Maggie almost crumpled to the floor. “Oh, my God. Thank you.”
He nodded. “The best of luck to you, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Joe drove away from the barricaded area and glanced over at Maggie. “Hold on, OK? We’ll be there soon.”
She stared out the window, trying to keep herself together enough to face whatever was waiting for her in her mother’s room.
Hang in there, Mom. I’m coming. Just stay with me a bit longer, OK? Please don’t go without letting me say goodbye. Please.
Chapter Fourteen
In the elevator, Joe watched Maggie closely. She was shaking and pale, her eyes fixed on the floor numbers as they ascended, stopped, ascended again. He knew she was feeling every second of every delay as people struggled on and off on crutches, or were rolled in and out in beds. At one point, he seriously thought she was going to bolt out and make a dash for the stairs.
They got off on the sixth floor and Maggie shot off to the right, straight down the hall. A tall blonde nurse rushed to meet her.
“Hurry, Maggie… hurry!”
Maggie broke in to a run now, and Joe let her go, watched her move farther away from him. She disappeared around the corner and he followed, his heart in his throat.
Fuck. I hope I got her here in time. I’ll never, ever forgive myself if she doesn’t get the chance to say goodbye to Rita. She was at the restaurant tonight because of me.
He turned the corner and blinked at the long hallway in front of him. He passed room after room, peering in, looking for Maggie. He saw her now, and he hovered in the doorway, uncertain if she wanted him there.
Rita was conscious, thank God, and Maggie was leaning over her, listening intently to what her mother was saying. Maggie was nodding and whispering, stroking her mother’s hair back, and Joe felt an overwhelming rush of love for her. Even at this horrible, heart wrenching moment, she was behaving with nothing but strength and sweetness.
She turned to him now, waved him over. He hesitated, then approached the bed. Rita looked at him, and he tried to hide his shock at her appearance. Her eyes were bloodshot, the area around them a bruised black, and she was horrifically swollen. In places, her skin was an angry red; in others, a deathly gray.
Oh, my God. She’s really going to die right in front of her daughter. Maggie is going to be an orphan tonight.
“Joe.” Her voice was faint and he moved closer. “You brought Maggie here?”
“Yes.”
Her green eyes – so like Maggie’s – surveyed him. “Thank you.”
He inclined his head. “You’re welcome.”
She closed her eyes now and Maggie stiffened. “Mom?”
“Margaret.” Rita tried to focus on her daughter. “I’m going to have to go soon.”
“Mom, no.” Maggie fought to stay calm. “The doctors will find a way, I know it. A different drug, some way to control the sepsis. Your body will rally, OK, and you’ll get stronger and you’ll be fine. I’ll take you home and we can start to think about taking a trip together at Christmas. Paris, remember?”
Rita shook her head. “I’m tired, honey. I’ve been tired for years, and I’ve been fighting for so long. Hours of dialysis every day, and years of waiting for some innocent person to die so I could get their kidney, and the stress of this transplant… all the bad side effects and now the sepsis.” She tried to smile. “I want to get some rest, Maggie. I want some peace.”
“Mom…”
“Please.” Her eyes were full of quiet desperation. “Please. Let me go. Tell me it’s OK for me to go… tell me you’ll forgive me for leaving you. Please don’t hate me for giving up.”
Maggie stared down at her mother, frozen, unable to believe what she was hearing.
My mother is actually asking my permission for her to die.
No. No, that’s not right. She’s asking my permission to sleep.
Maggie sat down right next to her mother, her leg resting against Rita’s. She took her Mom’s hand, squeezed it gently. When Joe looked at Maggie’s face, it was shining with love, and his breath caught at her beauty.
“It’s OK, Mom,” Maggie said. “You can go now. I won’t be angry and I won’t hate you and I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me… just let go. Just sleep.” She smiled. “Say hi to Daddy for me. Tell him I love him.”
“I will, honey.” Rita’s lips curved upwards in a weak smile. “Thank you, sweet girl.”
Maggie nodded, but couldn’t seem to say one word more. She sat and watched her mother’s face relax, and she marveled that Rita suddenly looked younger and lighter. More content, more free. She looked truly happy, for what was the first time in a long, long time.
The first time in years. She’s ready to go.
“I love you, Mom.” Her tears were falling now, and she let them.
“I love you too. So much, more than I’ve loved anything in the whole of my life.” Rita’s eyes fluttered shut and stayed closed. “My baby girl.”
Her breathing deepened now, evened out. Joe could almost see her releasing her grip on life, just letting go of the desire to keep on with the fight. Rita was walking off the field of battle by choice; she was lying down and letting the blackness just crash right over her. She was surrendering, but Joe was damned if he’d say that she’d given up or lost.
He stood for a few minutes with his hands in his pockets, without a clue what to do, where to go, what to look at. “Maggie?”
She glanced up at him.
“You want me to leave?”
She considered him, really took him in. Joe stood still, feeling like his whole worth as a man and a human being was being weighed and measured in her perfect eyes. Then she shook her head.
“OK,” he said. “I’ll be right here if you need me.” And he settled himself in the chair next to the window, looking at Maggie and Rita. All that he saw in front of him was the epitome of grace and love and courage, and he felt tears welling up in his own eyes.
