When Crickets Cry Read online

  Royer shrugged. "Don't know. They didn't say." He smiled. "That's why it's called anonymous. Atlanta's a pretty good town. People hear about needs, and it's not uncommon to wake up one morning and find that. . ."

  "Yeah, but . . . " Cindy worked her fingers across the keys to the calculator in her mind. "All this? And an entire transplant? That's close to $150,000."

  Royer smiled and patted Annie's toes. "Actually the account balance is closer to $200,000. Whoever did it knew that she'd have follow-up care for years to come. Chances are good that you won't see another bill for close to a decade."

  Cindy rested her head on the bed and placed her hand beneath Annie's.

  Royer walked around the bed and put his hand on her shoulder, his back to me. "Hey, right now, Annie needs you to sit here quietly, paint her toenails, treat her like a kid with her whole life ahead of her. Just spend the day with her. Hold her hand when she wakes up. I'll probably keep her here, just to be safe. Matter of fact, I think I will." He glanced over his shoulder at me. "It's looking like I'll be here tonight, and there's really nothing quite like a hospital at night. While the rest of the world is sleeping, it's a rather busy place. Besides, the more rest we can give her here, the more energy we can put back in her muscle banks. I'll check back in a little while."

  When the sound of Royer's heels had faded down the hall, I walked over next to Annie, dug the chain from my pocket, clasped it around her neck, and laid the sandal flat across her chest as it rose beneath one more breath.

  Cindy spent much of the day sitting quietly next to Annie's bed, stroking her hair and whispering to her. At 3:47 p.m., Annie opened her eyes lazily and looked around the room. Before she ever said a word, her right hand came up from under the sheet and unconsciously felt for the sandal. Then her eyes found Cindy, who had fallen asleep on the edge of the bed. Annie searched the remainder of the room, and when her eyes found me, she closed them again and slept until 4:32, when she woke again and whispered, "I didn't wake up."

  Cindy tried to smile and said, "I know, baby. I know."

  Cindy held a water cup with a straw to Annie's mouth.

  When Annie swallowed, which was painful and would be for a few days, she said with a half smile, "Hey, I was just wondering if, while I was asleep, you guys went ahead and found a heart and put it inside me without telling me. That way, we could just skip the whole waiting thing that comes next."

  She and Cindy spent the evening watching movies, sending their personal chauffeur for non-hospital food and napping while I watched them.

  About midnight, I stepped from the corner of the room and walked out into the hall. Cindy was asleep on the pullout sofa, and Annie had dozed off some time ago. The shift change had come and gone an hour ago, but that wasn't what brought me out of the room.

  About eight minutes earlier, a helicopter had landed atop the hospital on the helipad. Given the chatter on the intercom and the excitement among the nurses, I knew Royer would be in the thick of things about now.

  I climbed the service stairs-the "back way" that doctors used when they didn't want to be delayed-punched the numbers of Emma's birthday into the keypad, and waited to see if the light would turn green. When it did, I realized that Royer still had hope. I pushed on the door I had sworn I would never walk through again. The air was cold, the hallway clear, and at the far end stood the nurses' station and a half-sleeping security guard I didn't know.

  OR2 sat at the other end of the hall, where the corridors crawled with nurses and ICU personnel. The cameras would catch my every move, but they'd go back to them only in the event that I slipped up. If no one knew I was here, they'd have no need to go back and look.

  I slipped through a few side doors, crossed a hall, grabbed a white doctor's coat from the back of a supply closet, and tied a surgeon's cap over my head. I slipped into the doctors' locker room and into a pair of blue scrubs and covers for my shoes, and grabbed a stainless clipboard. I walked through a back door, down a small hallway traveled only by doctors, and once again punched Emma's birth date into the keypad. The light turned green, I climbed the single flight of stairs, and walked into the observation post above OR2. The far wall was constructed of tinted one-way glass. I crept up to the glass, looked down upon the ninemember team, and started looking over Royer's shoulder.

