17. Brian (VII)
The world wide web offers
a wealth of information, but wading through it can be overwhelming. For Brian, it was like diving for a penny in
a vast pond. He knew the information he
sought was out there, if only he knew where to search. But finding information on his donor was
almost impossible, with the few details he’d been given.
He had spoken to the
hospital social worker again the day after the dream in which he’d discovered
that his donor’s death may not have been accidental at all. But Joan had only been able to repeat the
same information she’d given Becci the day of his transplant: The donor of his heart had been a woman in
her twenties, who was killed in a car accident in Ohio. “You know that’s all I’m allowed to tell
you,” said Joan apologetically.
Brian knew. She’d made it clear, both before and after
his transplant, that the hospital was required to keep all other information
about his donor confidential. The
transplant program would facilitate written communication between him and the
donor’s family, if he wished, but although he had written a letter before
leaving the hospital, it had gone unanswered.
Joan had also warned him that might happen. “It may take time for your donor’s family to
feel ready to correspond, or you may never hear back from them,” she’d
said. “Even if you do, you’re required
to wait at least six months before we can release any information that would
allow you to communicate directly with the family or meet face-to-face, and if
that’s only if both parties are open to the idea.”
But Brian couldn’t wait
three more months, knowing there was no guarantee his donor’s family would even
respond to his note of gratitude. He
couldn’t stop thinking of her, the stranger whose heart beat inside his chest. Someone had struck her with their truck, not
bothering to stop, slow down, or swerve around her. In a way, Brian had become a witness to her
murder. And if the street in which she’d
been slain was as empty as it had seemed in his dreams, he was the sole
surviving witness, which meant two things:
first, that his donor’s killer was probably still somewhere out there on
the streets, and second, that he might be the only one who could solve the
mystery of her murder.
In the weeks following his
discovery, he had become obsessed with the idea of bringing his donor’s killer
to justice. There had to be more clues
hidden in his dreams, he thought, and he’d started to look forward to sleeping,
hoping to find answers inside his nightmares.
But sleep was hard to come by when his mind was constantly racing,
keeping him awake, and when he did dream, he saw only the same things he’d seen
before. Even if he did remember more
details from the dreams, he doubted they would be enough to take him much
further without knowing more details about his donor. That was when he had decided to start
searching. The hospital may have
prohibited the release of certain information, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t
seek it on his own.
So
he turned to the internet, that endless ocean of information. Day after day, while Becci was at work, Brian
sat at home on his laptop and searched.
He spent hours looking up articles and obituaries from Ohio newspapers
published the week of his transplant. He
browsed pages upon pages of search results, scrolling and skimming until his
eyes glazed over from the strain. I’ll know her when I find her, he kept
telling himself, but deep down, he worried he wouldn’t.
The
stress of the search was starting to get to him. He realized it one day as he sat on the
living room sofa with his computer on his lap, while Calhan played with his toy
cars on the carpet at his feet.
Normally, Becci still dropped their son off at his grandparents’ house
on her way to work, but Brian’s mother had called that morning to say she’d
come down with a cold and wasn’t up to babysitting. “Looks like someone’s staying home with Daddy
today,” Becci had announced, smiling at Brian.
He could tell she’d thought she was giving him a rare treat. Before the obsession with finding his donor
had overtaken him, it would have been a treat to spend the day with his
son. He had needed time after his
transplant to rest and recuperate, but just as before, his days had been long
and lonely, and he’d always looked forward to four o’clock, when Becci came
home with Calhan. But now Brian found
himself groaning when he heard the garage door open because it meant giving up
on his search for the day. He didn’t
know how to explain that to Becci, though, so when she’d asked, “You can handle
him, can’t you, hon?” he’d smiled and said that, of course, he could. He was starting to wish he hadn’t.
“Shh…
Can’t you keep it down, Cal?” he begged as he scrolled through another page of
search results, his eyes barely leaving the screen. His son was crawling around on the floor with
his fire truck, making high-pitched siren sounds that Brian found
distracting. “Daddy’s trying to
concentrate.”
But
Calhan, not quite two, couldn’t understand.
“Whoooooooh!” he wailed, crashing the fire truck
into Brian’s foot.
