My Daughter Is Dying, and My Husband Is Saving His Lover's Son novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Six-Thirty

Heidi is prepped for the harvest, Brad arrives late with Caden and rages at the team, and the doctor tells him the donor decides; in recovery, a bank alert shows the Clara fund has lost $48,000.

I didn't text my mother.

I screenshotted the post, the caption, and the time stamp.

Then I sat on the landing and saved every photo on Hope for Caden to a folder I named "Clara."

There were two hundred and twelve.

I stopped looking at them after the fourth one, because the fourth one was her port.

At five I put Clara in the car in her fox pajamas and the crown, because she wouldn't take it off.

At six-thirty I was lying on a gurney in a paper gown.

The pre-op nurse was taping an IV into the back of my hand.

"Your veins are terrible," she said kindly.

"I've been told."

Clara's doctor came through the curtain with two coffees and handed me neither.

"Last chance," he said. "Nobody here will think less of you."

"Is the OR ready?"

"It's running twenty minutes behind. Anesthesia got pulled to a trauma."

"Then I'll wait twenty minutes."

He looked at me for a long moment, then nodded and signed something.

A man in navy scrubs pushed through the curtain behind him.

He was tall, with a short dark beard and reading glasses sitting on top of his head.

"I'm Matt. I'm the night charge nurse on seven. Clara's unit."

"Isn't your shift over?"

"Seven o'clock." He checked the clock on the wall. It said 7:04. "So technically I'm a volunteer."

"Why are you here?"

"Your daughter told me to make sure nobody drops you." He unlocked the brake on my gurney. "She was very specific. She made me repeat it."

I almost laughed.

Then I heard Brad's voice in the hallway.

"Where is she? I'm her husband. I'm the donor!"

The curtain ripped back on its rings.

Brad stood there in yesterday's shirt.

Caden stood behind him in a soccer hoodie, holding a juice box, his shaved head shining under the lights.

"What is this?" Brad said. "Why is she on a bed?"

"Sir, this is a sterile prep area," the pre-op nurse said.

"It's 7:20," I said. "Prep was at six-thirty."

"Caden had a nosebleed!"

"Did he."

"It was a bad one! Tasha was panicking!" He turned to the doctor. "I'm here now. Get her off that thing. We're doing it the way we planned."

Clara's doctor didn't move.

"Mr. Sorensen, your wife signed as donor at five forty-five this morning."

"She can't do that without me."

"She can."

Brad laughed, high and ugly.

"Do you know what you've done?" he said to me. "I posted about this. Hundreds of people are praying for me right now. You've humiliated me in front of everyone."

The anesthesiologist had come in behind him. Two OR nurses. A tech with a cart.

All of them stood very still.

"Tell him," I said to the doctor. "Out loud. So he hears it from you."

The doctor set both coffees down on the counter.

"The donor decides," he said. "Not the spouse. Not the father. The donor. Heidi is the donor."

"I'm the better match!"

"You were. At six-thirty."

Caden tugged Brad's sleeve.

"Uncle Brad, Mom said we have to take the picture before."

Every person in that room turned and looked at the boy.

Brad's face went red to the ears.

"What picture?" I asked.

"Just a picture," Brad said. "For the page. People want updates."

"In a pre-op bay. With my daughter's marrow."

"It's for Caden's donors, Heidi. It's not about you."

Matt kicked the brake off the other wheel.

"We're going," he said to the room.

"You can't just..." Brad started.

"I can," Matt said. "I'm very tall, and I have a key card."

He pushed my gurney through the curtain and past Brad.

He didn't hurry, and he didn't go around him either.

Brad had to step back against the wall.

In the corridor, the ceiling lights went by in white squares.

"Was that the dad?" Matt asked.

"That was the dad."

"Huh."

"That's all you're going to say?"

"I'm on volunteer time. I'm saving the rest for when I'm paid."

The double doors of the OR opened.

Somebody put a mask over my face and told me to count backward from ten.

I got to seven.

I thought of the candles.

When I woke up, the back of my pelvis felt like someone had driven a truck over it twice.

A recovery nurse was checking my blood pressure.

"Low," she said. "We're hanging a unit of blood. You'll get a second one tonight."

"Did it work? Is it enough?"

"More than enough. It's already on its way upstairs."

I cried a little then. Only a little.

My phone was in a plastic bag on the tray beside me.

The screen had lit up.

In September I had set an alert on the Clara fund, our joint savings.

Any balance under fifty thousand, the bank would tell me.

I had set it as a joke. The fund was at eighty-six thousand. Clara's medicine was covered. I never touched it.

The alert said: "Your balance is now $38,000.00."

The last transfer had gone out at 9:47 the night before.

While I was on the phone with the doctor.

While Clara was asleep in her crown.

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