Let It Be Me

by Becky Wade

  She was left with a candle, a clean house, an open suitcase, and Dylan’s words, which circled around and around her like a whirlpool.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Isabella Ackerman’s medical team gathered in the conference room on Wednesday morning. Sebastian and the other surgeons were present, as was Audrey, the cardiologist in charge of the transplant program. Markie. The fellows and residents.

  “These are the best oxygen saturation numbers Isabella’s had in weeks,” Sebastian’s mentor, Dr. Nelson, said. “Is she status seven?”

  “Yes, but I think she should be status one,” Sebastian answered. Status seven meant that she was on the heart transplant list, but currently ineligible. Status one would designate her as a patient in urgent need of a transplant.

  “In my opinion,” Audrey said, “she’s not an acceptable candidate. Her neural status is unknown.”

  “Her lungs aren’t great,” a resident added, “and she’s repeatedly struggled with ascites.”

  “A new heart is unlikely to fix her issues.” Audrey tapped her pen against the file before her. “She might die as a result of the transplant surgery.”

  “But she will certainly die without the transplant surgery.” Sebastian’s anger, which had been very close to the surface since his fight with Leah, rose like a storm surge. “Our task is to give every child a chance.”

  “Yes, but if Isabella receives a heart, she deprives another child—a healthier child with a better prognosis—of his or her chance,” Audrey replied. “Our task is actually to ensure that we’re allocating hearts to those most worthy of them.”

  It might be coldblooded of him, but those other worthy candidates were not his patients. Isabella was his patient, and writing her off was not an option for him. She’d fought her way back from sepsis. “Isabella is worthy of a heart.”

  “But is she the most worthy?” Audrey challenged.

  “Worthy enough for status one,” he said.

  Tension stretched through the room as they considered Isabella’s numbers, her history, her options.

  Dr. Nelson resettled his glasses. “I’m inclined to move her to status one. If a heart becomes available and we have any reason to think, at that point in time, that a transplant with Isabella will not be successful, we’ll defer the heart to another candidate.”

  “I worry about the damage we’ve already done to Isabella’s parents over the past three months by giving them false hope,” Audrey said. “What will this do?”

  “We’ve given her parents hope,” Sebastian said evenly. “But not false hope.”

  “Can you try to get a heart for her?” Dr. Nelson asked Audrey.

  “I have reservations.”

  “But can you try?”

  Everyone in the room zeroed in on Audrey.

  “I can try,” she eventually said.

  Sebastian took the elevator up to his balcony. He stood at the rail and watched the small people and small cars, all of them preoccupied with achieving the next thing on their to-do list. I’ve got to visit my brother. I’ve got to get lunch. I’ve got to get to my appointment on time.

  He’d gotten what he wanted just now—Isabella upgraded to status one. He wasn’t experiencing any happiness over that outcome, however. Partially because that outcome had been, for him, the only and necessary outcome. Partially because Isabella was lying unconscious several floors below with a catastrophically deformed heart, so this wasn’t the time to celebrate. Partially because, since his argument with Leah, the space suit had returned that prevented him from feeling much of anything—

  No. That wasn’t true.

  He did feel a few things very sharply and clearly.

  He felt miserable. And he felt frustrated.

  He’d been waiting for Leah to come to her senses and call him. But she hadn’t.

  How long was he supposed to wait?

  He’d already waited a day and a half, which was a day and a half longer than he’d been willing to wait. He didn’t like being far away from her at the best of times. He hated being far away from her with angry silence between them.

  Old traumas—his mother’s death, the earthquake—kept ambushing him in quiet moments.

  The day his mom had died, he’d packed his clothing in suitcases while people he didn’t know rolled his mother out of the old lady’s apartment on a stretcher.

  He’d looked at his mom’s stuff. Were they going to take everything that belonged to her and roll it away, too? Desperately, he started grabbing items. Her hairbrush, her favorite bracelet, her robe, two picture frames. He hid it all in his suitcase.

  Then his social worker drove him across town in a car that smelled so strongly of flowers that he felt like he was choking.

  “Sebastian,” she said, when they arrived at a brown house, “this is Mr. and Mrs. King. They’ll be looking after you for the time being.”

  “Sebastian! Welcome,” Mrs. King said. She and her husband were both round, pink, and smiling.

  She looked nothing like his mother.

  He didn’t speak. He didn’t know them, and his mom had taught him not to trust people he didn’t know.

  “Come inside,” Mr. King said.

  He was numb. Dead, like his mom.

  His mom was gone.

  His mom was gone.

  She’d been here this morning. And now she wasn’t.

  The social worker held the door of the house open for him. Mrs. King was saying a lot of things he didn’t want to hear. They passed a room where two kids, one older than him and one younger, were finishing dinner. He pretended he hadn’t seen them. He followed the adults to a room that had bunk beds with red covers.

  He decided he hated red covers.

  The social worker was talking to him. The strangers were talking to him.

  His mom was gone. His mom was gone.

