Let Him Live Read online

Inside the playroom, Meg discovered twelve kids ranging in ages from four to ten preparing for a session with an art therapist. Some were in wheelchairs, others were in casts, a few were bald. “From chemotherapy, I’ll bet,” Alana whispered.

  Meg felt overwhelmed. She realized how isolated she’d been from her father’s world. The hospital was like a separate city, with a hierarchy of people in charge. But in this city, people were sick, some of them sick enough to die. Seeing the children, small and vulnerable, carrying around basins in case they had to vomit, and with apparatuses attached to their arms or protruding from their chests, made Meg queasy. And it brought back the memory of Cindy much too vividly. Meg didn’t see how she was going to last the summer in such an environment.

  “You all right?” Alana asked. “You look a little green.”

  “Too many doughnuts,” Meg mumbled. “Doesn’t this bother you?” she asked.

  “Lonnie was on dialysis so long, I got used to coming to the hospital. I saw lots of sick people. Now, I want to help them.”

  Meg wished she could feel the same way, but all she really wanted to do was go home. She began to think she’d made a mistake by agreeing to work at the hospital. She really wasn’t up to the task. She made up her mind that at the end of the day, she’d tell her father that she couldn’t manage it. That it was too painful for her emotionally.

  At the end of her shift, she stopped by Donovan’s room. He was sound asleep, and she didn’t wake him. She studied his drawings from his brother carefully. There were many of a house with the words “Our Home” and “Where the Jacobys Live.”

  Nervously, she approached her father’s office, where she discovered him hunched over his desk, doing paperwork. He looked up and beckoned her inside. “How was the first day?”

  “I’m not so sure this is such a good idea for me,” she said.

  “Sit and tell me about it.”

  “I tried to help with activity time, but I didn’t do a very good job. The art therapist had to help me more than the kids.”

  “You’ll catch on.”

  She felt cowardly, wishing she could simply come out and tell him the truth. “I also met a boy named Donovan.”

  Her father nodded. “He’s one sick kid.”

  “What’s wrong with him? I know it’s something to do with his liver.”

  “I’m afraid his liver’s shot. That’s really why he’s here. His physician referred him to me because our program is his only hope.”

  Meg felt her hands turn clammy. “Your program?”

  “Donovan needs a liver transplant. Without one, I’d say he has less than six months to live.”

  Three

  “DONOVAN’S GOING TO die? But he’s not much older than me.”

  “He’s almost eighteen, but age has nothing to do with it. He’s in advanced stages of cirrhosis brought on by a non-A, non-B strain of hepatitis. Cirrhosis is deadly.”

  “How did he get such a thing?”

  “His hepatitis is idiopathic.” She looked perplexed, and her father added, “That’s medical talk for ‘We don’t know how he got it.’ Frankly, at this late stage, it doesn’t matter.”

  “There must be some kind of medicine for it.”

  “I’m afraid not. And the virus has all but destroyed his liver. Sometimes, cirrhosis can be reversed, but not in Donovan’s case. The liver filters out toxins—poisons. Once it begins to fail, toxins build up. Eventually, the liver atrophies altogether and the victim dies. The only hope is a transplant.”

  “Will he be able to get one?”

  “Only if we can locate a compatible donor.”

  “What’s that mean?” Meg’s head began to swim with the complexity of Donovan’s circumstances.

  “A donor has to match in blood type, plus be about the same weight and height as the intended recipient. The liver is a large organ and can’t be expected to function properly if it’s mismatched. And there simply are not enough donor organs to go around to all the patients needing them.”

  “Why not?” Meg recalled how her dad would hurry off to perform surgery whenever an organ would be specially flown in for one of his patients. He was on virtual twenty-four-hour call.

  “Ah, Meg,” her father said with a sigh. “That’s a complicated issue. To be of any use for transplantation, organs need to be free of disease and injury, so donors are most often healthy individuals who die unexpectedly and traumatically—often with a massive head injury. Anyway, families have to be approached about donation when their loved one is on life support, when he or she is declared brain dead. It’s a very trying time for everybody, and families are in shock.

