"That"d be cool, I guess."
"Can you drive a standard shift?" Sam asked. "A car, not a horse, that is."
Cody"s mouth twitched. "Sure. I learned on one."
"There"s an old Jeep in the pole barn I could let you use for getting to and from school. That way, you wouldn"t waste time waiting around for the school bus. You"d have more time for ch.o.r.es in the morning."
Cody carefully weighed the merits of the offer. It was really no contest. The bus that smelled like a locker room or ch.o.r.es and his own wheels. "That"d be good," he said. Then, reaching through reluctance, he said, "Thanks."
Sam acted like it was no big deal. He opened the chips and pa.s.sed the bag to Cody. They were silent again until Cody spoke up without even thinking. "This morning really sucked," he said, feeling stupid but unable to keep quiet.
"The transplant, or school?"
"The transplant. School-well, that sucked all day. At the hospital, everybody was like, really nervous." He made a face in the side mirror. "I kept thinking how totally gross the whole thing was."
"Gross, huh?"
He stared out the window at the scrubby landscape swishing past. "You must think I"m really selfish." He immediately wished he hadn"t said that. It was none of this guy"s business what was going on in his head. But it was so strange. Cody just kept wanting to talk.
"Why would I think that?"
"Because I didn"t make them test me to see if I could be the kidney donor."
"I suspect they would have tested you if your mom hadn"t turned out to be a near-perfect match."
"n.o.body even asked me."
"And that"s a problem?"
Cody scrubbed the side of his hand at the fogged-up window. "They should have checked me out instead of treating me like I didn"t exist."
"Did you say you wanted to be tested?"
"My mom didn"t even tell me what was going on until a few weeks ago. And then it was like, "Well, we"re moving to Montana so I can give this guy a kidney." "
Sam cleared his throat. Cody thought he might be grinning. For some reason, Sam was pretty easy to talk to. He didn"t push, didn"t try too hard. He was just... there. Quiet. Cody"s mom was always nagging him about "opening up." She didn"t seem to understand that he was not going to open up if she kept talking all the time.
"So anyway," he said, "it was like, really intense. They had my mom in this room with one of those paper hair things on her head and a bunch of tubes and wires all hooked up to her, and I had to go in and say good-bye, like she was going to another planet and I wouldn"t ever see her again. And all that was before I had to go to Hicksville High."
"I can see how that would suck."
Though Sam didn"t take his eyes off the road, Cody could feel the full force of his attention, his fascination. It was a new experience, having an adult be this interested in what he had to say. Why? Because Sam was a doctor? Or his father, or just a guy? Or because he"d been hanging out with Cody"s mom and they put that stupid picture in the Enquirer?
"Since n.o.body called from the hospital while I was at school, I guess everything went okay. But I was wicked nervous all day."
"Uh-huh," said Sam in that lazy way of his. "So was I."
Chapter 35.
Mom. Hey, Mom." Cody. More powerful than any drug, her child"s voice drew Mich.e.l.le out of the fog.
"Cody..." She could feel her lips move, but only a whisper of sound came out. She had the sense that time had pa.s.sed; she remembered hearing that her father was all right. The pain-cloud still surrounded her, but this time she wanted to fight her way out of the fog.
"Where... am..."
"In your room, Mich.e.l.le." A deeper voice. A man"s voice.
"Brad-" No. Sam. Sam. "Hurts," she said.
"She"s miserable." Sam spoke to someone in a clipped voice. "I want her to have a self-administered morphine pump."
Bless you, Sam.
"Yes, we"ve ordered one-"
"Now, okay? Not in a minute, but now."
Typical doctor. That aggressiveness, that obnoxious, abrasive personality. His staccato order worked. She couldn"t open her eyes or count the minutes, but in a short while she felt the drip, and someone guided her thumb to the b.u.t.ton that would deliver the gentle, numbing surge of narcotics to her system. She pushed the b.u.t.ton, and almost instantly felt the wavelike swish of morphine curling in, then rolling back out, taking some of pain"s fury with it.
" "S"working," she said. Dry. Mouth was so dry.
"That"s good, Mich.e.l.le," Sam said. "You rest now."
She couldn"t remember if he"d touched her or not since she awakened. Probably not. Doctors didn"t do that so much, not anymore. She tried to recall what had pa.s.sed between them the last time they"d been together. Hotel room. Something big, important, interrupted. She couldn"t think.
"School." She formed the word carefully with her lips. "Cody. How was school?"
"I survived," he said simply.
She wanted to hear it all, every detail, but she couldn"t stay focused on one subject. "You"ve seen... my father?"
"I"ll take Cody in a minute," Sam said. "Gavin"s on this floor, different wing. He has to be quarantined in ICU for a while, but we"ll look in on him."
Mich.e.l.le drifted in and out of pain and consciousness. Heard the TV news, and smiled when she felt Cody come over to the bed and awkwardly, hesitantly, touch her head.