  All he’d been able to do in that moment was wrap his hands around his backpack and stare at the strange room where they expected him to live with a kid he’d never met.

  A bird’s cry fractured the memory like glass. The wind absorbed the shards, and Sebastian came back to the present.

  This separation with Leah might be for the best, darkness inside him whispered.

  It concerned him, how invested he was in Leah. Yet he wanted to see her again far too much to consider making this separation permanent.

  Just like it was not an option to keep Isabella at status seven, it was not an option to leave things the way they were with Leah.

  The stalemate between them could not continue.

  The following day, Leah sat at her desk in her classroom, prepping for upcoming lessons during her free period. Beyond her windows, the weather was as gloomy as her disposition had been since she’d left Atlanta. The moaning wind whipped trees into unnatural angles.

  “I found some blueberry muffins on my desk.”

  She lifted her face toward the voice, which belonged to Ben. He stood framed by her doorway.

  “Are you the anonymous donor?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “Mystery solved.” He took the chair across from her desk, just like old times. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Did this visit mean—please, Lord—that Ben was willing to get the ball of their friendship rolling again? She leaned back in her chair and focused solely on him. “How are you?”

  “My third period class is causing me migraines.”

  “Sometimes there’s not enough patience or Excedrin in the world for this job.”

  “How are things with you?” he asked.

  “Very well.” Not true. “I’ve been doing a bit of research into my family history.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “I think you mentioned to me last year that Genevieve did some research into her family history, too. Is that right?”

  “Yeah. I know that she and Sam drove to Clayton at one point to look at records. If you need tips, you should reach out to her.”

  “Will do.” Ge
nevieve had given Leah her number the day Leah had toured Sebastian’s house. . . .

  Sebastian. For the past three days, every thought of him had affected her like a pin skewering a pincushion. The most painful memories were the tender ones. The way he’d looked at her during their weekend together. The irresistible things he’d said.

  This is an opportune time to bring your flirtation with Sebastian to a close!

  The sound of footsteps reached her, and she turned to see Claire enter her room for tutoring.

  Ben tapped twice on Leah’s desk and rose. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Thanks for coming by,” she said, meaning it.

  “Sure.”

  Ben greeted the girl, gave Leah a salute, and departed.

  Leah waved Claire into the chair he’d vacated.

  A few stains smudged the girl’s sweater. Her eyes were puffy. She’d bitten her nails to the quick and picked off most of her white polish.

  “Everything okay?” Leah asked.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “That didn’t sound very convincing.”

  “Everything’s mostly okay.”

  “What’s the latest with your mom and dad?”

  “My mom, um, moved out last weekend. Which is probably the very best thing.” The girl injected a note of levity into the sentence that fell completely flat.

  Leah knew what it felt like to be abandoned by your mom, and it didn’t feel like the very best thing. “Did you and Becca and Mason and Annie stay at home with your dad?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Had Claire’s mom’s departure made things worse for Claire and her siblings? Would they now have to bear the brunt of their dad’s anger? “Where has your mom gone?”

  “She hasn’t let any of us know. Which is also probably for the best. That way Dad doesn’t know where to find her. She told us she wants to bring us to live with her as soon as she can.”

  “Has she given any indication of when that might happen?”

  Claire shook her head. “I’ve been texting her, but she hasn’t answered much. She knows Dad checks my text messages.”

  “Who’s been handling your mom’s responsibilities for the past few days?”

  “Us kids.”

  “Do you have all that you need? Enough to eat?”

  She nodded.

  “And has your dad been managing his temper?”

  “It’s been all right, Ms. Montgomery.” But the bleak light in Claire’s eyes told a different story.

  “If you have any concerns, or simply want someone to talk to, I strongly encourage you to speak with me or Ms. Williams. In fact, I’ll send Ms. Williams an email right now.” She typed out a brief note, hit send, then faced Claire. “Ready to work on math?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Outstanding. We can always depend on differential calculus to lift our spirits.”

  Later that evening, Leah dialed Genevieve from one of her patented out-of-Dylan’s-hearing-range spots: inside her turned-off car, inside her garage.

  “Anyway,” Leah said, wrapping up a very vague description of her attempt to learn more about her genealogy, “I was told that birth certificates are only made available to the person named on the certificate or a primary family member.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Since I’m neither, I’m not sure what to try next.” Yet she was yearning to research Ian and Bonnie O’Reilly further.

  “What about death certificates?” Genevieve suggested. “When I was looking into this same sort of thing a year ago, it was actually a death certificate that revealed far more than birth certificates ever did.”

  “Oh?”

  “Unlike birth certificates, death certificates are a matter of public record. They’re available to all.”

  Leah’s hope rose. “How would I go about accessing a death certificate?”

  “You can go to the vital records office in the county of death, or you can request a record online for a fee. I can’t remember off the top of my head the name of the website that allows you to request death records. But if you Google death certificates in Georgia, you should be able to find it.”

  “I appreciate the help.”