They waited.
**
At about three o’clock in the morning, it happened. Joe sat straight up in his chair, shocked to complete alertness by the alarms ringing and lights flashing on the machines next to Rita. Maggie gripped her mother’s hand tighter, and nurses rushed in to the room.
The blonde one who had spoken to Maggie by the elevators turned off the alarms. The silence was empty and almost deafening.
“She’s gone?” Maggie’s voice was eerily calm, and Joe’s heart ached.
“Not yet, hon.” The nurse was firm but kind. “Those alarms mean that her system has gone in to full organ failure. She’s gone past the point of being able to come back to us… her body is now completely deprived of oxygen. She’s dying, Maggie, but she’s not all the way gone. Not yet.”
“When?”
“No way to say for sure.” The nurse looked at Rita, looked at the monitors. “Everyone is different. It could be five minutes, it could take hours. All we can do now is wait.”
“How will I know? How will I know that she’s really gone?”
“See this line?” The nurse pointed to one screen with a red line across it. The line had peaks and valleys in it, spikes and flat sections.
“Yeah.”
“When these blips stop completely, that means that all vitals are gone. It means she’ll be brain dead.” Her eyes were gentle. “That’s how you’ll know, hon.”
“Thank you.”
She touched Maggie’s shoulder. “I’ll be at the station if you need me. OK?”
“OK.”
The nurse nodded at Joe as she passed him, and he nodded back. He stared over at Maggie, trying to imagine what she must be feeling. His grandfather had died of a massive heart attack while at home; the doctors said that he’d died within seconds of it beginning. Joe had always regr
etted not being able to say goodbye to Steven, but he’d found comfort in the knowledge that his Grandpa hadn’t suffered. And still the loss was huge and devastating.
But this? Sitting and watching someone you love die one failing organ and asphyxiated cell after another? Just slide away from you, right in front of you, knowing that there was nothing to be done to hold them here? Joe thought that had to be a special kind of torture, one that was akin to a living nightmare.
How is she still in one fucking piece?
Time passed and they didn’t say a word. They barely moved. Then Joe spoke.
“Maggie?”
She looked at him and the urge to hold her was immense.
“What do you need me to do? Tell me, baby.”
“I don’t know.”
They stared at each other.
“You want me to get you some food?” he asked.
To his relief and astonishment, Maggie smiled. “Oh, Joe… it has always amazed me that the way you offer comfort and support is with food. It’s – it’s actually a thing of beauty.”
“Well,” he said, trying to make a small joke. “I’m not sure how much comfort I can offer with hospital cafeteria food. It may be the very opposite of something beautiful.”
She managed a grin. “Yeah, true enough. But I’m not hungry. Thanks anyway.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” She paused. “Maybe you can get me something hot to drink? Tea?”
“Sure thing, sweetness. I’ll be right back.”
She watched him go out of the room and she sighed. Alone with her mother now, she stroked her cold hand gently.
“God, Mom. You were right, you know. There is a good man in there, it just took a while for him to declare himself. But he’s here now, front and centre. Impossible to miss.” She smiled. “I think… I think if I ask, he’ll want to be with me again. But not like how it was before. I think he’d be honest with me. I think… he’d be good to me.” She glanced back at the door. “I just don’t know if I should take that chance. Can I trust him? Really trust him?”
She was silent for a few seconds.
“Is it true that once someone is a cheater, they’re forever a cheater, Mom? Can people really change? I mean, if they really, really want to… can they change?” She bit her lip. “Do I take the chance? Am I strong enough to not fall to pieces if he does it again?”
Maggie looked up from her mother’s still face, almost idly checking the monitor screen. She blinked for a few seconds, simply not comprehending what she was looking at, then with the force of a semi-truck, it hit her, hard enough to knock the breath out of her.
The red line on the screen was completely flat.
Oh, my God. That’s what flatlining means.
When Joe came back in to the room, he found Maggie sitting next to the bed, holding her mother’s hand in both of hers, pressing Rita’s hand against her cheek. She was silent and still, almost cold in her lack of emotion. He paused in the door, uncertain, and then he looked at the monitor.
“Oh, Maggie.” His voice was rough. “Baby…”
She didn’t seem to hear him, and he set the tea on the small table next to the door. Joe walked over to her, not sure if he should touch her. He stood next to Maggie, waiting for her to tell him what to do, to say what she needed.
He heard a sound behind him and from the rubber-soled foot falls, he knew it was the nurse again. He didn’t turn around; he knew she was there to start the process of forever separating Maggie and Rita and he closed his eyes.
Joe almost sighed when a doctor walked over to the monitor, turned it off, and then checked Rita. He glanced at his watch.
“Time of death… three forty-three a.m.”
Maggie didn’t give any sign that she’d heard him.
“Maggie,” the nurse said gently. “How you doing?”
Maggie looked up, her eyes blank.
“Honey? You with us?”
No answer.
Joe exchanged worried glances with the nurse.
“Baby?” he said.
Maggie started.
“Talk to us, sweetness, OK? You here?”
