Free Let Him Live by Lurlene McDaniel Page A

professional distance was one of her father’s rules, she knew she was in trouble. She’d already broken it and could figure no way to turn the situation around.

T
welve

    “Y OU’RE DRAGGING AROUND today, Meg. Did you have a hot date last night?” Alana asked.
    Meg shook her head in response and sipped a soda, hoping the cola would revive her sagging energies. The lunch crowd in the hospital cafeteria seemed especially loud to her. “I wish it had been a hot date. No, I’m afraid last night was a real downer for me.” Quickly, she recounted her and her father’s false alarm run to Bethesda for Donovan. “I didn’t get to bed until four A.M . and then I couldn’t go to sleep. I feel like a zombie today. Sorry if I’m not carrying my share of the work on the floor.”
    “Forget it. I’m just sorry the donor didn’t work out for Donovan. Have you been by to see him this morning?”
    “Not yet. Frankly, I’m not looking forward to talking to him. I know how depressed he’s going to be, and I feel so helpless. I don’t know what to say to him. I mean, how do you go about consoling someone because he didn’t get a transplant? Someone who’s still living on borrowed time?”
    Alana’s expression was sympathetic. “You know I understand because of my brother’s situation. I wish I could help people understand that.”
    “I wish I could help the whole
world
understand it,” Meg countered. “The truth is, unless it happens to someone you care about, it isn’t important to you.”
    Alana started stacking the empty plates from Meg’s lunch tray onto her own. “You’ve got some free time. Why don’t you go see Donovan now?”
    “He’s still in ICU and won’t be brought back to his room until tomorrow. Maybe by tomorrow, I’ll feel better myself. I don’t want to make him even more depressed.”
    “He doesn’t have to know about your going to the other hospital with your father. And all you have to do is hold his hand and listen to him. Don’t feel you have to be responsible for making him cheerful. Sometimes, it’s okay to let a person work through his anger by himself.”
    Meg thought Alana sounded very wise. “The voice of experience?” she asked.
    Alana nodded. “Sometimes all I could do for my brother was listen. He needed to get it out, and I was the one person in our family who let him say anything he felt like saying.” She smiledimpishly. “And sometimes that boy had some pretty shocking things to say. I didn’t know he knew such words.”
    Meg felt a flood of gratitude toward her friend. Maybe it would be best not to tell Donovan how upset she’d gotten over the family’s refusal to donate their dead son’s organs. “I’ll remember what you said.” She touched Alana’s arm. “And thanks for the advice.”
    Alana smiled. “Anytime.”
    Two days later, Meg could visit with Donovan. Even after he was brought down from ICU, he was still incoherent. Meg spent time with Mrs. Jacoby during one of her visits to the hospital. They met in one of the pediatric playrooms, where Brett, well out of earshot, was building a spaceship with giant snap-together blocks.
    “The night the hospital called me, I almost went delirious with joy,” Donovan’s mother told Meg, sighing. “I thought it was finally happening for him. I bundled up Brett and took a cab to the hospital. The two of us waited and waited. Brett fell asleep—thank heaven—but I couldn’t think about anything except Donovan’s surgery.”
    “And then there was no surgery,” Meg commented. “You must have really felt cheated when you found out.”
    “I felt both disappointed and relieved at the same time.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Disappointed for the obvious reasons. Relieved because the unknowns are so scary for me.I mean, once he has the transplant, he has a long road of recovery ahead. Also, once it’s done, there’s no turning back. If his new liver rejects, or if something goes wrong, Donovan will