Safe With Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

was.”
    Hearing this, Sophie released a shuddering breath and crumpled into a chair by the window, shoulders curled forward and her hands over her face. Hannah glanced at her, then back to Emily. She felt strangely hollow, as though her insides had somehow slipped out of her onto the floor. She searched her daughter’s face for some hint of the girl she knew—the girl who scaled the pear tree in their backyard like a monkey, who sketched intricate drawings of dragons and queens, who danced in her room to rhythms that played only in her head.
    “Can we wait for her grandparents?” Hannah asked. Sophie had called them when she arrived at the hospital and they were already headed to the Boise airport. Isaac was on assignment somewhere in Hong Kong and hadn’t answered his cell, but Sophie left him a message to call as soon as he could.
    “Of course,” Dr. Wilder said. “But I need to know . . . have you decided if she’ll be a donor?”
    “She’d want that . . . don’t you think?” Hannah asked Sophie. Her words quaked.
    “Of course,” Sophie said, dropping her hands to her lap. “She is such a kind girl . . .” Sophie’s voice broke and tears streamed down her cheeks. Even crying, she was beautiful. Herred hair lay in a smooth sheet well past her shoulders, and her model-like cheekbones forced you to appreciate her clear green eyes and arched brows. She was the kind of woman other women accused of plastic surgery but was guilty only of exceptional genetics.
    “She is, isn’t she?” Hannah said, running her hand over Emily’s smooth cheek.
    “Yes,” Sophie said softly. “Kind and generous.” She let loose a heavy breath. “It’s the right thing to do, chérie. ”
    Hannah knew this was true. There had to be something good that came out of this horror. Some drop of joy amid an ocean of sorrow. “What do I need to do?” she asked Dr. Wilder.
    “I’ll contact the transplant coordinator,” he said. “Zoe Parker. She’ll take care of everything.”
    An hour later, a petite woman with short black hair and a clipboard entered the room and went over the entire process. Confidentiality was guaranteed—all the recipients would know was Emily’s age and city, and that was all Hannah could know about the recipients. “I can tell you right now that there’s a girl here in Seattle who desperately needs a liver,” Zoe said. “She’s been ill for years.” She paused. “Your daughter will save her life . . . and many more.”
    Hannah nodded—she opted to donate every viable part of Emily: her heart, her lungs, her liver . . . even her skin to help burn victims—but inside she was screaming, What about my daughter’s life? Why can’t someone save her? Still, she signed where she needed to sign and wished with everything in her that she could cry. Since her initial tears in the ER waiting room, her breaths had become tight and dry, scorched and cracked as the desert. Nurses swirled around Emily’s bed, injectingmedicines into her IV that Dr. Wilder said would prep her organs for successful transplants. Hannah tried not to think about the surgery, about scalpels slicing into her daughter’s skin. But over the next several hours, as she sat by Emily’s side waiting for her parents to arrive, she couldn’t stop the images from flashing through her mind.
    Hannah heard her mother before she saw her. “Oh, no!” her mother cried out as she entered the ICU and saw Emily in her bed. Hannah turned around, noting that her parents hadn’t bothered to change out of their work clothes before leaving for the airport. Her mother wore a white T-shirt and jeans smudged with dirt from her garden; her father, baggy Carhartt overalls with small holes in the knees. Her mother’s gray-streaked black hair, usually worn in a tight bun at the base of her neck, hung loose about her face; her eyes were red, her jaw trembled.
    Hannah stood, and her father strode across the room, taking her in his arms. He