“He was fortunate to find a donor,” Katie said.
“I was his donor,” Phil told her with a beaming smile. “It was the greatest feeling in the world—knowing that I could give my son a second chance at life.”
Katie felt goose bumps skitter along her arms.
“I support the Transplant Games wholeheartedly,” Phil went on. “The world needs to know that people with organ transplants are very normal people, grateful to be alive. Anyway, when I came this year, I never imagined I’d see the race I saw yesterday. I want you to keep in touch with me.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Do you think I could get a scholarship for track? Even with a heart transplant?”
The coach laughed. “You’d be the secret weapon of some collegiate coach’s arsenal, Katie. Of course, you could. Coaches pick athletes who can win. And you’re a winner.”
She felt Josh reach under the table and grasp her hand. “We’re all winners,” she replied, squeezing his in return.
Later, during the banquet, when special awards were given out, Katie received one for Best New Participant. She cradled it in her arms, knowing it would get a place of honor on the shelves in her bedroom. Afterward, she hugged other recipients warmly, promising to return to the Games next year and run in more races.
“It’s hard to say good-bye,” Katie confided to Josh as they returned to their hotel.
“There’s always next year,” he said.
Katie didn’t remind him that for some of them, there would be no next year. For in spite of their good health, medications, doctors, tests, and technological advancements, all of them were carrying around foreign organs inside their bodies—organs that could reject at any time, leaving them in desperate need of a new donor, or dead.
At noon the next day, Katie, Josh, and her parents boarded a plane and flew home to Michigan.
* * *
Once home, in spite of her reluctance, Katie became a minicelebrity. The paper did a front-page story on her, two TV stations invited her to be a guest on special programs devoted to community events, and several radio stations did live interviews with her.
“You look fabulous on the tube,” Melody told her as she spent one rainy afternoon in Katie’s bedroom, hearing all about Los Angeles. “Maybe I could be your groupie.”
“Very funny. I’m only doing this to help give publicity to the organ donation program. You know how I hate this limelight stuff.”
Melody made a face. “Party pooper. Has Oprah called yet?”
Katie bopped her on the head with a pillow, sending the two of them rolling and giggling on the floor.
“You are returning to dull Ann Arbor High in the fall, aren’t you?” Melody asked after their tussle.
“You bet. We’re going to take state honors in track this year.”
“I think we can,” Melody agreed. She paused, before asking, “How are you and Josh?”
Katie fingered the silver locket around her neck. “Crazy about each other. Melly, I feel like the luckiest person in the world.”
That night, when Josh came over, she took him outside to the swing on her front porch. They sat close together while the soft scents of the summer night folded around them and fireflies blinked from the front lawn. Katie handed him a large, flat box, which she plucked from its hiding place under a nearby table. “Now, it’s my turn to give you a present,” she said.
“For me?” He looked genuinely surprised.
“For posterity,” she teased mysteriously. He opened the box and lifted out a large scrapbook. “I’ve been working on it for months.”
Josh flipped it open. His breath caught. She’d written a dedication page, which read: “To the Life and Courage of Aaron Martel.” Every page was filled, not only with the photos he had lent her, but with other photographs and with newspaper clippings about Aaron’s high school and brief collegiate athletic careers. A large knot of emotion wedged in Josh’s throat. When he was able to clear it out, he asked, “Where did you get all this stuff?”
“Your gramps helped get the extra pictures for me, and Daddy helped with the articles. He got them from your newspaper back in Indiana, from their old files. And the coach at Michigan is a friend of Dad’s, so he was able to supply the college information. I left some pages blank in the back in case you want to add any personal stuff.” She reached out and stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. “Do you like it? Are you surprised?”
To answer her, he put the book aside, took her in his arms, and kissed her with all the feeling he had stored up and locked away in his heart throughout his lifetime.
* * *
In the middle of the night, Katie awoke feeling chilled and disoriented. Her teeth chattered, and her head hurt. She pulled the covers up to her chin, thinking that maybe the air conditioner was malfunctioning, but she couldn’t get warm. The next morning, when her mother came to check on her, Katie was huddled beneath the covers.
Her mother took one look at her and blanched. “Katie, what’s wrong?”
Tears filled Katie’s eyes, and fear filled her mind. “I’m sick, Mom,” she said. “You’d better call the doctor.”
Twenty
“IT’S A FLU virus,” Dr. Jacoby said. He stood at the side of Katie’s hospital bed, examining lab reports.
“The flu’s pretty common,” Katie said, hopefully. “You should have me up and around in no time, shouldn’t you?”
The worried expressions on her parents’ faces were upsetting her. She wanted to chase away their fears, so she selected the words of assurance she longed to hear from her doctor. Dr. Jacoby continued to frown. “No illness is simple for you, Katie. Remember, you’re taking immune-suppressants, and they make you highly susceptible to sickness and infections.”
Yet without the suppressants, her heart would certainly reject. Katie felt caught in a vicious cycle. “What about the results of her heart biopsy?” Her mother asked the question Katie had feared asking.