  “Sure! My sister and I also looked up old newspaper articles and old yearbook photos. I’m not sure if either of those pertain to your search, but they’re worth keeping in mind.”

  Leah thanked her and, after a few minutes of chitchat during which Genevieve talked about how much she adored Ben, they disconnected.

  She propped her laptop between the steering wheel and her abdomen, and located one of the record search sites Genevieve had alluded to. VitalCertificates.com.

  It could be that Bonnie had died, and Leah simply hadn’t succeeded at locating her obituary online. In fact, if Bonnie had died back when Leah was young, it wasn’t surprising that Leah hadn’t been able to find her obit on the Internet. The Internet had been in its infancy then. Even after the Internet became more widespread, it may have taken many years for online obituaries to become prevalent.

  The website asked her to provide much more information on Bonnie than Leah had to give. Red error messages kept popping up, asking her to fill in more fields. She typed unknown into several of the fields, then submitted the request. Perhaps VitalCertificate’s search engines would be able to piece together a result from very little.

  She had more information on Ian, thanks to the details included in the intellectual property suit. Thus, even though he’d only be in his late fifties now, she completed a second records request for him.

  Your request is processing, the site informed her.

  Seven days ago Sebastian had gone to church with Leah. Today he was attending a worship service again, sitting alone on a folding chair at the back of a small auditorium.

  Then, the church had been formal. Now a smaller, more casual congregation surrounded him.

  Then, between holding Leah’s hand, breathing in the scent of her body wash, and studying the appearance of the Brooksides, he’d paid almost zero attention to the service. Now he was paying close attention to the pastor.

  Then, he’d felt as content as he’d ever felt. Now he was as far from content as it was possible to feel.

  He went to church with the Colemans from time to time in Misty River. But he usually spent his Atlanta Sundays reading medical journals, exercising, running errands, or checking on his patients.

  He’d come here today because of his itching, scratching discontent. Obviously, he couldn’t go on like this. He was sick of the slideshow of scenes—from the ruined building in El Salvador and his foster care years—that kept running through his mind.

  He’d hoped for a sermon on a topic like God’s grace or love. Instead, the sermon centered on identity. It was as if the pastor, who was wearing a blazer with jeans, had written it just for him.

  It wasn’t comforting him. It was confronting him.

  He’d wanted to slip in and slip out without talking to anyone. But Ellie, the nurse at work who’d told him about this place, had spotted him almost as soon as he’d arrived, and rushed over. She and her friend had taken chairs to his right. Ellie had been shooting glances at him the whole service, which was annoying him almost as much as the sermon.

  Ellie had made it clear to everyone they worked with that she was into him. She was a stunning girl—lots of shiny dark brown hair. Green eyes. But she was much too young and much too enthusiastic for him. She made him feel twenty years older than he was, and nothing about her personality or body or bright lipstick attracted him.

  Ellie wasn’t a math genius. Ellie wasn’t too independent for her own good. She didn’t make his five senses light up like a pinball machine.

  The woman who did make his senses light up still hadn’t called him.

  If Leah cared about him, she would have called him by now. Right?

  Sebastian had been certain that she cared about him, but maybe that had been wishful thinking. At times his ideas and opinions on a subject we
re so strong that he could project those onto other people.

  It could be he was the guy that girls like Ellie had crushes on and that women who hit on him in bars wanted to sleep with. But he was not the guy that women like Leah cared about.

  If so, how much of that was his fault? How much of that could be chalked up to the fact that he hadn’t let anyone care?

  He’d made an error with Leah.

  “My affection can’t be bought,” she’d said to him. It had been clear the day he’d given her the necklace that accepting presents didn’t come naturally to her, yet the gifts he’d purchased had served their purpose. They’d convinced her to go out with him.

  He should have stopped there, while he was ahead, because he’d clearly crossed an invisible line when he’d made that phone call on Dylan’s behalf. In doing so, he’d insulted her.

  If he wanted her back, which he did, it looked like he was going to have to make the first move.

  What would work with her? How could he win her over in ways that went beyond wrapped packages and expensive dinners?

  Long ago, she’d told him she appreciated it when people spoke to her directly. He was a blunt person. Even so, the thought of speaking to Leah about his emotions left him feeling unprotected.

  Which was worse . . . losing Leah or feeling unprotected?

  He was going to have to get over feeling unprotected, because losing Leah was much worse.

  The pastor read from 1 John. “‘See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God.’ The most meaningful thing about you,” the pastor said, “isn’t your job. It’s not your status as a father, a mother. A husband, a wife. A son, a daughter. A sister, a brother. A friend. We’re all tempted to try to plant our identity in those things. Ultimately, they won’t satisfy, because that’s not how God created us to find meaning.”

  Hands down, the most meaningful thing about Sebastian was his profession. He definitely had planted most of his identity in it. His degrees and accomplishments had given him his truest sense of pride. Really, his only sense of pride. Yet as much as he loved his work, as committed as he was to it, it hadn’t brought him peace or wholeness.