It was all very clean and efficient—less so, though, when Molly thought of Robin. “Once the machines are turned off, how long would it take for her—”

  “For her heart to stop?” the nurse finished in an understanding voice. “Without cerebral activity? Not long.”

  “Would she suffer?”

  “No. She feels nothing.”

  Molly swallowed. The end seemed so near. “So, once it happened—once her heart stopped—she would be wheeled out of the room.”

  “Taken to an operating room.”

  “And afterward? I mean, like, at a wake, would we see anything?”

  “You mean, disfigurement?” the nurse asked insightfully. She was either used to the question or simply attuned to Molly's thoughts. “No disfigurement. Great care is taken, so that even with an open casket, the loved one looks like herself.”

  Molly nodded. Her eyes met the nurse's. “If I'm having trouble with this, I can imagine how much more my mother will have.”

  “She's a strong woman. She simply needs to come to it in her own way.”

  KATHRYN knew time was short. Nothing, absolutely nothing about Robin's condition had changed, yet her daughter was slipping away. Finger-combing Robin's dark hair, Kathryn restored a bit of the look of a physically active runner; but Robin's forehead was too cool, her eyelids smooth. With each day, she became less the Robin Kathryn had raised.

  Or perhaps it was Kathryn's own mind making the adjustment. Accepting.

  Part of her was frightened by that.

  Elbows on the edge of the bed, she took Robin's hand in hers and, kissing it, studied her daughter's face. “I love you,” she whispered. She wanted to say more, but her throat closed up; and when she would have thought she was all cried out, her eyes filled again.

  Charlie touched her arm. “Let's take a walk,” he suggested softly.

  And still Kathryn looked at Robin. She didn't speak. Robin no longer heard. Her mother accepted that—though the thought brought more tears. Blotting them, she rose. Charlie's arm was a solid support as they went down the hall.

  Leading her to the lounge, he pointed outside. Far to the left was the river, but closer, on a patch of grass well shy of the bluffs, was a sign: We're praying for you, Robin. Nearby, seated in a loose circle, were a group of Robin's friends.

  “Other friends have brought signs,” he said, “but this is the first group that guessed the right spot. I've been fielding calls from the press. So far, they're holding off.”

  We're praying for you, Robin. Kathryn started crying again. She pressed her face against Charlie's arm until she regained control. “This is so not like me,” she finally whispered.

  “Crying?” he asked, drawing her close.

  “Falling apart.”

  “You're acting as any mother would. And you're utterly exhausted.”

  “I'm torn—pulled here, pulled there. Final has never been so finalbefore. What should I do, Charlie?”

  “Oh, sweetheart. I can't make that decision for you.”

  That struck her as being unfair. “Beginning of life, end of life—why is it always the mother's choice? When I was first pregnant, I had to decide whether to have a baby alone or to abort. Peter didn't offer an opinion. It was me. My choice.”

  “At least there were choices.”

  “They were both daunting. Choosing to abort is painful, even when it's done for all the right reasons. I would have suffered for years afterward and never have known Robin. This choice is even worse.”

  “It's the cost of having a life worth living. Choices are easy when you have nothing to lose. Would you rather have led that other kind of life?” She was feeling perverse enough to say yes, when he added, “You couldn't do that, Kathryn. It's not in your nature. I've always loved your determination—the wholehearted way you go at things.”

  “But now I'm giving up,” she said in self-reproach. This was the frightening part of accepting what was happening. Giving up was a betrayal.

  Charlie answered with startling force. “No, Kathryn. If anyone has fought these last few days, it's you. No, it's not about giving up.” His voice gentled. “It's about letting go, and I say that in the most positive sense. At some point, you'll decide there's nothing else you can do and that hanging on only brings more tears.”

  “Have you reached that point?” Kathryn asked.

  He was silent, his eyes troubled. “I want to start remembering Robin the way she was. That'll only happen when this is done.”

  “Is that enough reason to turn off the machines?”

  “Not alone. No.”

  “What would be reason enough?” She was looking for something. One concrete thing. A reason to rest on in the years to come.

  “Your having made peace with the situation.”

  That wasn't concrete, she thought. It was nebulous. Spoken by Charlie, though, it was a challenge. “But she's not in pain,” she reasoned frantically. “She isn't suffering. There has to be a reason why that's so—why we can keep her heart beating indefinitely even while her brain is dead.”

  “Some people do it to buy time until a miracle cure is found.”

  “You believe in miracles,” she reminded him, wondering if even a tiny part of him would be willing to wait. That would be something to grasp.

  “Miracles within reason,” he qualified. “When the odds are against something and it does happen, we call it a miracle. But in this case, the odds are too long. I've searched the Web, Kath. I've pulled strings with friends who know doctors. Not one of those physicians felt that with test results like hers there is any chance of recovery. Yes, we're buying time, but it's for our sake, not Robin's.”

  “My sake,” Kathryn murmured. “Robin's been a major player in my life. I can't picture my life without her. Once this … this vigil is over, once I'm not coming here every day, there'll be a huge hole in my life.”