  He had just removed the old, diseased heart and placed it into a stainless bowl held by another doctor, who immediately left the room to go study that heart for several days, maybe even weeks, because dead hearts tell us much. Another doctor, whom I didn't know, stood next to the red-and-white Igloo. Upon Royer's silent command-an open palm and accompanying nod-the doctor reached in, grabbed the cold, lifeless heart, removed it from the plastic bag, and put it in Royer's hand.

  Royer placed it in the patient's chest and began his work. Twenty-seven minutes later, he brought the patient "off pump" to test a series of stitches; then, satisfied with what he saw, requested that the patient be placed back "on pump" while he stitched another artery. After fifty-one minutes, Royer looked to the doctor across from him, who nodded, and the two requested the patient once again be taken off pump. Royer released one final clamp, blood filled the heart, turning it a bright, vibrant red, and then the true miracle occurred.

  It beat on its own.

  In all my years fixing hearts, it never ceased to amaze me how a lifeless, unbeating, and cold heart that had not been inside a human chest for almost four hours could be removed from ice water, placed inside another's chest, and, when filled with blood, beat as though it had never quit.

  Life is where the blood flows.

  A minute later, the heart pumping perfectly and the patient once again alive, Royer stepped back, broke scrub, and nodded to the other doctor, who began closing the patient. For the patient, a new life. For Royer, it was simply another day at the office.

  I sat down in the chair behind me and took it all in. Another man will see his children grow up, get to know his grandchildren, make love with his wife, go fishing, watch a movie, or drive the outskirts of Burton in an old wooden boat.

  The amazing thing about transplantation, aside from the fact that it worked, was that it allowed people to feel again. The thing I liked best about my previous life was the first smile when a patient woke up. Because with that smile, I knew that I hadn't simply given that person a new pump, I had given him or her a new pump that allowed that person to live, to express emotion. It was the smile, even more than the first beat of the heart, that told me it had worked.

  The heart doesn't just pump blood, it is our source of emotion. Out of it and because of it, people laugh, cry, get angry, grow sad, know joy, empathize, live with a full range of emotions.

  Yes, the road after transplantation is not without its challenges. They are multiple and complex. The patient will forever maintain a regimen of some dozen medications a day, designed to force the body to accept the alien organ. And the doctor has to specifically and proactively target and weaken the immune system so that it will not reject the new heart. But given the choice, the pain of surgery, the agony of recovery, the long road back to health, and the constant maintenance of it, we still meet people who would give anything for the chance to lie down on our table and let us cut their hearts out.

  When I turned to leave, I saw the yellow sticky note taped to the glass. Just three words, in Royer's handwriting, characteristically visible due to the all-caps: ABOVE ALL ELSE ...

  I crept back to Annie's room to find Royer bent over the bed checking her vitals. Cindy lay sleeping quietly on the pullout against the wall. In stocking feet, I slipped into the shadows and watched him. Royer was meticulous. He recorded some notes in her chart slipped into the foot of her bed.

  As he stood to go, Cindy jerked, sat upright, and said quickly, "She okay?"

  "Fine," Royer whispered. `Just checking before I head home. Go back to sleep."

  She put her head down, tucked both her hands under the pillow, and drifted off.

  Royer stood, hi
s starched white jacket draped with stethoscope and the day's notes, his blue scrubs wrinkled and splattered. Married to his job, he had sacrificed his love life at the altar of this hospital. He still dated, but at fifty-four, he lived mostly at the hospital and seldom went home, which was nothing more than a condo a few blocks away stuffed with some never-used furniture.

  His bedside manner, his professionalism, his huge hands, kind smile, and tender voice-he was everything good in a doctor. In all my time here, in all my time across the table from him, we'd never had a cross word, never even close. Royer and I worked the way Charlie and I rowed. In perfect unison. And for the first time since Emma's death, I missed that.

  He walked out, and I slipped from behind the door, sat in a chair opposite Annie, and wished I had Emma's letter.

  I dozed fitfully, because my dream wouldn't let me sleep. No matter how hard I tried to pour that water, I just couldn't hold it on my own. It just got too heavy.

