do, but every time I try, the words get caught in my throat and pushed back down deep.
I know I should talk about her more – Daisy deserves to be remembered and not forgotten, and I know it’s important to Violet too, so I put down the book I was reading, take a deep breath and start talking as best I can.
“I remember when I was eleven, Daisy would have been about twenty-one, it was my birthday, and my parents had promised me a skateboard. It was the only thing I wanted, and I was so excited to finally be getting one. Anyway, the day came, Dad was sick, and Mum was already beginning to forget things, and that’s what happened to my skateboard – they forgot to get one for me.” I’d put on a brave face and told them it didn’t matter, but truthfully, I was devastated.
I know now that it’s just a toy, and if I’d known at the time that only a year and a half later my father would be gone, and that my mother’s mind would be taken from her not long after that, I doubt I would have cared about doing anything other than spending the day with the both of them.
That’s the real kicker about hindsight.
“I’ll never forget the look on Daisy’s face when she realised what had happened. She disappeared for an hour and when she came back she had with her the same exact skateboard I’d pointed out in the store a few weeks before.”
“She sounds like a good big sister,” Violet murmurs, her eyes still shut.
“She was the best.”
It hurts my heart that I have to say ‘was’ instead of ‘is’ – that I have no choice but to talk about her in past tense rather than present.
“It was a beautiful sunny day, and the four of us went down to the park so I could practise using it. Daisy stayed there with me all day, long after Mum and Dad headed back home. She wasn’t too cool for her little brother, or too busy either. When she moved away she always made sure to come home for things like birthdays and holidays. She loved me the same way a mother loves her child – unconditionally.”
“You miss her a lot.” It’s not a question, but a statement.
“Every single day.”
Violet yawns and wiggles around to get more comfortable. “Tell me another story.”
So I tell her the very next thing I can think of.
“She’s the reason I went to med school.”
“Yeah?” she answers sleepily.
“I got really good grades in high school, but I had no idea what I was going to do when it came time to leave. I went to visit Daisy once; she was working as a GP in a small town while she furthered her study. She was running late so I went into the clinic to wait for her.
A lady in the waiting room started talking to me. She went on and on about how much Daisy had helped improve the symptoms of her arthritis, but it wasn’t just her Daisy had helped, it seemed that everyone in town had a problem my sister had looked at and done her best to fix. She was helping people – giving back to the world, and it just dawned on me that I wanted to do that too.
Dais
y’s always done that for me – lead by example. She never put any pressure on me to make a decision about my future; she never even suggested medicine as a potential field for me. Instead she just showed me the way.
I enrolled last minute, and I don’t know how, but I got accepted, and as they say, the rest is history.”
I realise I’m smiling as I talk about my sister. This is the first time I’ve associated her memory with any emotion other than despair and I’m shocked that I’ve managed it.
I look down at Violet, so I can share my achievement with her, but when my eyes land on her pretty face, it’s obvious she’s finally let sleep take her.
Her lips are parted, and her breathing is deep and steady.
She might not be able to hear me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t talk.
I tug the blanket off the back of the couch and drape it gently over her before telling her story after story – filling in her sleeping form about exactly who my sister was.
Violet
There’s something I need to do – something I’ve been putting off for a long while now because it just seems too… hard.
I need to make contact with the family of my donor.
It’s been four years now since they lost their loved one and I still know nothing about the person who in death, saved my life.
I don’t know if it was a man or a woman, or if they were young or old.
I don’t know how they died or if their organs were used to save anybody else.
I don’t know what they did for a job or how many people they left behind.
I don’t know a single thing about them, so I know it’s time to reach out now.
The only option I have is a letter. I can give a letter to the hospital’s transplant co-ordinator, who will pass it onto the family of my donor. It’s up to them if they want to reply, or even read it at all, and even if I never hear back, at least I’ll know I tried.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to write – I don’t know the right way to thank someone for the unbelievable gift I’ve been given.
I could ask Rylan for help, but he already does so much for me, and this feels like something I need to do on my own.
I started this journey a long time ago, and I need to finish this final chapter. Who knows what might happen after that – maybe sometime soon I’ll be ready to close the book entirely.
I think about the selfless gesture that organ donation is.
I think about the people my donor left behind.
I think about the heart beating in my chest and how I owe my life to someone else.
Each thump of the borrowed organ is so important, so significant that suddenly I know exactly what I need to say.
I reach for a sheet of paper and a pen and write from deep inside my soul.
To the owner of my heart,
You don’t know me, and I know you can’t read this, but I still need to write it.
My name is Violet Miller, and four years ago, you saved my life.
If you hadn’t have ticked that little box labelled ‘donor’, it’s entirely possible I wouldn’t be here right now, so for that I thank you – you chose to be selfless where you could have been selfish instead.
There’s no possible way I could ever repay you, so instead I’ll spend the rest of my life living, really living each moment as it was intended to be lived. I can’t give you much, but I can do that – for both of us.
There’s so many things I wish I could say to you, and it hurts me to know that I’ll never get the chance.
