The Winner's Game(106)

He nods. “Is that it?”

“Well…no. I’ve been thinking a lot about my new heart. I’m struggling to understand why that guy had to crash on his motorcycle. Why did the girl have to hit him? Why am I the lucky one who is sitting here with a beating heart, while he’s having a funeral?” I pause to take a breath, then finish with one last question. “Why does one person have to die for another one to live? I used to think I knew the answer, but now that it’s more real—now that someone is actually dead and I’m still breathing—I’m having a hard time remembering what I thought the answer was.”

Dad is smiling patiently. He reaches up and takes my hand. “Perfectly reasonable questions, Ann. I guess I don’t know the answers to all of them, but I will say this. Life is tenuous at best. It’s fragile. And it’s impossibly short, no matter how long you live. The thing that’s easy to forget is that nobody was meant to live forever—not in this life anyway. We’re here, and then we move on, some of us faster than others. But once in a while, those who are leaving are able to give a wonderful gift of life to someone else, like you getting the heart. But that doesn’t change the fact that everyone—you, me, your mother, Grandma Grace, and yes, the guy on the motorcycle—we’re all going to die sometime.”

“And Bree,” I moan, getting choked up.

“Yes,” he whispers. “And Bree.”

I can feel my cheeks getting hot. And wet. “I think that’s what’s been bothering me the most. I wouldn’t mind if it was me dying—Heck, I thought for sure I was going to die when I went out in the ocean after Cade. But every time I look over at Bree, I worry that maybe it’s her turn instead of mine, and I’m just not sure I’m ready for that.”

“Me neither,” he says, as much to himself as to me.

Dad hangs out until the nurses come around for their nine-o’clock checks on me and Bree. I think he’s thinking—or wishing—that their assessment will show that Bree has improved, but no such luck.

“Status quo,” says the chief nurse with a grimace after she’s taken all of Bree’s vitals. “Sorry, Mr. Bennett. You probably hoped to hear something else, but hang in there. You never know what tomorrow brings.”

So true.

Heck, you never even know what today brings, let alone tomorrow! Like, one day you wake up hoping to set state swimming records, and later the same day you end up drowning at the bottom of a pool.

Or one day you go in for a routine checkup, just to see if your medicines and therapies are working, and you find out you’re going to need a transplant.

Or one day you’re riding your motorcycle down the road, enjoying the sun and the wind, and the next thing you’re lending your spare parts to the sick girl on the sixth floor with the bum heart.

Or in Bree’s case, one day you wake up with some brilliant plan for how you’re going to win a game, and you don’t even realize it but you’ve easily done the best job truly loving your siblings and making them feel special, but you wind up broken and bent in the back of an ambulance, then lying in the ICU beside your sister, just waiting to die.

So, yeah…you never know what tomorrow brings…

* * *



Usually I feel like the nurses wake me up every hour throughout the night and by the time morning comes I’m more tired than when I fell asleep. But not this time! Somehow I manage to sleep though their overnight checks, which is a miracle. For the first time since Cannon Beach, I wake up feeling completely rested.

These past few days I’ve gotten used to wishing Bree a good morning as soon as I wake up, even though she never responds. So first thing I do is rub the tired out of my eyes and roll over to face her. “Hey, Breezy, good—”

She’s gone. Her bed. Her monitors. Everything…gone.

In a panic, I hit the red button next to my bed.

A minute later, I’m still alone in my room.

I can’t take it. I climb out of my bed, exit the room in pajamas and bare feet, and rush down the hall.

Toward the end, before the hallway turns, I see Mom and Dad talking to a doctor outside the waiting area.

What are they doing here so early? This can’t be good…

As I pick up my pace, the doctor turns and leaves in the opposite direction. Mom is breaking down in tears. Dad is crying too. He wraps his arms around her in a tight embrace.

“Where is she?” I ask tentatively as I approach. “Where is Bree? Why did they take her?”

My questions catch my parents by surprise. Mom unwraps herself from Dad’s arms and opens hers up for me. “It’s OK,” she whispers in my ear while we’re hugging. “It’s going to be OK.”