  “It’s not always easy for them to accept what’s happened, much less agree to donate organs. Yet, people working with transplant services attempt to help families see that organ donation is sometimes the only positive thing to come out of such tragedies as premature death. The best way for a family to deal with the issue is to know how members of the family feel about donating their organs. That requires discussing it before a tragedy happens.”

  “Does Donovan know how sick he is?” Meg asked.

  “His mother’s aware of the gravity of his condition, but even though I’ve had several talks with him, I’m not sure he’s totally accepting it. Kids, especially you teens, believe you’re invincible, bigger than death. Also, the condition itself often brings on bouts of confusion and extreme fatigue that dulls a victim’s perceptions about his illness.”

  Had Cindy thought she was invincible? Meg wondered. Didn’t everyone have the right to grow up and grow old? “So, once you find him a donor, he’ll be all right, won’t he?”

  Again, her father shook his head. “It doesn’t always work that way. The transplantation operation and recovery period aside, he’s not the only person here at Memorial awaiting a liver transplant. I have a list of patients.”

  “But you said he’d die without one.”

  “They’ll all die without one.”

  Meg felt as if she’d wandered into a maze. “Still, there’s hope, isn’t there?”

  “There’s always hope. That’s what keeps us going.” His beeper sounded. “Excuse me.” He picked up his phone and dialed his exchange.

  Meg had grown to hate the sound of the beeper, and she felt particularly irritated now that she had so many questions about Donovan and his necessary liver transplant. She waited while her father carried on a clipped conversation and hung up. He stood. “Meg, tell your mom I won’t be home this evening.”

  “What’s wrong?” She looked up at him, watched as he removed his lab coat and slipped on his suit jacket.

  “That was a colleague in Baltimore. He’s got a donor heart for us, and I’ve got a thirty-three-year-old mother of two who desperately needs it. According to the National Network for Organ Sharing, the two of them are a match.”

  “Can’t someone else go get it?”

  “Time is critical, and I want the retrieval done properly. Nothing’s more frustrating than having a perfectly suitable organ go bad because of improper surgical procedures or storage conditions. It’s best if I use the hospital’s private jet to go retrieve it myself.”

  “I’ll tell Mom,” she said. He was already out the door. Meg stood and shook off a chill. Images of her father, Donovan, and the hospital bombarded her, but the sound of the beeper took on a new meaning. One day, it might sound for Donovan. One day, it might mean medical science had located a donor liver for him. Still, she kept seeing the image of Cindy’s face. For Cindy, there had been no hope, not with an organ transplant, not with hospitalization, not with any assortment of new and experimental drugs.

  Meg hurried to the parking garage. All she wanted to do was go home and put the entire day behind her. And also to forget what had happened to her very best friend.

  At dinner that night, Meg shoved green beans and broiled chicken around on her plate. She didn’t have much of an appetite. Her sister, Tracy, kept jabbering about her upcoming stay at gymnastic camp for th
e summer. Meg listened, halfheartedly, still brooding about Donovan.

  “How was your first day as a volunteer? Do you like it?” Meg heard her mother ask.

  “I’m around sick kids all day. What’s fun about that?”

  “Honey, it’s good for you to be active, remember? You were getting too introspective, and your father and I were concerned about you.”

  That’s why it’s called depression, Mom, Meg felt like saying. The phone rang, and Tracy hopped up to answer it. She returned, saying, “Mom, it’s Mrs. Hotchkiss from the Junior League.”

  Meg was relieved, knowing that her mother would get involved with her Junior League responsibilities and forget about delving into Meg’s day.

  Later, in her room, Meg flopped across the bed. She wondered if her father’s effort to retrieve a donor heart and save a patient under his care had gone well. She thought about Donovan’s need for someone to die so that he could live.

  Meg got a sense that she was viewing some kind of low-budget horror film. Maintaining human parts and flying them around the country for use in dying people sounded so bizarre. But she was able to see the necessity for the process in a new light because a stranger named Donovan had become a real person, not a case.

