Serenity

by Rochelle Paige

  “The grapevine must’ve been working extra hard,” Faith sighed. “We’ve barely been here for a couple of hours.”

  The nurse shrugged. “You know how it is.”

  “Especially since you’re the biggest gossip in this place.”

  The nurse didn’t look the least bit bothered by Faith’s accusation as her smile grew bigger and she nodded. I rose to my feet and held out my hand to shake hers. “I’m Dillon Montgomery, Faith’s boyfriend.”

  “I’m Nurse Simpson, but you can call me Stacey since Faith isn’t one of my patients anymore.” She turned to Faith and wiggled her brows. “Not just a boy, but a boyfriend. And he’s hot, possessive, and has manners. I guess we don’t need to tell you to have faith anymore. You earned your college degree and fell in love. Seems like you’re making the most of the kidney you received.”

  Faith and I looked at each other and shook our heads. “You have no idea.”

  “Oooh, it sounds like there’s a juicy store here.” Stacey pulled the extra chair over to the other side of Faith’s bed and sat down. “I want all the details. Spill ‘em.”

  “And that’s my cue to leave you two alone.” I bent down to kiss Faith on the cheek after I stood. “Have fun gossiping with Stacey.”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me closer. “You don’t have to go.”

  “Although it will make it easier to gossip about you,” Stacey drawled.

  “I won’t be gone long,” I promised. “I’m just going to head down to the cafeteria to grab a coffee and a snack. Do you want anything?”

  “She’s NPO until the rest of her results come back in case she needs a biopsy.”

  I didn’t understand what the nurse meant until Faith explained, “Nothing to eat or drink for me yet.”

  “Shit. Sorry. I’ll wait then.”

  “It’s fine, Dillon. I’m not even hungry. Don’t worry about me. Go grab something for yourself.”

  “If you’re sure?”

  She smiled up at me before pushing me away from the bed. “I’m positive. If you go now, you might still be able to grab breakfast.”

  “Which would be good since it’s the only decent food they serve around here,” Stacey added.

  My stomach growled, and they both giggled while pointing at the door. I heard the nurse say something about me being sweet too, and I was glad to be out of there if I was going to be the main topic of conversation. I headed down to the cafeteria like I’d said I was going to do, and I was surprised to find a hot buffet with scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns. I made myself a plate, grabbed a cup of coffee, paid, and found a table in the corner. I needed to clear up space since my voicemail was full, so I started listening to my messages while I ate my breakfast.

  I quickly wished I hadn’t as I pushed my plate away after only a few bites because my appetite disappeared after listening to the first two voicemails from Faith. She sounded desperate to talk to me, and it only got worse from there as more time went on. I skipped over the messages from my parents and listened to all of the ones from Faith in order. I couldn’t bring myself to delete all of them, even though I didn’t think I could bear to play them ever again. But I never wanted to forget the damage I’d done with my carelessness. I kept a few of the worst ones in case I needed a reminder in the future.

  As I was listening to the messages my parents had left, a call came in from my dad’s phone number. My finger hovered over the button I needed to press to accept it, but I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I wasn’t ready to talk to them yet, let alone face them again. And I knew if I told them where I was, they’d race over to the hospital to help in any way they could. It was just how they were. Plus, they loved Faith almost as much as I did. But even with all that, I needed more time. So I let the call go to voicemail and tried to choke down a few more bites of my breakfast since it’d been days since I’d eaten a real meal.

  When my phone rang again, I expected it to be my mom since I hadn’t answered my dad’s call and it wasn’t unheard of for them to tag-team parent like that. I was surprised when I glanced at the screen and saw Corey’s name instead. It’d been at least two months since we’d last talked, and he’d replied with text messages the last couple of times I’d tried calling him.

  “Dude, where the hell have you been?”

  “Sorry, man. My dad actually flew out here in April and things got super weird.”

  “Parents,” I sighed. “They sure can fuck things up.”

  “What the hell do you have to complain about? Your mom and dad are perfect.”

  “They fell off that pedestal pretty fucking hard,” I said before filling him in on everything that had happened over the past week.

  “Fucking A, dude. What the hell is up with parents and secrets lately?”

  I felt like an ass for dumping my problems on him when it was obvious he had his own shit going on in his life. “Were yours keeping something important from you too?”

  “That’s putting it mildly.” I heard a muffled thumping sound and had the impression he was banging his head against something.

  “You want to talk about it? I’ve got time,” I offered. “Faith is happily gossiping with a nurse upstairs, and I’m sure most of it is about me.”

  “Now’s not a great time for me because I’m in the airport waiting for my flight. We should be boarding soon, but I was calling to see if that offer was still good? For me to use my old room? I know you really did replace me with a new roomie. But I figure since Faith is bunking with you, it’s not like my room isn’t sitting empty.”

  Fuck, this was awkward. Corey was my best friend, and I’d totally meant it when I’d told him he could have his room back. But that was before Faith had moved in with me. Before we discovered the secret my parents were hiding from me. And before she got sick. It was absolute shit timing to even consider having my best friend move in with us.