  When streaks of the morning broke through the glass and lit my face with a white glow, I finally realized the one thought that had kept me awake all night. Something I had known and yet forgotten, something so simple yet so profound, something I promised Emma I'd never forget.

  While the heart is an amazing organ, transplantation doesn't allow you to choose the emotions you want. It's not a Mr. Potato Head. You elect to go ahead with transplantation, and you get the whole package. That means with great joy, you also get immense sadness. It's not like a rib eye, where you can trim the fat before you eat it.

  Transplant patients are lucky in one regard. They are guaranteed they will never physically feel heart pain again. When you transplant a heart, you sever all the nerve endings leading to it. Given current medical techniques and knowledge, it is impossible to reattach those nerve endings. Arteries yes, nerves no. So, while the patient gets the benefit of emotions, they do not get the burden of pain associated with them.

  If they have another heart attack, they don't feel it. They could have a complete and total blockage of the entire heart, the most massive attack to ever hit a human being, and they wouldn't know something had happened until they quit breathing and passed out. About like an engine running out of gas. No signal other than a last sputter, and then silence. That's why transplanting children is so delicate-because if they don't recognize the signs, and if their communication skills aren't fully developed enough, they'll never know anything is wrong, and you, as their doctor, probably won't either, because they can't tell you.

  It struck me as I sat not sleeping, letting the sunlight warm my face, that I had taken the last five years and attempted to sever the nerve endings in my own heart. I had taken a scalpel and carefully carved a swath around my own heart, cutting the nerves, while allowing the arteries to stay intact.

  Self-diagnosis is painful at best. Or, to quote Dr. Trainer, "The doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient, and a fool for a doctor."

  And while medicine is helpless to regenerate the nerves, the heart can self-generate them, regrowing those tied to emotions in literally a matter of milliseconds. All they needed to take root, sprout, and begin the path back around my hardened and diseased heart was to talk with Royer at the bedside of a patient, watch Annie bravely undergo anesthesia and then simply breathe beneath a labored heart, and listen to Cindy care for everybody but herself.

  And there, not far from the surface, floated the memories of Emma and Charlie. After more than thirty years of studying the heart, more than a hundred transplants and countless other surgeries, I could not cut out my own heart. I looked down, saw the tears that were now soaking my shirt, and realized that I hadn't even come close.

  Chapter 47

  reakfast came early, and Annie ate as if she hadn't seen food in a week. Nurses from all around the hospital had heard she was in and awake, and began dropping in unannounced. That proved too risky for me, so I told Cindy I was going to get a paper, and stayed gone until she called me on my cell phone and asked me to bring the Suburban around.

  Mike Ramirez accompanied the nurse who rolled Annie out. I clicked the door unlocked and rudely sat behind the wheel while Mike helped Annie out of the chair and into the car. Cindy grabbed Annie's new supply of stuffed animals and hugged Royer, who had walked out behind them. Mike pushed the chair back inside, a relief to me, and Royer leaned in the window. He looked back at Annie, then at Cindy, and his face switched once again from father to doctor.

  The switch told Cindy that she needed to prepare herself. She sat upright and took a deep breath.

  Royer said, "I'll list Annie tonight." He put his hand on her shoulder and said, "It's time."

  Cindy nodded and said, "Will you try to reach Dr. Mitchell one more time?"

  Royer nodded. "Already did. You might say ... I left him a message. If I don't hear from him by tomorrow, I'll call Macon. Basically, once we list her, we could go any day. Could be tomorrow, could be next month, could be three months."

  He handed Cindy a plastic bag containing two pagers and one cell phone. "Keep these close. Pagers on you both twenty-four hours a day. Keep the cell phone with you, and don't forget to charge it." He smiled. "The phone is equipped with a GPS, so if I need to find you with the helicopter, we'll be in good shape. Basically, if that pager goes off, and your cell phone is on, I'll already know where you are. Oh, and when that pager goes off? You'll need to be thinking about getting to the hospital."

  Cindy held the bundle in her hands like a map that led to the lost treasure in the Sierra Madre.