  “It'll close. You'll fill it with other things.”

  She couldn't think of what. Her mind was numb.

  The sun had begun to slant low over the river, but Robin's friends remained on the grass. “Someone should thank them.”

  “Molly's down there.”

  Kathryn tried to see, but her eyes were too tired. “She's pushing for organ donation.”

  “Not pushing,” Charlie cautioned softly, “just saying that Robin was interested.”

  Which was precisely what Kathryn couldn't dismiss. If there was one thing she had learned in the last few days about her relationship with her daughter, it was that honesty had been lacking. Here was honesty. She couldn't deny what was on that license, any more than she could deny the content of Robin's journals.

  “What you said before,” she asked, “about picturing her the way she was? Would you be able to do that if her organs were gone?”

  “Of course I would,” he said spiritedly. “Remember my mother—how much she suffered before she died, how thin and gray she seemed after so much surgery? I don't picture her that way anymore. I picture her as she was before she got sick. That'll happen with Robin, too. As for her organs, the truth is, if she keeps them, they'll return to dust sooner. Letting other people use them will prolong their lives.”

  It was a comforting thought. “Then you do favor organ donation?”

  “Probably. But it can be done next week or next month. It doesn't have to be today.”

  Looking north, past the grass to a stand of birches that were already starting to turn yellow, she whispered, “I keep hoping—this is such a horrible thing to say—hoping that one of the machines will malfunction and the alarm won't ring and no one will rush in, so the decision will be taken out of my hands. Am I a horrible mother?”

  “No, sweetheart. You're human. This is hard.”

  She wanted to ask when it would get easier, but he had already answered that. It would get easier when she made peace with the situation. She was getting there. But the closer she got, the more frightened she was.

  She remembered a distinct moment, early in her labor with Robin, when she realized that she was actually going to have to push a full-sized baby out of her body through an impossibly small opening. What she had felt then, just hours before welcoming Robin to the world, was panic.

  With death closing in now, she felt the same thing.

  MOLLY hadn't planned on sitting with Robin's friends. She had wandered out along the bluff to pass time until David arrived, and there they were, waving her toward them, hugging her, making her sit. When she braced for the inevitable questions, none came. These friends knew the situation. They focused on memories instead, and the memories were good. Molly even laughed with them over a few.

  When she saw David on the patio, though, she hurried back. She had a mission.

  “That should make you feel good,” he said with a glance at the sign.

  “It does. Were you able to reach your friend?”

  With the hitch of his chin toward the building and a light hand at her arm, he guided her back to the hospital. One flight up and down the corridor to the central station, he introduced her to John Hardigan. A staff doctor, John was in his forties. David had taught his son two years before. They had hit it off then and occasionally ran together now.

  John led them to the small lounge. When the door was closed, he cautioned, “Organ donation is a very personal thing. How much do you want to know?”

  “Whatever you can tell me,” Molly said.

  The doctor shot David a look.

  “Whatever,” Molly insisted. “Please.”

  That seemed to be all the man needed to realize she meant business. “Organ donation is the stuff of which dreams are made,” he began. “Literally. In a given year, there may be 4,000 people waiting for 2,000 donated hearts, and 4,000 people waiting for 1,000 donated lungs. Livers? Probably 18,000 people will wait, 6,000 will get, and another 2,000 will die waiting. And the numbers are even higher when we talk about kidneys—60,000 people waiting, 15,000 getting, 4,000 dying while they wait. By the way, the survival rate for these transplants is impressive, often up in the 85 percent range.”

  Molly didn't say anything. She couldn't argue with figures like those.

  “Right now, here at Dickenson-May?” he went on. “We have a woman with pulmonary fibrosis, probably the aftereffect of an infection. She's thirty-five, which is young for the disease, and she has two children. Pulmonary fibrosis causes scar tissue to form in the air sacs, making breathing difficult. That limits her to a sedentary life, which will lead to other problems down the road. A single lung will give her a new lease on life.

  “Also in-patient right now, we have a guy in his twenties who contracted hepatitis from a blood transfusion when he was a kid. He gets chronic liver infections that require hospitalization several times a year, and he still managed to graduate from Dartmouth last June. He wants to go into medical research. All he needs is half a liver. Another patient can use the other half, and they'll both survive.”

  “Half?” Molly asked.

  “Just half,” the doctor confirmed. “The liver regenerates itself. And then upstairs are the kids. One is a seven-year-old girl who has cystic kidney disease. It goes without saying what a kidney would mean to her.” He went on, speaking generally about cases he'd seen where a donated heart, a pancreas, even an intestine had saved a life. He spoke of donors and donor families, and of new techniques being tested.

  By the time he was done, Molly had heard enough to understand why Robin had registered as a donor. Then David told her about Dylan Monroe.

