Page 33 of Serenity
Faith squeezed my hand and answered his question, “I had a little bit of a health scare yesterday, and my doctor had me admitted to the hospital overnight. It was more for observation than anything else,” she hurried to add when my mom cried out. “But while we were there, Dillon had mentioned to my doctor that he was interested in being screened as a donor in case I ever needed another transplant. Part of that process is a medical history review, and the heart transplant was in his records at thehospital.”
“I see,” my dad murmured as he noddedhishead.
“I’m glad you do because I sure as shit don’t understand any of this, Dad!” I held on to Faith like she was my lifeline—because that’s exactly whatshewas.
My mom leaned forward and put her hand on my dad’s arm. “It’s time. We need to tell him allofit.”
“Please,” Iadded.
“You’re right.” My dad nodded and sighed. “It’s not an easy story, but you deserve thetruth.”
“When we got the call about the accident, it was the most scared I’d ever been. The police said you and Declan were being taken by ambulance to Southeast Memorial. Both of you were seriously injured, and we should get there as quickly as we could,” my mombegan.
“The ten minutes it took for us to get to the emergency room felt like the longest in our lives,” my dad continued the story. “And then it took forever to get an update because you arrived only minutes before us. The nurse only had limited information when she came out to tell us what she could, which was basically that it didn’t look good. We found out how bad it was when the doctor who’d been working on Declan came out maybe an hour later to tell us he’d suffered a devastating neurologic injury. He was on a ventilator and was suffering from a loss of brainfunction.”
“He didn’t have a status update for you,” my mom added. “But he promised to get one for us. When he came back out, I knew it was going to be bad. And it was. They suspected you had a cardiac contusion caused by blunt trauma to your chest wall during thecrash.”
“A cardiac contusion?” I knew contusion meant bruise because I’d gotten more than my fair share of them when I played football, and I recalled my parents saying something about bruising to my heart when I woke up from my coma. “I needed a heart transplant because of abruise?”
“If only it were that simple,” my dad sighed. “It led to an aortic rupture, and you had profuse bleeding coming from the aorta where it connects to your heart. They did emergency surgery to try to repair it, and at first we thought you were in the clear and we only needed to worry about Declan. But in the end the damage to your heart was too severe, and after a couple of weeks the doctors said the long-term prognosiswasn’tgood.”
“We were in an impossible situation,” my mom cried. “Both of our sons in comas, with no idea if either of you would survive. Your brother had a complete loss of brain function, and eventually one of the doctors suggested a possiblesolution.”
“Give me Declan’s heart,” Iwhispered.
“Yes,” my dad confirmed. “They told us it was the only way tosaveyou.”
Whoa. I’d already figured it had to be something like that, but it still hurt to hear it out loud. “I get that you were put into a situation where you had to make a decision that nobody should ever have to face, but what I don’t understand is why you kept lying to meaboutit.”
“Because we were worried that the complete truth woulddestroyyou.”
Faith’s hand tightened at my mom’s whispered confession, dragging my attention away from my parents. “Are you sure you’re ready to hear the rest? Because I feel likethere’smore.”
“The rest?” I echoed, glancing up at my parents. “Is she right? Istheremore?”
My mom’s eyes filled with tears as she nodded, and my dad looked older than his age as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “We haven’t told you the hardestpartyet.”
“Shit.” My head dropped low, and I stared at my lap for a couple of minutes while I tried to wrap my head around the idea of there being something worse than I’d already learned. But in the end, it didn’t matter how bad it was. If it was about Declan and me, I wanted to know. I looked back up and demanded, “Tellme.”
Faith let go of my hand and scooted closer to my side. Her arm around my back was the only thing that kept me from sliding off the couch as my dad finished thestory.
“Declan’s brain damage was beyond repair. They said he had no hope of ever recovering. That the machines were keeping his body alive, but he was already gone. We couldn’t save him. Not really. But we could save you...if we turned off the machines that were keeping your brotheralive.”