  He pointed at both of them. "Remember, never without your pager. Even in the shower, I want it close enough to touch."

  Cindy patted Royer on his wrist and mouthed, Thank you.

  "You bet. Now, get her home, get her some rest, but don't treat her like an invalid. Let her get out. Some sunshine will do her some good. She's still very much alive. Let's treat her that way."

  We weren't even out of the parking lot before Annie said, "Reese? Did you hear that my test went well and that I didn't wake up?"

  "Yeah," I said, looking in the rearview mirror. "I did."

  Cindy handed Annie her pager, and they both clipped them to the waistlines of their clothes. Cindy spent a few minutes getting familiar with the cell phone. Finally she slipped it into her purse and smiled sheepishly. "I've never had a cell phone before. Hope I can figure out how to use it before I need to."

  WE STOPPED AT THE WELL FOR LUNCH. I FED THEM AS MUCH AS they cared to eat and then drove them home.

  When we turned into the drive, the sight was not pretty. Condensation was running down the insides of the windows, and a steady stream of water was bubbling up from under the door and spilling across the concrete front porch. Cindy covered her mouth, and I said, "Wait here."

  I opened the door to find the entire house soaked from ceiling to carpet. I sloshed into the kitchen beneath a spray of water from the busted pipe in the ceiling and discovered that a crawl-space pipe had sprung a leak. From the multiple sag holes in the ceiling, it looked like a tiny leak had initially emitted a fine and quiet spray until it split the pipe, deluging the ceiling. The attic river then sought lower ground and found it. Three inches of water stood in the bedroom, and the living room was no better. Annie's stuffed animals looked like they'd been invited to a swimming party. I could turn the water off, but drying out the house would take the better part of a week, and by that time black, sporous mold would be growing off the walls like sprayed-in insulation.

  I went back outside.

  Cindy asked, "Do I even want to look?"

  "It's pretty bad," I said. "Listen, let's worry about this tomorrow. Right now, let's get you two to my house."

  I switched off the main water line and left the doors open. The rest would have to wait.

  I got them settled at my house, then returned to theirs and collected a few things they had asked for. I opened the windows and spent three hours mopping out as much water as I could, then set three floor fans blowing across the house.
r />   Looking at the mess, I phoned Cindy and asked, "Do you want to contact your insurance agent and have them send someone out while I'm still here?"

  "No need."

  "Why not?"

  "You might say we're . . . self-insured." Cindy paused, and I thought I heard her chewing on a fingernail. "Well, anyway. We didn't have much, so losing what we had doesn't hurt as much as if we were running over with stuff and money."

  ANNIE SLEPT THROUGH THE AFTERNOON WHILE CINDY SPENT it pacing back and forth atop the boathouse, thinking through her options. I tinkered with whatever I could get my hands on in the workshop, which wasn't much. I had finished their table and benches and didn't feel like tackling the Hacker. So I cleaned tools, waxed the hull of the shell, and watched Cindy through the crack of the sliding door.

  When she descended the stairs along with the sun, I decided I'd try to cheer her up. "Hey, I wanted to show you something."

  Cindy walked in, and I led her to the table and pulled off the canvas cover. I slid out the benches and pointed with an open palm. "It's for you and Annie."

  Her mouth dropped and she sat gingerly, as if she were afraid it might break.

  "Don't worry, it's pretty stout. It'd take a tornado to rip this apart."

  She ran her hands across the top, following the grain, and then said, "You made this?"

  "Well ... yeah. It's not-"

  "It's incredible," she interrupted. "I've never seen anything like it. What's it made out of?"

  "This is heart of pine. About two years ago Charlie and I salvaged it out of an old barn like yours, but a bit older. The wood itself comes from the 1840s."

  Cindy's eyes grew large and round, and the corners filled with tears.

  "I put it together with mortise and tenon. Meaning, there's not a nail in it. It's all sort of dovetailed together."

  She ran her fingers along the edges, holding back the flood for as long as she could. Finally, she broke. After a minute or two, her shoulders were shaking, and a mixture of both fear and anger poured out of her.