  Sadness engulfed her, and she tried to recall the last time she’d felt happy. Somehow, since the accident, she didn’t feel right about being happy because Cindy could no longer be happy. Her therapist had helped her see that she had to overcome that feeling. She remembered the night Cindy had been with her for a sleep-over and it had been great.

  “So, what do you think, Meg? Will I always be the tallest girl in our class, or will my hormones give up and leave me in peace for a while?”

  Meg sat upright and looked around her room, half expecting Cindy to be sitting on the floor, complaining about her height. The room was empty. Of course, she’d imagined her friend’s voice. “You’re going to have sporadic periods of renewed grieving,” Dr. Miller, her therapist, had often explained and tried to reassure her. “We call them ‘grieving pangs,’ and they’re normal. It’s when a person can’t rise up out of the spiral and go on with everyday life that he or she gets into trouble.”

  Suddenly, Meg realized she was tired of feeling grieving pangs. Agitated, she circled her room. She didn’t want to think about the loss of Cindy. She wanted to forget the pain. What could her father and Dr. Miller have been thinking to suggest that she work around sick people at the hospital? This wasn’t going to help her. It was harming her.

  Meg went to her desk and picked up Cindy’s class photo. The image grinned out at her—a slim girl with a head of wild, frizzy brown hair and freckles on her face. “I wish you could meet this guy I saw today. Even though he’s sick, he’s cute. You’d probably think he was too thin, but that’s not his fault. I wish …” Meg’s voice trailed.

  She carefully set down the photograph. It was stupid to be talking to a picture. She glanced at the bedside clock. It was only nine o’clock, but she suddenly felt overwhelmed by exhaustion. “Excessive sleeping is a sign of depression,” the therapist had informed Meg when she’d first started seeing her in April.

  “So what?” Meg said to the memory of Dr. Miller’s face. Without a second thought, she flipped off the light and crawled beneath the covers, into the blessed arms of a deep, forgetful sleep.

  Four

  WHEN MEG ARRIVED at the hospital the next morning, she headed straight to Donovan’s room. Once there, she skidded to a halt, seeing a woman and a young boy beside Donovan’s bed. “Meg,” Donovan greeted her. “Come meet my mom and brother.”

  “Donovan’s been talking about you,” said the woman with hair the same color as her son’s.

  “He said you were pretty,” the young boy blurted out. “You are, but I don’t like girls very much. I think they’re mean. Bonnie Oakland’s mean. She’s in my class, and she always butts in line and my teacher doesn’t do anything about it.”

  “Brett, that’s not polite,” his mother scolded. “Excuse Mr. Chatterbox here. Today’s teacher conference at his day school. I asked my boss if I could come in late so that I could meet with Brett’s teacher.” She patted Donovan’s arm. “And on our way home, we stopped to see Donovan.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Meg said, her mind still dwelling on Brett’s comment about Donovan’s thinking she was pretty. She’d struggled with her weight most of her life, and boys had never seemed to notice her the way they did slimmer girls.

  “I’m glad you didn’t go right home,” Donovan told Meg. “I wanted you to meet each other.”

  “It’s not home,” Brett interrupted. “It’s an apartment. And I hate it.”

  “It’s home for now, big guy,” Donovan said. “Come on and climb up on the bed with me. I’ve got something for you.”

  Eagerly, Brett scrambled up on the bed. Meg knew she should say something about its being against the rules for anyone other than a patient to be in the bed, but she couldn’t bring herself to spoil the look of delight on Brett’s face.

  Donovan reached under his pillow and pulled out a toy laser gun. Brett’s eyes grew large. “Wow. Thanks.”

  “Where’d you get that?” his mother asked.

  “I coaxed one of the night-shift nurses into buying it for me.” He offered his melting smile, and Meg realized that he could probably coax Eskimos into buying ice cubes. “Don’t worry—I paid for it.”