  “Dude. Relax. I’m just fucking with you,” he laughed. “I can almost hear your brain getting ready to explode from halfway around the world.”

  “Asshole.”

  “What can I say? I had to at least give you a little bit of a hard time since you were so certain I was wrong about Faith moving in with you. I totally called it, man. You were ape shit over that girl from the moment you met.”

  “Still am.” And I always would be.

  “Thank fuck some things haven’t changed.” I couldn’t tell if he sounded more pissed or upset, and he didn’t give me the chance to ask. “Gotta go. They’re boarding now. I’m going to be wrapped up in family shit when I get back, but I promise I’ll be in touch.”

  “You better. And if things get really bad, you can crash at our place for a little while. I’m sure Faith will understand.”

  “Nah, I’ll be fine. If worse comes to worse, I’ll reach out to Gramps and ask him to get me a suite at one of the five star hotels downtown. Room service and housekeeping make everything better, right?”

  What the hell? Things had to be royally fucked for Corey to even consider calling his grandfather and asking for help. As far as I knew he hadn’t talked with him since he was in high school. But before I had the chance to react, he disconnected the call and my phone started to ring again.

  When I saw Faith’s name pop up on the screen, I grabbed my tray and dumped the contents into the trash. Racing out the door, I answered, “You okay? I’m on my way back up.”

  “Yeah, I just wanted to let you know that Stacey just left and my nurse came by to let me know Dr. Stewart should be in to see me again any minute. My test results came back, and he’s looking them over now.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes. Do me a favor and ask him to wait until I get there if he beats me to your room?”

  “You clearly don’t remember what it was like to be in the hospital.” I easily pictured Faith rolling her eyes as she spoke. “Any minute really means sometime in the next hour.”

  “With my luck lately, he’ll be there and gone before the elevator even co
mes,” I grumbled.

  “Yeah, those are notoriously slow too. But don’t worry. I’ll stall him if a miracle occurs and he shows up before you do.”

  It was a good thing I’d asked her to wait because that miracle did happen, and Dr. Stewart was with Faith in her room when I made it upstairs. “Did I miss anything?”

  “Not a thing. Faith insisted that I couldn’t start until you were back.”

  “Thanks.” I pressed a quick kiss to her forehead before I sat down on the chair next to her. “How’d she do?”

  “Better than I expected.”

  He proceeded to rattle off a bunch of medical jargon that I could barely follow and didn’t really understand. But I did recognize what Faith’s grin meant. “So the kidney’s okay?”

  “It’s not in acute rejection, but I’m still going to keep her overnight while we help get her back to one-hundred percent. She’s also going to need to follow-up with me in my office next week, and we’re going back to at least monthly blood draws for the near future.”

  “See? Vampires,” Faith groaned.

  “I wouldn’t have to pull the vampire act if you’d taken better care of yourself and that kidney,” Dr. Stewart chastised her. “And remembered that only a moderate amount of alcohol is okay. No overdoing it like this again.”

  “I know. It won’t happen again. I’ll take my pills on time and follow my diet to the letter. Whatever it takes.”

  “It better not,” he grumbled.

  “I’ll be there to make sure it doesn’t,” I promised. “But if the worst ever does come to pass, at least we know that I can donate one of my kidneys to her.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” Dr. Stewart drawled.

  “What do you mean? I should be a perfect match since Declan was my identical twin and he was her donor.”

  “True.” He nodded. “I haven’t gotten the results from your screenings back yet, but I don’t anticipate their being a matching issue.”

  I had two kidneys, should be a match, and was willing to donate to Faith. I didn’t understand what could possibly be complicated about that. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “It’s your medical history. More specifically, your heart transplant.”

  My hand pressed against my chest, right over the scar that’d been there when I woke up from my coma. The one my parents had explained was because of the surgery I’d needed due to some damage caused during the accident. But nobody had ever said a word about a transplant. I stared blindly at the doctor, not really seeing him as my brain put the pieces of the puzzle together.

  Declan had died the day before I woke up.

  My parents had agreed to donate his organs.

  I’d had a heart transplant.

  But I hadn’t needed to take any of the anti-rejection medications that were vital to Faith’s health after her kidney transplant.

  Declan had been my twin.

  With identical DNA.

  “Holy fuck.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Faith

  Dillon looked like he was about ready to fall off his chair. His skin had paled, and his eyes looked glassy. His chest started to rise and fall rapidly, and Dr. Stewart swiftly moved to his side.

  “Put your head between your legs and try to take slow, deep breaths.” He pushed on his back until Dillon had done as he’d instructed. Then he lifted Dillon’s arm and pressed his fingers against the inside of his wrist. After a little while, he let go and stepped away. “Your pulse is good. Your breathing sounds better. Let’s get you up and make sure you’re okay.”

  “I need a minute. Please.” The words were practically torn from his throat, and I wanted to weep for the sorrow I heard in his tone. Dr. Stewart moved near the door, and we waited in silence for Dillon to absorb the shock of what he’d just learned. It took a good five to ten minutes before Dillon sat up and assured us he was okay.

