Heart to Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

I reminded myself that Elowyn loved Wyatt. Love was supposed to be strong medicine. I told Wyatt, “You should talk to her.”
    He followed Terri into the unit, and they came out about ten minutes later. Wyatt’s face was the color of chalk. He didn’t say a word. He walked down the corridor and punched the button for the elevator. It wasn’t until after he was gone that I realized my ride home was also gone. It was almost midnight and I’d have to call Mom to come pick me up.
    Terri took my hand. “I’ll take you home. Matt wants me to sleep at the house tonight. He’ll return and stay with his Sugar Plum.”
    When Matt stepped into the room, Terri fell intohis arms. I watched them hold each other for the longest time, and wondered what it would be like to have someone to lean on like they leaned on one another. I wondered if Mom ever missed my dad, then pushed the thought away. Why should she miss him? She’d given him a choice, and he’d chosen to leave us.
    In the car, Terri was uncharacteristically silent. The heater turned me buttery warm, and within minutes I was falling asleep. The strain of the past few days, the exertion of tonight’s game, the sadness inside my soul made me want to sleep for a year.
    In my driveway, Terri turned off the engine and touched my shoulder, rousing me out of my stupor. “They want to turn off the machines,” she said quietly.
    “What?” I was suddenly wide awake. “But why?”
    “Her doctors tell us she’s fallen farther down on her test scores. They say she has an irrevocable deep-brain trauma and for all intents and purposes, she’s experiencing brain death. Fixed and dilated pupils … doll’s eyes, they call it. No response to pain. No upper-brain activity on her CT scans. The only thing keeping her alive is the machines. She’ll never recover.” Terri stared out the windshield, recited the facts and statistics in a voice without inflection.
    “Never?” I couldn’t process what she was telling me. Never was forever.
    “Her body will begin to shut down with or without the machines.”
    “Do you believe them?”
    She turned her face toward me. “My little girl’s never coming home.”
    The car was turning cold and I shivered as I tried to wrap my mind around Terri’s words.
    She took a deep breath. “Did you know she’d checked the little box on the back of her driver’s license to be an organ donor?”
    “I—I don’t think so.” I dragged out the words in an effort to remember something. “There was a man who came to our school. He wanted to impress on us about safe driving. You know, not drinking and driving. And he told us that his brother was killed by a drunk driver, but that he’d donated his brother’s organs to help others, so that his brother hadn’t died for nothing. He told us that organ donation was … like … you know, noble. Elowyn and I talked about it. I didn’t know she’d checked the box.”
    “Well, she did. The transplant people talked to us yesterday. They said her organs would go to help a lot of people.”
    “You’re going to give her organs away?” The idea made me feel sick. Not organ donation in principle—the man’s speech had been inspiring—but giving away Elowyn’s organs. How could they?
    “It’s what she wanted done. She’ll look perfectlyfine after … afterward. She’ll look the same on the outside of her body. Her organs will save many lives and …” She didn’t finish the sentence.
    I almost gagged on my tears, but I didn’t break down in front of Terri. “You’re sure? About … her brain?”
    She nodded, sniffed hard. “We’re going to spend tomorrow with her. In a private room. If she’s still unresponsive at the end of the day, we’ll let them turn off the machines. A transplant team will be there….” She broke down and couldn’t continue.
    Neither could I. I grabbed at the door handle, numb and blind with tears.
    Before I could tumble out into the cold, Terri called, “Please