“Ouch,
damn it! Stop that!” Brian snapped,
jerking his foot up off the floor.
Calhan, startled by this harsh reaction, stared up at his father for a
stunned second, then screwed up his face and started to cry. Brian sighed.
“Oh, Cal… I’m sorry, buddy.” He
set the computer aside and scooped his son up into his lap, stroking his back
as Calhan buried his face in Brian’s shoulder and sobbed. When he glanced back at the laptop and saw
the clock in the bottom corner of the screen, Brian realized the reason for the
overreaction: it was well past Calhan’s
naptime. Sure enough, as soon as Cal had
calmed down, he fell asleep on Brian’s shoulder. Brian carried him carefully back to his crib
and put him down, praying he would stay asleep.
Then he tiptoed back out to the living room and picked up his laptop
again.
It
was while Calhan was napping that he came across an article from The Cincinnati Enquirer about a
hit-and-run accident that had occurred in the early morning hours the same day
as his transplant.
“The pedestrian,
Marjorie J. Wilder, 23, of Lockland, was walking in the 600 block of Wylee Avenue
when she was struck by the unidentified vehicle. Wilder was transported to the hospital, where
she later died of her injuries.”
He
read those two sentences over and over again, remembering what Becci had told
him when he’d woken up after surgery: “She was a woman, in her twenties, from
Ohio, who was killed in a car accident.”
The details fit, but he couldn’t know for sure until he found out
more. He entered the name “Marjorie J.
Wilder” into the search engine and found her obituary. The small, black-and-white photo that
accompanied it showed a young woman with long hair and an impish grin. As he scanned the obituary, his eyes lingered
on one line.
“Marjorie, known as
‘Jori’ to those closest to her, enjoyed art and music, especially by her
favorite band, The Beatles.”
Brian
thought of his own love of music and his newfound preference for classic
rock. He remembered the pleasure he’d
felt in listening to Beatles songs in the car with Becci. Then he pictured the brightly-painted baby’s
room in his dreams, with the mobile that played John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and he
knew. He knew in his heart – her heart – that this was his donor.
The
revelation brought with it a sudden rush of emotion. The words on the page blurred before his eyes
as he reread the obituary, wanting to know more about the life of the woman who
had saved his.
“…Surviving are her
parents, Larry and Pamela (Reinhardt) Wilder of Crawfordsville, Indiana and her
fiancée, Alexander J. McLean of Lockland.
She was preceded in death by her infant daughter, Lucy Sky Diamond
McLean…”
She
had been a mother. He had already known
this on some level, just as he’d known that the nursery in his dreamscape was
not Calhan’s. He thought of the crying
baby in the crib, which was sometimes empty.
She had lost a child. He could
imagine nothing worse. The heart that
beat inside him had been broken.
Wanting
to know more, he ran another search for the name of her daughter and found a
second obituary. It was very short, just
like the life of the baby, who had only been three months old when she
died. It did not include a cause of
death.
Brian
continued to delve into his donor’s past, becoming so immersed that he did not
even hear his son wake up. It wasn’t
until Calhan started to cry that he looked at the clock and realized two hours
had passed since he’d put the toddler down for his afternoon nap. Still, Brian felt a touch of annoyance as he
slid the computer off his lap and stood up, stretching his legs. “I’m coming, Cal!” he called, as he walked
back to Calhan’s bedroom.
He
was suddenly struck with déjà vu.
How
many nights had he followed the sound of Calhan’s crying in his dreams,
entering a nursery that was nothing like the one in which his son slept? Yet the room had always seemed familiar to
him, as familiar as the child he was going to comfort. Only now did he realize the baby in his
dreams may not have been his son, but his donor’s daughter. Not Calhan… but Lucy.
When
he came into the room, Calhan was standing up in his crib, clutching the
rail. Brian was relieved he hadn’t tried
to climb over it yet. “Ready to get up,
buddy?” he asked, hoisting him out of the crib.
He held Calhan close for a few seconds, savoring the feel of his son’s
warm body cuddled against his chest. He
couldn’t imagine the kind of grief Marjorie must have gone through after losing
her daughter. Just thinking about it
hurt his heart.
Her heart.
Maybe
it was remembering.
***