“What do you mean?”
He remained quiet for several moments. Her autumn three-wick candle, which smelled of pumpkin pancake, burned sedately on the coffee table.
“I think you put all these rules on me because you want control,” he said.
“No. I do what I do because I love you.”
“Okay, sure, you love me. But that’s not why you’re so strict.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “You got stuck with a kid when you were around my age.”
She blinked at him because, of course, he was correct. Yet the thought of his taking custody of a child at his age was abhorrent. He was a kid himself, in no way prepared to take charge of a child. Her eighteen-year-old self and Dylan’s seventeen-year-old self had little in common. By that point in her life, she’d lived away from home for four years. She’d come out of the womb a small but old and serious person. Her parents had ensured that she grew up quickly from there.
But Dylan, and thank God for this, had been afforded the chance to be young. After Mom had left him in her care, Leah had done her best to give him an elementary school experience free from worries graver than memorizing multiplication tables. As a middle school kid, he’d spent chunks of his weekends immersed in video games. As a high school kid, he had the luxury of playing football and hiding in his room and regarding the adults in his life as hopelessly uncool.
“I did not get stuck with you,” she said.
“Yeah you did. You were supposed to go and get your PhD, and it makes me feel like dirt when I think about how you had to take care of me and couldn’t go.”
She stepped to him and held his face in her hands. The soft little boy face had turned firm and angular. But this was still her Dylan. “You’re my favorite person. Please believe me when I tell you that having the chance to take care of you has been the greatest joy of my whole life. Would Princeton have been nice?” A rueful chuckle spilled from her. “Yes. But if I had the choice to make all over again, I would choose you every single time. There’s no contest, Dylan. I got the better bargain.”
He stepped back a few feet, looked toward the TV.
Her hands fell to her sides. “Also, just so we’re really clear on this, you have nothing to feel like dirt about. You weren’t old enough back when Mom left to make a single decision, nor should you have had to. So none of what happened is on you. No one blames you. No one thinks that anything is your fault.”
“Yeah.” He kept his face pointed to the side.
“Really, though. I mean it. . . . Dylan?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “What I was trying to say is that I think a lot of your freedom got taken away. So even though you talk about trusting God, you’re always trying to control me to make up for the stuff you couldn’t control before.” He met her eyes with a knowing look.
Ouch. He might have hit on a vein of truth there. And it hurt. Over the years, had she started unintentionally yanking away some of the control that rightfully belonged to God and appropriating it for herself?
He ambled toward his cave.
“You don’t need to go,” she said. “We can talk about this more. Or you can finish your show.”
“Nah. I’m done.” He turned into his bedroom and shut the door.
She was left with a candle, a clean house, an open suitcase, and Dylan’s words, which circled around and around her like a whirlpool.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Isabella Ackerman’s medical team gathered in the conference room on Wednesday morning. Sebastian and the other surgeons were present, as was Audrey, the cardiologist in charge of the transplant program. Markie. The fellows and residents.
“These are the best oxygen saturation numbers Isabella’s had in weeks,” Sebastian’s mentor, Dr. Nelson, said. “Is she status seven?”
“Yes, but I think she should be status one,” Sebastian answered. Status seven meant that she was on the heart transplant list, but currently ineligible. Status one would designate her as a patient in urgent need of a transplant.
“In my opinion,” Audrey said, “she’s not an acceptable candidate. Her neural status is unknown.”
“Her lungs aren’t great,” a resident added, “and she’s repeatedly struggled with ascites.”
“A new heart is unlikely to fix her issues.” Audrey tapped her pen against the file before her. “She might die as a result of the transplant surgery.”
“But she will certainly die without the transplant surgery.” Sebastian’s anger, which had been very close to the surface since his fight with Leah, rose like a storm surge. “Our task is to give every child a chance.”
“Yes, but if Isabella receives a heart, she deprives another child—a healthier child with a better prognosis—of his or her chance,” Audrey replied. “Our task is actually to ensure that we’re allocating hearts to those most worthy of them.”
It might be coldblooded of him, but those other worthy candidates were not his patients. Isabella was his patient, and writing her off was not an option for him. She’d fought her way back from sepsis. “Isabella is worthy of a heart.”
“But is she the most worthy?” Audrey challenged.
“Worthy enough for status one,” he said.
Tension stretched through the room as they considered Isabella’s numbers, her history, her options.
Dr. Nelson resettled his glasses. “I’m inclined to move her to status one. If a heart becomes available and we have any reason to think, at that point in time, that a transplant with Isabella will not be successful, we’ll defer the heart to another candidate.”
“I worry about the damage we’ve already done to Isabella’s parents over the past three months by giving them false hope,” Audrey said. “What will this do?”
“We’ve given her parents hope,” Sebastian said evenly. “But not false hope.”
“Can you try to get a heart for her?” Dr. Nelson asked Audrey.
“I have reservations.”
“But can you try?”
Everyone in the room zeroed in on Audrey.
“I can try,” she eventually said.
Sebastian took the elevator up to his balcony. He stood at the rail and watched the small people and small cars, all of them preoccupied with achieving the next thing on their to-do list. I’ve got to visit my brother. I’ve got to get lunch. I’ve got to get to my appointment on time.
He’d gotten what he wanted just now—Isabella upgraded to status one. He wasn’t experiencing any happiness over that outcome, however. Partially because that outcome had been, for him, the only and necessary outcome. Partially because Isabella was lying unconscious several floors below with a catastrophically deformed heart, so this wasn’t the time to celebrate. Partially because, since his argument with Leah, the space suit had returned that prevented him from feeling much of anything—
No. That wasn’t true.
He did feel a few things very sharply and clearly.
He felt miserable. And he felt frustrated.
He’d been waiting for Leah to come to her senses and call him. But she hadn’t.
How long was he supposed to wait?
He’d already waited a day and a half, which was a day and a half longer than he’d been willing to wait. He didn’t like being far away from her at the best of times. He hated being far away from her with angry silence between them.