  “But the money—”

  “I’ve been saving what you give me.” He ruffled Brett’s hair, while the younger boy busily removed the packaging from the bright plastic pistol.

  Meg noted that Mrs. Jacoby seemed genuinely concerned about the expense. Meg couldn’t imagine not having enough money to buy a small toy.

  “I only want you to have enough for the things you want and need for yourself,” Mrs. Jacoby said.

  “What I need, I can’t buy,” Donovan replied.

  The expression on his mother’s face tore at Meg’s heart, and after Meg’s conversation with her father, she understood exactly what Donovan meant. “Let me see that,” Meg said, lifting Brett off the bed and bending down to examine the gun.

  While she kept Brett occupied, Donovan and his mother had a low, quiet discussion. Minutes later, Mrs. Jacoby said, “We need to be going, Brett. They’re expecting you at the day-care center.”

  “I hate that place.”

  “What’s worse? The center or school?” Donovan asked, distracting Brett.

  “School,” the boy answered glumly.

  “Then lucky you,” Meg inserted. “No school today.”

  Brett looked thoughtful, and Mrs. Jacoby smiled warmly at Meg. “We can’t get back until Sunday,” Mrs. Jacoby told Donovan. “I get paid time and a half if I work on Saturday.”

  “No problem,” Donovan assured her, but Meg could see he disliked being alone.

  Once they were gone, even Meg felt the hollowness in the room. She could go to work, but Donovan was stuck with another long day to face by himself. “Do you like to read?” she asked. “I’m supposed to go to the hospital library and pick out books for the patients. Maybe I could choose something just for you.”

  “Reading’s all right, but what I’d really like to do is get outside on the grounds.”

  “You can do that?”

  “If someone takes me in a wheelchair.” He made a face. “I hate being pushed around, but if it’s the only way to get outdoors …”

  “I could take you down after I finish my shift today.”

  “What happened to you yesterday? I thought you were coming by to see me?”

  “I did, but you were asleep.”

  “You should have awakened me. Really. I hate sleeping in the daytime. That means I’m awake half the night. You know how long the nights can be around this place?”

  “Twelve hours—same as the daytime?”

  “Technically, that’s true, but it feels like a hundred hours when you’re alone with nothing to do and no one to talk to.”


  She didn’t dare admit that she knew exactly what he was talking about. Her periods of excessive sleeping were often followed by bouts of sleeplessness. “I guess the nights can seem pretty long in this place.”

  A lab technician strolled through the doorway. “Time for my bloodletting,” Donovan said with a grimace.

  Meg backed away as the tech put down the basket filled with syringes, swabs, and glass tubes for blood samples. “Doctor’s orders,” the tech said.

  “I’ll see you later,” Meg promised, and slipped out of the room. She didn’t want to watch needles poked into him.

  At the nurses’ station, Alana greeted her, and together they went over the schedule for the day’s activities. “I’ll do the bookmobile,” Meg said. “I already know my way around the library downstairs.”

  “And I already promised Mrs. Vasquez I’d handle the afternoon reading time in the activity room,” Alana said. “See you for lunch?”

  “Sure thing,” Meg said. But she never made it to lunch. The hospital library was so devoid of appealing books for kids that Meg called her mother and asked if she could go through some of the Junior League book donations stored in their basement.

  At noon, Meg rushed home, rummaged through boxes and sacks earmarked for the store the Junior League ran to raise money for charity, and chose an armful of new reading material. She came across a set of The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis and decided to offer them to Donovan. By the time she returned to the hospital, lunch was a memory.

  The hospital librarian seemed delighted with the new books, but Meg had to promise to help her catalog them on Saturday before she’d put them out on loan.

  The afternoon passed so quickly, Meg could scarcely believe it when Alana told her good-bye for the day. Meg remembered her promise to Donovan, checked out a wheelchair, and was on her way to his room when she met her father in the hall. He looked tired, but was freshly shaven, and she knew he’d probably ducked into the upstairs doctors’ lounge for a shower and a change of clothes. “How’s your heart patient?” she asked.