  “You didn’t know about the transplant?” Dr. Stewart asked the question I already knew the answer to.

  “No,” Dillon and I answered in unison.

  “Dillon always thought his brother died during the car accident they were in,” I explained. “His parents hid the truth from him, and he didn’t find out until almost a week ago when we discovered that Declan was my donor.”

  “Only there must have been a hell of a lot more to the story than they admitted to when I talked to them this morning,” Dillon added. “Because they sure as shit didn’t mention anything about me getting Declan’s heart.”

  “Since you and your twin were genetically identical, it would have meant that you didn't have to take immunosuppression drugs because your body would accept the new organ as your own.” Dr. Stewart tapped on the tablet’s screen. “But this is highly unusual. I’m surprised your medical team was willing to go along with the deception.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Dillon snorted. “It had to have been the crackpot psychiatrist who convinced them it would be better for me not to know that Declan survived the crash and lasted for another month. They must have also told my parents that I couldn’t handle knowing that his heart pumps in my chest.”

  “They’d have needed to be extremely convincing to get your doctors on board with that plan.”

  “Maybe it was because of his age?” I suggested. “He was only seventeen, so he was still a minor at the time.”

  “That’s possible. It isn’t unusual for families to be concerned that knowledge of a life-threatening diagnosis will harm the patient’s psychological and physiological well-being. I could see how the same might apply in this case.”

  Dillon shot to his feet and paced the floor. “And that’d be enough for the doctors to lie to me about what kind of surgery I had?”

  Dr. Stewart nodded. “Physicians sometimes withhold medical information from a patient if they believe the information would harm the patient’s overall health. We refer to it as ‘therapeutic privilege.’ Of course, there are ethical dilemmas raised by nondisclosure requests when made by a parent of a minor patient. It’s difficult for medical personnel to reconcile their obligation to the patient with the parents’ authority to make decisions on behalf of child.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you call it, Doc. Or how hard it was for the doctors to agree with my parents’ request.” Dillon’s fists were clenched so hard, his knuckles looked white. “No amount of fancy words are going to make it easier for me to accept.”

  “And I’m truly sorry for that, Dillon. Had I known that you weren’t aware of your full medical history, I would have delivered the news in a gentler manner.” Dr. Stewart swiped at the tablet’s screen again. “We didn’t get far enough into your medical history review to find the notes about the decision to withhold the information to you. They’ve only had the chance to pass along the diagnosis codes so far, and I noticed the heart transplant on the list.”

  “It’s not your fault, Doc. There’s no way you could’ve made this any easier for me. Nobody could’ve.”

  “I’m still sorry all the same.” Dr. Stewart clapped him on the back before walking towards the door. “I’ll give you two some alone time. I’m sure you have a lot to talk about, and Faith will be stuck here at least until tomorrow morning. Privacy is hard to come by around here, so you need to make the most of it when you can.”

  “C’mere.” I scooted over and patted the mattress. When he sat down, I tugged on his arm until he laid down next to me.

  “I can’t believe it.” He pressed his hand against his chest. “Declan didn’t just save your life. He saved mine too.”

  “He did.” I didn’t know what else to say. How to help him through this. So I stroked my fingers through his hair for about ten minutes until he was ready to talk again.

  “They lied to me about when he died. How he died. My surgery. I don’t know what to believe anymore. What’s true and what’s a lie.” He banged his fist on the other side of the mattress several times, his chest heaving.

  I leaned my head against his shou
lder. “Believe in me.”

  “I do.” He shook his head. “I don’t deserve to after the shit I pulled, but you’re the only thing I can hold onto right about now. The only thing in my life that’s real. That I can trust.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up too much. You already promised me it would never happen again, and you’ve taken enough hits lately.” Having seen firsthand how badly the bomb Dr. Stewart had just dropped on Dillon had impacted him, my forgiveness was quickly moving towards forgetting.

  If I was being completely honest with myself, part of it might have been because I didn’t worry about him looking at me differently anymore. I wasn’t the only one of us walking around with one of Declan’s organs in them. Dillon was too. In a weird way, I found that a little comforting since he’d have to hate himself if he was going to hate me. And vice versa. If he got to the point where this made him feel even more guilty about his twin’s death than he already did, I could remind him that he wasn’t the only one who’d benefited from Declan dying. We were both alive because of it, so we were in this together even more than we had been before.

  “Thanks, baby.” He kissed me on the top of my head, and I snuggled into his side.

  He fell quiet again, and his body was tense. I knew he was obsessing over the situation, and I wished I could make him forget. If even just for a little bit. But we were in the hospital, so our options were limited. “You want to zone out and watch some TV?”

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “I need to do something to get my mind off all of this shit.”

  I grabbed the remote off the bedside table and turned on the TV. Clicking through the channels, I found a football game and left it there. Even though we were in a hospital bed, I was more comfortable than I’d been in days. It didn’t matter how narrow the mattress was, that the sheets weren’t super soft like the ones at home, or that the pillows were too firm. I was in Dillon’s arms, and it was the only thing that mattered to me.