  “This is the nicest little guy,” he said. They were on the back patio of the hospital now, finishing dinner. With visiting hours nearly over, there were few other diners. “He's a musical whiz—hears a song, plays it by ear. Academics are a problem. He's slow to catch on, but once he gets it, he's fine. Same with sports. He's a little plugger. What trips him up is his eyesight, which is why music is so great. His ears matter more than his eyes. He has thick glasses, but his corneal condition makes the world a hazy mess. When he's old enough, he'll have a corneal transplant. Until then, he has to work twice as hard. This isn't a matter of life and death. It isn't even technically organ donation, since the cornea is only tissue. But if you saw this little boy trying to keep up with his friends, it'd break your heart.”

  “My mother would feel for him,” Molly said.

  “Can you tell her?”

  “No. But I'll have to. No one else will.” Pushing the last of her chicken around, she set down her fork. “Funny, Robin was self-absorbed in some ways and totally selfless in others. She loved doing clinics, loved working with kids who needed extra help. And organ donation? You're right. The boy needing a corneal transplant may not be a matter of life and death, but she would care about him, too.”

  David sat back, smiling at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Remember Thursday when I helped you pack and you asked what I'd learned about Robin? I really learned more about you. What you just said confirms it. You loved your sister. You're realistic about her shortcomings, but you admired her. You've been loyal in everything you've done this week.”

  “After I blew her off,” Molly reminded him. “I'll never forgive myself for that.”

  “You will,” he said and, grabbing her tray, carried both to the trash.

  “How do you know?” she asked when he returned.

  “Because you're practical.”

  “Practical?” They headed back into the hospital. “Me? I'm emotional. I fly off the handle. I act without thinking.”

  “But once you calm down and think about what you've done, you're practical. You're doing things that no one else in your family can do, because someone has to do them. You'll tell your mother what you learned about transplants because it'll help her with the decision she has to make. You'll forgive yourself for not taking Robin on that run, because she'd have had that heart attack whether you were there or not—just as she would have had it whether I'd gone running earlier or been running faster.” He opened the door.

  Molly went through. “You've forgiven yourself, then?”

  “Intellectually. I'm still getting there emotionally. It doesn't mean I'm not sorry I didn't get there sooner. But I didn't.” His eyes met hers. “Are you going back up?”

  Molly nodded. “I have to talk with my mom.” She entered the elevator. “Are you heading home?”

  He checked his watch and joined her. “There's five minutes left before visiting ends. I want to run by my student's room. If her parents are there, I'll just keep on running. I'm no masochist.” He pressed floor buttons for her, then himself. The door closed.

  “Thank you,” Molly said quietly.

  “Elevators are easy.”

  “No. Thank you for having your friend talk with me. Thank you for listening to my whining and helping me pack and boosting my ego. You've been a bright spot in a dark week.” Which was putting it mildly.

  “The feeling's mutual,” he said and opened his arms.

  Hugging David was as natural to Molly as waking up to the sun, watering plants, stroking cats. She no longer thought of him as the Good Samaritan who had found Robin. They saw eye to eye on so much. In an incredibly short and stressful time, he had become a close friend. That made her feel really, really good.

  The elevator stopped. The door slid open. “My floor,” he said.

  Grinning, she held his gaze until the door cut him off. By the time it opened again, on Robin's floor, her grin was gone.

  DAVID meant what he said to Molly. He walked casually down the corridor, prepared to saunter right past Alexis's room if her parents were inside. Only when he saw her alone did he stop. She looked up and actually smiled.

  “Hi, Mr. Harris. Come on in.” She pushed herself higher. “Last chance. I'm going home in the morning.”

  “You are?” he asked as he neared the bed. “That's great news. How're you feeling?”

  “Fat,” she said, patting her middle. “They have been making me eat huge amounts of food. But that'll be over once I get home. I mean, like, just one more day of rest was all I needed. They want me to rest more at home, and they don't want me dancing right away. At least, that's what the doctors say. My parents know better.”

  That was what David feared. But even aside from the fact of who this particular student was, he had taught long enough to know never to directly contradict a parent to a child. “I'm really pleased for you, Alexis. I'll make sure you get your homework, and if there's anything else I can do—”

  “Tell everyone how well I look. Don't I look well?”

  He studied her face. The shadows under her eyes were marginally lighter. “I think you look more rested,” he said.

  “Oh, I look much healthier. Please let the kids know. The doctors here say I'm perfectly healthy. This was a totally false alarm—and I don't blame you, Mr. Harris. The nurse was the one who sent me here. She overreacted.”

  David might have pointed out that the doctors had admitted her for two days. But again, he wasn't the parent.

  “Well, it's always good to check things out,” he said. “So you'll let me know if you need anything?”

  She smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Mr. Harris. I really appreciate your help.”

  As good as David had felt moments earlier with Molly, he felt bad leaving Alexis's room.

  Then he spotted Donna Ackerman. She was leaning against the wall not far from her daughter's door, lips pursed, hands in her pockets. From the way she straightened expectantly, she had been waiting for him.

  When he was close enough, she asked, “Did she tell you she's going home tomorrow?”

  “She did. That's good news, Mrs. Ackerman.”

  But the woman was shaking her head. “She's going to a center that specializes in this.”

  David was relieved, but surprised. “She said the doctors gave her a good report.”

 

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