Dr. Jacoby glanced up from Katie’s medical chart. “It’s showing mild rejection.”
Katie felt sick to her stomach. “That’s bad, isn’t it?” she asked.
“While rejection is always a threat, episodes aren’t uncommon when a patient undergoes an infection or illness, such as you’re experiencing.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“We’ll increase your immune-suppressant doses and see if that doesn’t turn it around.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Katie persisted.
“Let’s not borrow trouble.” Dr. Jacoby patted her arm.
Katie felt coldness snake along her insides. She understood that a second heart transplant was unlikely for her both because of the scarcity of donor hearts and because of her blood type. Aaron’s heart had come to her through an odd chain of events that wouldn’t likely be repeated. Also, Katie realized that while a kidney patient who rejected could go back on dialysis, there was no magical machine capable of keeping her alive until a new donor could be found—there was no mechanical substitute for the human heart.
As upset as her parents were, nothing prepared Katie for the degree of Josh’s anguish. When he came to see her, he looked terrified. She wanted to assure him that she’d be all right, but knew she couldn’t lie. He took her hand and held it tightly, as if his grip might pull her away from the darkness threatening her. “Don’t leave me, Katie,” he whispered.
Weak as she was, she reached up and smoothed the hair on his forehead. “No regrets, okay?”
“Why, Katie? Everything was going so perfect—why did this have to happen?”
“I don’t know.” She moistened her lips. She felt weak and feverish, and it was difficult to concentrate, but there was something she wanted Josh to know. “If I had it all to do over again, I would. Every bit of it. The surgery … the pain … the fear … the recovery … the isolation—all of it was worth it, Josh, because it gave me another shot at life.”
Josh started to speak, but she silenced him with a look. “He
ar me out. Every day, every minute that I’ve had, has been wonderful. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, and I’d do it all again if I got the chance. Think of it, Josh. I’ve been living—really living—with another person’s heart inside my chest for almost a year. Isn’t that extraordinary?”
Josh watched her eyes shut as she slipped into a world of dreams where he couldn’t go. He held her hand and struggled with bone-chilling fear. “Stay with me,” he whispered, remembering what his grandfather had told him the night of Aaron’s funeral. You’ll be happy again, the old man had said. He’d been right. The months Josh had spent with Katie had been some of the happiest of his life.
A person never grows deep unless he’s been through suffering. Gramps had told Josh that, too. Right again, Josh thought. At the moment, he felt a thousand feet deep. He brought Katie’s hand to his mouth and kissed her palm. “Hang in there, Katie. Hang in.”
Increased doses of her regular medications didn’t halt the rejection process. “Don’t you have any secret, magic microbes, Doc?” Katie asked a frowning Dr. Jacoby.
“There is another drug,” Dr. Jacoby said, his eyes serious. “It’s experimental, though. We use it only in extreme cases, when conventional medications aren’t doing the trick. It’s called by a string of letters and numbers. We can’t use it for long, because of the side effects, but sometimes, it turns the tide and halts the rejection. Then we switch back to the tried and true as soon as we have a particular episode under control.”
Katie saw her parents exchange glances. Weakly, she said, “It’s my life. I want to give it a try.”
“Oh, Katie—” her mother started to protest.
Katie’s dad put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “If that’s what Katie wants, we shouldn’t interfere,” he said.
Her mother nodded, without an argument. Katie knew the matter was out of all of their hands, anyway. She looked at her doctor. “Let’s do it.”
“You’ll run a high fever,” Dr. Jacoby cautioned. “You’ll be very sick … disoriented and out of it. You might even have to go back on a ventilator for a time. But if it works—”
“Do it,” Katie repeated, holding his gaze unflinchingly. “You know me—I have to go for the gold.”
“We’ll have to move you back into the ICU.”
Katie hated the thought, but knew she had no choice. She looked to her parents. “I want you to promise me something.”
“Anything,” her dad said.
“If it doesn’t work, promise me you’ll look out for Josh … that you’ll take care of him, be a family to him.”
“We’ll treat him like a son,” her father said.
“And the rest of the Wish money … see that it goes to someone in need of a transplant who can’t afford it.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I want.” Katie shut her eyes, too exhausted to say anything else.
Josh sat out on the hospital patio, under a striped umbrella, sipping a soda and staring down at the concrete. The soda tasted flat, and the umbrella was doing little to hold back the heat of the August sun. He felt as if he were in purgatory—the state of torment between heaven and hell. Eight days. Katie had been in a coma for eight days while the doctors pumped her full of some new potion that didn’t seem to be working.
Josh wouldn’t have come down for a soda, preferring to keep his vigil in the ICU waiting room, but Mrs. O’Roark had insisted. “Take a break, Josh, while Dr. Jacoby’s in with her. You know I’ll come get you if anything changes.”