“Mom’s an organ donor,” Maggie said suddenly, startling the others. “Are any of hers viable? Even with the sepsis?”
“Yes,” the doctor said quietly. “Some are, for sure. But we can’t do anything for a while, Maggie.”
That got her attention. “Why not? If she’s gone?”
“Because we have protocols.” The doctor put his hands in his pockets. “We need brain death for twenty-four hours, and we need two different doctors to perform neurological tests on Rita, to really make sure. Once we’ve decided her status of brain death, then we can begin the process of… of harvesting.”
Joe felt a wave of nausea wash over him.
What a fucking grisly topic. But maybe Maggie needs something good to come of this, for other people to get a shot at life… after all, her own mother could have benefitted from transplant, if things had gone differently.
Maggie nodded. “You have the paperwork that Mom signed?”
“I do,” the nurse said. “And if there’s no change in her condition for twenty-four hours, I’ll have some more things for you to fill in. But for now, why don’t you take some time, honey.” She touched Maggie’s shoulder. “We can worry about the rest of it tomorrow, alright?”
Maggie nodded again.
And then she and Joe were alone in the room. He didn’t say one word: he thought that expecting her to answer a question, or to hold up one half of conversation was unfair to the point of bordering on sheer cruelty. To ask her to do anything more than breathe was to ask the impossible.
Chapter Fifteen
Joe looked up as the elevator doors slid open and a whole group of people came rushing off. He took a deep breath as several sets of hostile eyes rested on him.
Wow. They look like they’re taking aim.
“Hi,” he said.
“Joe.” Katie’s brown eyes were shooting fire and daggers at him. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Katie.” Mia spoke quietly. “Come on… Maggie doesn’t need us arguing with him, OK?”
“No,” Katie hissed. “What Maggie doesn’t need is this lying piece of crap anywhere near her when she’s vulnerable.”
“Hey, whoa.” Joe felt his own temper flare. “What are you saying? That I’m going to take advantage of her somehow?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, would it?” Katie said.
“OK, stop.” Reena’s voice was uncharacteristically harsh. “You two want to fight, take it outside. Now.”
“I don’t want to fight,” Joe said tightly. “I just wanted you here with Maggie, because she needs you. That’s why I called you.” He narrowed his eyes. “I go when she asks me to, Katie, and not one second before. You got a problem with that, take it up with her.”
They glared at each other, then a huge man stepped forward and gently placed a massive hand on Katie’s shoulder. She looked up at him.
“Back down, baby,” he said in a deep voice. “You’re not here for him.”
She dropped her eyes. “OK. You’re right.”
“Where’s Maggie?” Mia asked, clutching another man’s hand. His gray eyes were hard in his face as he surveyed Joe, but at least he wasn’t acting like he wanted to kill Joe. And thank God for that, because he was sure that any one of these three men could take him down without a second thought. Yeah, he was a big guy, in good shape and strong, but these three? Fuck, man. They looked like they pumped iron for a living.
The third man was standing behind Reena protectively. He hadn’t said a word, but he was looking at Joe with some warmth. They exchanged half-glances, and Reena managed to give Joe a small smile.
“She’s in the visitor’s lounge,” Joe s
aid. “This way.”
They followed him down the hall, and when he got to the room, he stepped aside to let the women pass. He stood in the doorway with the other men, and they all watched as Maggie’s friends surrounded her. She looked shocked, shattered. Joe wasn’t at all sure that she was fully aware of what was going on anymore – she had a vacant, flat look in her eyes that worried him.
“I’m Adam Pierce,” the giant one said, extending his hand. “This is Nick Spencer and Mitch Corrigan.”
Joe took their hands one by one. “Joe Carlisle.”
“Yeah, I know your restaurant,” Mitch said “‘Chorus’, right?”
“That’s me,” Joe said.
“Man, your fusion cuisine is amazing.”
“Thanks.”
The men regarded each other.
Nick spoke now. “How’s Maggie doing?”
Joe sighed. “Terrible. She sat and watched her Mom die right in front of her, and now she’s sitting and waiting for the twenty-four hour brain death window to close. Once it does, she’s going to hand Rita’s body over for organ harvesting.”
“Jesus Christ,” Nick said softly. “This is horrible.”
“Yeah. I know.” Joe rubbed his eyes. “And she hasn’t even cried… she’s just been totally cold since it all went down. I feel like she doesn’t really believe what’s happening.”
The men looked at Maggie again.
Adam studied Joe, debating if he should say something or not. “Look, man. I don’t know you, and what I do know of you, I don’t like. But I also know what you’ve done for Maggie, being here with her through this all.” He grinned and Joe was amazed at how it changed his whole face. “Katie will never say it, I know, so just let me thank you for all of us. For being here when Maggie needed you.”
Joe shifted uncomfortably. “It’s OK.” He looked away.
“Maybe we should leave the ladies alone for a while, huh?” Mitch asked after a pause. “And maybe you’d like a coffee… you’ve been here all night too, right?”
“Yeah. And yes, I’d love some coffee.”
“So let’s go.” Mitch cocked his head. “I’m buying.”
Fighting History (Fighting For Love Book 4) Page 11