Floating in the morphine fog, she listened to them getting ready to go back to Crystal City. She mouthed I love you and when they left she turned her face to the wall and wept for no reason she could name.
When she woke up again, the room was empty except for the drips and equipment. The s.p.a.ce between the drapes showed a night sky.
She pressed the b.u.t.ton on the morphine pump. Gentle swish of drugs.
The sky grew red around the edges as if it had caught fire.
Later, someone put something around her ankles. Helpless but resentful, she mumbled, "What"s that?"
"Air cuffs. You"ll hear the electric pump come on about every twenty minutes."
"Too loud. Won"t get any sleep at all."
"You have to keep these on until you can get out of bed."
With that powerful motivation, she was up at sunup, clinging to the arm of a nurse"s aide as she took one step, then lowered herself gingerly to the chair by the bed.
"Okay," she said. "Off with the cuffs already."
The aide touched a buzzer. "You win. Your husband warned us that you were a fighter."
Husband. Sam. No way. He wasn"t her husband. He was... too d.a.m.ned complicated to explain to the nurse"s aide.
Later she forced herself to get up again and wait patiently, staying in the chair, even eating something. Rice pudding. Too sweet, not enough nutmeg. Then it was back to bed, feeling as if she"d run a marathon. At one point Donna checked in on her, face wreathed in smiles.
"Just wanted to be sure you heard-your kidney is working great."
Mich.e.l.le squeezed her eyes shut and felt a powerful rush of grat.i.tude.
We did it, Daddy. We did it.
Tuesday
Chapter 36.
G.o.d, these are incredible. When did you do these?" Natalie"s voice pried into a strange dream Mich.e.l.le was having. In the dream, she floated through the wisps of steam that curled off the surface of the hot springs where she and Sam had made love. Only she was alone in the fog, searching, calling out, but no one could hear her.
"Mich.e.l.le?" Natalie was insistent. "I was asking about these drawings."
She gave up on the dream and dragged her eyes open. "What... drawings?"
"Here." Cody held a plastic bottle with a flexible straw to her lips.
Mich.e.l.le drank gratefully. "Thanks. What drawings?"
"I found them in your suitcase." Natalie held up one of the sketches Mich.e.l.le had done before the surgery. "These are wonderful."
"They"re pretty cool, Mom."
She took another drink. Didn"t want to think about the drawings and what had happened the morning of the transplant. Truthfully, she had no idea if the experience meant anything at all. "I feel as if I"ve been away forever," she said. "What day is it?"
"Tuesday."
She studied Cody. He seemed... different. She supposed that working outside a lot added color to his usually pale face. He might be eating better, too. He looked bigger. Filled out. When had that happened? she wondered with a clutch of apprehension. Changes don"t happen overnight. Why hadn"t she noticed?
"Is school going all right?" she asked.
"Yeah."
She didn"t believe him. Someone had probably coached him not to say anything to upset her. "Are you and Sam getting along okay?"
He shrugged. "I guess."
"I"ve been keeping tabs on the situation," Natalie reminded her. "They"re getting along fine."
"He doesn"t know me," Cody pointed out. "He"s just some guy. Ow! Quit kicking me, Aunt Natalie."
"Now the big question," Mich.e.l.le said. "How"s school going?"
"Sucks," he said predictably, then winced as Natalie kicked him again. "I"ll survive, Mom. But I really want to get back to Seattle."
"Speaking of getting back, I have to leave, sweetie," Natalie said. "That is, if you"ll be okay without me."
Mich.e.l.le smiled, feeling her lower lip crack with the effort. "I"ll be okay without you. Just not nearly as entertained."
"Call me, all right? Anytime, night or day."
"Sure, Nat. You"ve been a peach."
"Take care of yourself. I"ll keep the home fires burning."
After visiting hours were over, the nurses let Mich.e.l.le walk in the hallway, wheeling her IVs. She made them take out the catheter at the first opportunity. Pain flamed through her, but she kept walking, concentrating on the scuffing sound of her slippers on the linoleum tile floor. She found her way to Gavin"s room.
Her father was asleep, zippered in a sterile coc.o.o.n of clear plastic. He looked terrible, a waxen corpse. No. She wanted to scream it. Daddy. Oh, Daddy. We"re not finished, she thought frantically. We just found each other again. The very air around her suddenly felt unnatural, noxious. Everything was broken.
But his coloring was remarkable-a healthy flush to his cheeks, hands and fingernails pink. Everyone a.s.sured her that the transplant was a success, the kidney was working.
Please let it be true. Please please please let it be true.
She lifted her hand, pressed her fingertips lightly to the plastic bubble, and said, "I love you, Daddy." Her words sounded m.u.f.fled and small in the machine-snarled room. His chest gently rose and fell, rose and fell.
As she shuffled slowly back to her bed, she wondered if she"d ever told him that when he was awake.
She hadn"t.
But if he didn"t know it after this, he"d never catch on.