“How did you know?”
I squeeze Cade as hard as I possibly can. “I have my sources.”
My eyes bounce from Dell to Ann and finally land on Bree—sweet, precious, broken Bree.
Now we just need one more miracle…
Chapter 42
Ann
I REMEMBER MY doctor sitting on the chair beside my bed, way back before summer started, when he first told me I would need a transplant. He said it was natural to be scared, and that I might even feel uncomfortable with the thought of having someone else’s heart beating inside me. But he promised me, in no uncertain terms, that once I had a new heart, I would not feel any different.
My doctor was wrong.
When I came out of surgery three days ago, the first thing I felt was the weight. Not the weight of the heart, exactly. Physically it feels the same. It’s more like a weight on my soul, reminding me with every pulse that someone else’s life is over, and mine just sort of rebooted.
So yes, I feel different now. I feel lucky and humbled, and at times a little sad and guilty.
I found out just today that the guy who “donated” his heart was in his twenties. No wife or kids, so that’s good…I guess. He was riding his motorcycle on some country road when a teenager drifted lanes and hit him head on. Apparently Cade saw both of them when they arrived at the hospital. The girl is still in bad shape, but word is that she’s probably going to make it.
Bree, on the other hand, remains a question mark. We’re still sharing a room in the ICU, so at least I can be close to her, but she still hasn’t woken up. The doctors claim the swelling in her brain has gone down a lot. If Bree’s still “there,” we should start to see progress soon.
Mom and Dad seem a little torn at the moment, and I can’t blame them. They’re superhappy that I’m on the mend, but nervous to death about my sister. Laughter and tears—that pretty much sums up every moment that they’re here in our room.
After dinner Mom takes Cade home for a good night’s sleep. Dad wants to stick around a little longer.
“How you holding up?” he asks after they’re gone.
“Ah…you know. I’m OK.”
“I want the truth, Ann. What’s on your mind? You’ve been kind of up and down today.”
“Not just me,” I point out.
He smiles and nods, then glances at Bree and all of her machines and monitors. “True. I suppose we all have.”
I watch for a moment as Bree’s chest rises, then falls. Then rises again, and falls. “Actually…there is something.”
He scoots closer to my bed. “I’m all ears.”
“I was wondering about the Winner’s Game. Are you and Mom still playing?”
With a grin, he pulls his little notepad from his back pocket. “We’ve been focused on other things this week, so we’ve stopped scoring—or at least I have. But after we get through this stuff with you girls, I really want to start up again.”
“But what if Bree doesn’t make it?”
“She will.”
“But what if?”
“Then we’ll still play. I don’t want anything to ever come between your mother and me again.”
I gently run a finger down the outside of my chest, feeling the bandages beneath. “You mean like last time, when me and my heart came between you?”
He gives me a puzzled look. “Why would you say that? What happened to your heart was out of your control. Your mother and I didn’t need to drift apart like we did just because of that. Our problems were our problems, not yours, Ann.”
I nod that I understand, though part of me is reluctant to believe it.
“Anything else?” he asks.
I look at Bree again. There’s a scar on her forehead that may never go away. If she ever wakes up, she’ll have that as a constant reminder that when she tried doing something nice for me, it backfired. I’ve had so many questions since she got hurt, I don’t even know where to begin.
If she lives, will she resent me?
Will she regret what she did?
Will she still love me?
Will she want to finish our game?
If she dies, does that mean our Winner’s Game has no winner?
“Ann? You’re kind of zoning out.”
Yeah, I guess I am. My gaze moves from Bree’s face to her heart monitor. It’s a graph I am all too familiar with from past and present experience. “Sorry. I was just thinking.”
“About…?”
I shrug. “About why? When it was me whose life was at risk, I thought I understood. I’d already died once anyway, so I was kind of OK with the fact that I might die again. But now that it’s Bree? It just doesn’t make any sense anymore. Why does it have to be like this? Why did I have to have a heart problem in the first place? And why didn’t my earlier surgeries fix me? If they had, Bree would be fine. We would never have gone to the beach for the summer, I wouldn’t have met Tanner, and Bree wouldn’t have gone running off looking for him.” I place my hand over my new and improved heart. “Just…lots of whys.”