Day after day, Katie lay on the bed, with machines doing the work of her lungs, and her kidneys failing. Josh thought back to Aaron, but Aaron had been brain dead. With Katie it was different. It was, wasn’t it? Her heart—when had he stopped thinking of it as Aaron’s heart?—kept beating. “It can turn around,” Dr. Jacoby kept telling them. “I’ve seen it before in patients sicker than Katie.”
Something embedded in the surface of the concrete caught Josh’s eye. A plant had pushed up through a crack in the stone. He leaned closer, squinting. Actually, the green stem had cracked the cement in its quest for the sun. The tiny plant caught his imagination.
How miraculous life was! Why, it could even move stone when it was programmed to grow. The idea caused him to suck in his breath. Ever since his childhood, he’d heard it said that life was fragile. Staring down at the sturdy plant made him pause, made him see the issue of life in a new and different light. Life was hardy. It was tenacious. Life couldn’t be defeated. He started to pluck the stem, but stopped himself. It had fought its way through solid concrete. He couldn’t snuff it out.
Aaron had died, but his death had given Katie life. She, in her way, had given life to Josh. Even if death took her, it couldn’t snuff her out, just as it couldn’t eradicate Aaron, just as it couldn’t eliminate anyone who had once lived. Life was a gift. The realization swept over Josh and he felt renewed hope.
Josh leapt up. He had to see Katie. He had to touch her, let her know that even if she went away now, he’d see her again. He ran into the hospital lobby, but didn’t wait for the elevator. He took the stairs up to the ninth floor, running so fast that he arrived at the ICU completely out of breath.
“Are you all right?” Katie’s startled mother asked.
“She’s going to make it, Mrs. O’Roark,” Josh said between gasps. “One way or the other, Katie’s going to make it.”
“Oh, Josh, if we could only be sure.” She seemed eager to match his optimism.
“I just saw a plant coming up through a solid slab of concrete,” he explained. “I’m telling you, it was coming straight up to the sun, straight up to the sky. We have to believe she’ll make it.”
Dear Reader,
For those of you who have been longtime readers, I hope you have enjoyed this One Last Wish volume.
For those of you discovering One Last Wish for the first time, I hope you will want to read the other books that are listed in detail in the next few pages. From Lacey to Katie to Morgan and the rest, you’ll discover the lives of the characters I hope you’ve come to care about just as I have.
Since the series began, I have received numerous letters from teens wishing to volunteer at Jenny House. That is not possible because Jenny House exists only in my imagination, but there are many fine organizations and camps for sick kids that would welcome volunteers. If you are interested in becoming such a volunteer, contact your local hospitals about their volunteer programs or try calling service organizations in your area to find out how you can help. Your own school might have a list of community service programs.
Extending yourself is one of the best ways of expanding your world … and of enlarging your heart. Turning good intentions into actions is consistently one of the most rewarding experiences in life. My wish is that the ideals of Jenny House will be carried on by you, my reader. I hope that now that we share the Jenny House attitude, you will believe as I do that the end is often only the beginning.
Thank you for caring.
YOU’LL WANT TO READ ALL THE ONE LAST WISH
BOOKS BY BESTSELLING AUTHOR
Let Him Live
Someone Dies, Someone Lives
Mother, Help Me Live
A Time to Die
Sixteen and Dying
Mourning Song
The Legacy: Making Wishes Come True
Please Don’t Die
She Died Too Young
All the Days of Her Life
A Season for Goodbye
Reach for Tomorrow
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT MEGAN,
BE SURE TO READ
ON SALE NOW FROM BANTAM BOOKS
0-553-56067-0
Excerpt from Let Him Live by Lurlene McDaniel
Copyright © 1993 by Lurlene McDaniel
Published by Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers
a division of Random House, Inc.
1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036
All
rights reserved
Being a candy striper isn’t Megan Charnell’s idea of an exciting summer, but she volunteered and can’t get out of it. Megan has her own problems to deal with. Still, when she meets Donovan Jacoby, she find herself getting involved in his life.
Donovan shares with Megan his secret: An anonymous benefactor has granted him one last wish, and he needs Megan’s help. The money can’t buy a compatible transplant, but it can allow Donovan to give his mother and little brother something he feels he owes them. Can Megan help make his dream come true?
“When I first got sick in high school, kids were pretty sympathetic, but the sicker I got and the more school I missed, the harder it was to keep up with the old crowd,” Donovan explained. “Some of them tried to understand what I was going through, but unless you’ve been really sick …” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“I’ve never been sick,” Meg said, “but I really do know what you’re talking about.”
He tipped his head and looked into her eyes. “I believe you do.”
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT
KATIE AND JOSH, BE SURE TO READ
ON SALE NOW FROM BANTAM BOOKS
0-553-29842-9
Excerpt from Someone Dies, Someone Lives by Lurlene McDaniel
Copyright © 1992 by Lurlene McDaniel
Published by Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers
a division of Random House, Inc.
1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036
All rights reserved
Katie O’Roark feels miserable, though she knows she’s incredibly lucky to have received an anonymous gift of money. The money can’t buy the new heart she needs or bring back her days as a track star.