Chapter 17
To keep the donor heart viable, the transplant had to be performed within twelve hours of the donor’s death.
Marlin moved quickly, calling in the medical team to wheel Nolan into the operating room.
Then he hurried off to scrub in himself.
As Nolan lay on the gurney, just before they rolled him out of the room, he reached out and gently held the back of my hand.
My palms were ice–cold and clammy with sweat, but he smiled at me–calm, even a little playful. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
I walked with him all the way to the OR.
But just as he was taken inside, a sudden commotion broke out near the donor’s ward.
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I rushed over, only to find the donor’s grieving family in chaos–one of them holding a knife, blocking the medical staff.
The donor’s loved ones were overwhelmed, their emotions unraveling.
“We don’t want to donate his heart anymore!
“I want my son buried whole. That way, in the next life, he can be healthy–complete!”
T
The organ donation forms had already been signed by both the donor and the family.
E
But in the raw aftermath of death, grief cracked through reason, and they wanted to take it all back.
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Watching a loved one’s body prepared for organ removal just moments after passing… for most people, it was more than they could bear.
Time was slipping away, and in a moment of frustration, one of the doctors blurted out, “The dead don’t come back. There is no next life.”
The words exploded like oil in a hot pan.
Relatives who’d been standing back now surged forward, forming a wall in front of the body.
They turned on us–on the doctors, the nurses, and me–with eyes full of rage and grief.
“Everyone has a next life!
“Who are you to say otherwise? Who are you to curse our loved one just to save someone else?”
All I could hear was a loud, relentless ringing in my head.
When a family changed their mind, there was nothing anyone could do.
The donor’s body was taken away.
I walked out of the room, down the hall, and stopped in front of a window. Through the glass, in the distance, I could see the
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Chapter 17
sea.
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Waves crashing under a sky filled with snow.
Nolan was still lying in the operating room. Still waiting. Waiting for a second chance at life.
It was me who had told him, “Try to live.”
And he had said yes.
And just like that, all that hope unraveled into nothing.
Nolan never got the chance to wait for a second matching heart.
After Christmas, the new year arrived before I even realized it.
By then, he was on a breathing machine–so thin he looked like nothing but skin stretched over bone.
That morning, I borrowed the hospital kitchen and made food. We ate together.
Nolan only managed to eat half of it before he threw it all up.
What came out was red–so red it almost didn’t seem real.
For him, peace had become something out of reach. A wish that never stood a chance.
That night, he started coughing up blood again. His lungs gave out. He went into respiratory failure and was rushed to the ER.
When the doctors finally came out, they quietly asked me to come inside.
I walked to his bedside and gently took his hand–thin, cold, and all bone.
With what little strength he had left, he told me he’d had his will notarized. He was leaving everything to me.
As if afraid I might turn it down, his voice trembled.
“I never had much to give.
“I couldn’t save my sister back then. I saved up a little money, but now I can’t give it to her either.
“So just… let me do this. Let me pretend I gave it to her. Let me believe I did one thing right.
“Can I go… with a little peace, at least?”
Maybe there was no one else in the world like us. No one who understood the way we did–the kind of guilt that sunk so deep it became part of you. Guilt for the people we couldn’t save. For the versions of ourselves that failed them.
I blinked through blurred eyes and nodded.
He murmured again, his voice barely above a breath, “If you ever get sick… promise me you’ll take care of yourself. Get the treatment. Really live…”
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Chapter 17
For a moment, I thought he was mistaking me for someone else.
Maybe he thought I was his sister—the one who chose to die rather than let him spend money trying to save her.
But the hand I held suddenly moved, weakly turning to squeeze mine.
And then, barely audible, he whispered, “No… I didn’t get it wrong.
*Erma, I never… never once mistook you.
“I meant you. Erma, you have to live.”
Something inside me twisted. But I couldn’t cry. Not anymore.
These past few weeks, I’d been afraid every single day that his surgery wouldn’t happen.
I used to hide in stairwells to cry–quiet, invisible tears no one saw.
But now, standing at the edge of it all–facing the one ending I’d tried so hard not to imagine–I had nothing left. Not even
tears.
