STRIPPED: The Complete Runaway Series (6 Books Romance Bundle) by Lexie Ray

Author:Lexie Ray [Ray, Lexie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2014-01-22T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,” I said quietly, looking at myself in the mirror. There were things that I could do, right? There just had to be.Maybe they were things I needed courage for. Things I could change. We didn’t have to accept Jules’ fate just like that. If she was as high-spirited and rambunctious in the hospital, railing at the doctors to let her out of her room, I could also vow to not accept the bad news.

My son, however, was floored. He’d probably never even thought about the possibility of living his life without his wife.

After Jules’ diagnosis, Marshall had slipped into a profound depression. I’d caught him dead drunk, the bottle of whiskey half gone, the stench of him making me feel halfway repulsed and halfway wistful.

“I don’t want you following my path,” I told him as I put him to bed, making sure a garbage can was right next to him, in easy reach. “You’re a good man, Marshall, and Jules is going to be all right.”

“Not if she can’t get a new heart,” he slurred, his head lolling. “Then she’ll die. I’ll be all alone.”

That night, I threw all of the liquor away, breaking the bottles to ensure that I wouldn’t come looking for them in anybody’s trash bin. I didn’t need that temptation, and neither did my son. I hated that I’d practically bequeathed a likelihood of alcoholism in him. Couldn’t I impart anything positive to my boy?

I spoke with Jules’ doctors on my own, nurses who worked the floor, anyone who would stop and answer my questions.

“I know your daughter-in-law’s condition is very grave,” a nurse said, “but the truth of the matter is that there are people in even more dire situations—many, many people. There just aren’t enough organ donors in the system, and certainly not enough hearts to go around. We have to wait until she’s at the top of the list for a transplant, and she’s just not there yet.”

“There needs to be more outreach for potential donors,” an orderly told me, “more of a push for people to sign up. There’s this whole idea that if a hospital finds out you’re an organ donor, they won’t work as hard to save your life if you’re sick or injured in order to harvest your organs. That’s ludicrous. ‘Do no harm.’ That’s what we function on. Organ donors get the same quality of care as everyone else. There should be media campaigns, or something. Speakers at schools. Anything. There just aren’t enough donors.”

“The tricky part is finding a good match,” a doctor said. “If the donor didn’t have a compatible blood type, that would be the first red flag. There are so many variables going into a transplant—particularly a heart transplant—that even if a candidate is at the top of the list, it might be a while before the right heart becomes available.

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