I want you to know that I’m so, so sorry. I can’t even begin to explain the guilt I carry with me every day, knowing that your life was given in exchange for mine.
Why am I here, and you’re not?
I know that’s a question I’ll probably never get an answer to.
There’s a lot of things in this world that make sense to me, but why I was spared when others were taken is something I’m not sure I’ll ever understand.
I hope that whoever you left behind is managing as best they can. I may not have met you, but I don’t need to have known you to understand the hole you left in the lives of those closest to you.
I’ve thought a lot lately about fate, and what happens when we die… I’m still not sure exactly what I believe, but I do think that there’s some place good for those who deserve it, and I know that wherever that is, you’re there.
I have so many questions about you, but I know it’s not my place to ask. I don’t expect your family or friends to give me those answers, they’ve given me enough already. I just hope they can find some peace knowing that I’m alive because of you.
Thank you for my life, I promise to live it.
Violet – The keeper of your heart.
Rylan
I knock lightly on the door to the small office I haven’t set foot in for over four years.
I’m in such a different place now than I was back then, that it really doesn’t look like the same room at all as I open the door.
The paintings on the walls are brighter now, the room doesn’t feel like it’s caving in around me anymore, and I notice the light streaming in through the window, rather than the dark shadows that light creates.
I’m a different person than I was.
I have Violet to thank for that.
The only constant between my life then and my life now, is her.
She was the light back then, and she’s been that same light every day for the past year I’ve spent with her.
“Dr. Wilder.” The middle-aged woman smiles at me.
She’s a work colleague I don’t see often – this hospital is a big place, but yet I don’t think I’ll ever forget her face.
She was my counsellor for a year. I may not have thought that we made one single inch of progress in that time, but given that I’m here now and I’m doing so much better, I have to admit that maybe it did help me in some small way.
“Rylan, please,” I tell her as I take the seat she’s indicating I should sit in.
This whole set up feels like I’ve been sent to the principal’s office. I don’t know why I’m here, but I have a feeling in the pit of my gut that it’s serious.
“Rylan.” She smiles at me.
I don’t smile back; I can’t seem to make the muscles in my cheeks work.
“You’re probably wondering why I asked you in here.”
“I am.”
“I was wondering if we could talk about your sister for a minute.”
I can’t fathom for a second what she would possibly want to talk to me about in regards to my sister.
Daisy has been gone for a long time now.
As much as I’m confused by this topic, I’m also proud of myself for thinking of Daisy without the pain and heartache I’ve long since grown accustomed to.
I’m making progress – they might only be small steps, like contacting some of the people I let slip away during my grief, but for me, it feels like a huge leap I’m taking in the right direction.
I know I have Violet to thank for that too.
I still don’t talk about Daisy a lot, and I haven’t managed to put up or even share with Violet all our old photos yet, but it’s progress, and my heart doesn’t ache the same way when I think of her anymore.
I still miss her like crazy, and I think there will always be a little piece of me that’s missing, but this is the most whole I’ve felt in a very long time.
“Rylan?” she asks, and I realise I never answered her.
“Sorry, sure, go ahead.”
“Do you recall, when you began your employment here, that you were asked to fill out a few pages of questions?”
I know exactly what she’s talking about.
The questionnaire is designed as a safe guard – a guide for the families and loved ones of the doctors and nurses that work in this hospital should anything ever happen to us.
I’ve seen what can happen in an emergency situation, a patient is brought in and their fami
ly has no idea what they would have wanted in terms of medical intervention.
When I started here, I answered questions about who I wanted notified if anything might happen to me, whether I’d want to be resuscitated or have my life artificially prolonged… if I agreed to have my organs harvested for donation or my body donated to science.
“I remember,” I tell her.
“Do you also remember giving authority at the time of Daisy’s death to honour all of the decisions she made on her form?”
My sister worked here too – she answered the same questions I did.
I nod, my throat feeling suddenly thick with emotion.
I can remember the moment as though it were only yesterday.
I signed that sheet of paper without a second thought – whatever Daisy wanted, that was what she got. She always knew better than me when it came to these kinds of things, but even if she didn’t, I would never have gone against the wishes of my sister on the day of her death.
I still don’t know what her final requests were, but I agreed to all of them without a moment’s hesitation.
“I have a letter here for you… it’s from a patient whom Daisy donated an organ to.”
I don’t even realise that I’ve been staring at the ground until I hear her words and my head snaps up.
“Daisy was a donor?”
She nods at me. “She donated to five deserving people.”
I don’t know why the possibility never occurred to me before now, but of course Daisy was a donor.
She was one of the most generous people I’ve ever met.
“No one told me,” I whisper.
“Perhaps you didn’t want to hear it?” she offers.
When Daisy was brought in, I couldn’t bring myself to ask the extent of the damage caused by the crash, let alone if something like organ donation was a viable option, so instead I stuck my head in the sand and questioned nothing at all.
Much like I did my friends, I shut out any and all things Daisy for a long time, so there’s a good chance someone did try to tell me, but I just wasn’t willing to listen.
My Heart Wants (The Heart Duet Book 2) Page 12