I’d just finished lunch in the cafeteria with Alexis, and she’d gone back to my house. I swung by Gibson’s office on the last ten minutes of my break
and knocked on his door frame. He held up a finger, asking me to wait while he wrapped up his call.
I needed to ask for the days off for Benny’s transplant in July. I was practically bouncing. I’d been like this since last night. I couldn’t stop smiling.
It was like a light had switched on inside my brother; the change was instantaneous.
He’d stayed up with me and Alexis celebrating. Brad and Justin came over, and my brother was joking and laughing and was Benny for the first time in so long, I wanted to cry even thinking about it. This morning, he was on his treadmill when I got up. He said if he wanted to be ready for the next marathon, he had to start training now. Then he ate a full breakfast. All of it. I’d had to muscle down the happy sob that came out of my mouth.
Someone had given me my brother back.
I didn’t know who the donor was or how they found us. All we were told was that they were available for a late July transplant, they wanted to do it at Mayo Clinic, and that they wished to stay anonymous. Zander said they were a perfect match.
A perfect match.
I’d been braced for today to be so shitty. And now I didn’t even care that I was officially divorced. Didn’t care. Nothing could cast a shadow on this moment. Not even Nick.
Gibson hung up the phone and motioned me inside.
I stood in front of his desk feeling buoyant and light. “I need to request two weeks off in July,” I said.
“All right.” He logged on to his computer. “Going anywhere fun?” he asked, tapping into his keyboard.
“Rochester. To the transplant center.”
He stopped and looked up at me over his glasses with a grin. “Well, I’ll be damned. You see? Everything happens for a reason.” He went back to tapping. “And to think he might have gone to a different hospital.”
I laughed a little. “Why would Benny go to a different hospital?”
“Not Benny. Jacob. He’d never have met your brother if he had. Look at that, everything works out.” He shook his head with a smile and went back to the screen.
I stood there, my brain trying to make sense of what he was saying. “Jacob?” I asked.
“He’s doing it for Joy,” he said, talking to the screen. “Did he tell you that? His mother had a kidney transplant when he was a kid. Always dreamed of paying it forward. At least that’s what he said when Zander asked him if he wanted to run the labs. Glad it worked out.”
My soul. Left. My body.
“Jacob is my brother’s kidney donor?” I breathed. Gibson looked up at me. “What’s that?”
I swallowed. “The donor is anonymous…”
I watched Gibson’s smile melt, then morph into sheer panic. “It’s…he didn’t…Briana, I had no idea.” He stuttered. “He spoke about it freely,
the…the two of you seemed to be friends—you…you were eating lunch together yesterday. I—I didn’t know, I just assumed…”
I turned and ran. I had to find him. Now. Immediately.
I threw open the door to our supply closet as I darted past. He wasn’t there, so I bolted to the ER floor dialing his number.
My heartbeat was thudding in my ears, my mind careening forward faster than I could keep up, the details shifting and reconfiguring.
Jacob was Benny’s kidney donor. Jacob. Was Benny’s. Kidney. Donor. How???
I’d been so mean to him.
I wasn’t even nice to him in the beginning. I was a total nightmare. And he’d have to have been working on this even back then because it takes weeks for the labs and the tissue samples and the medical and mental health evaluations, and I knew they took that long because I’d done them myself once when I was trying to see if I was a match.
I pulled back sliding glass doors to patient rooms and yanked away curtains with my phone to my ear, his number ringing. He didn’t answer, so I ran through the doctors’ lounge and checked the stairwell and the cafeteria.
Then I started to cry.
He didn’t want me to know.
He didn’t want any of us to know. He just wanted to do this in secret when he could have done this in the open and let everyone love him for it— and they would have. Every single person who worked in this department would have instantly adored him for his selfless act, worshipped the ground he walked on. He would have been beloved, forgiven for anything, a hero.
But Jacob wasn’t like that. He was a hero, but he was the kind that never let anyone know.
A sob burst from my mouth, and I had to cover it with a hand. Jessica was right. He was an excellent human being.
I felt my chest filling up, like love and gratitude and appreciation were solids that took up space inside me. I could feel the emotions pouring from my heart, streaming from the tips of my fingers, bursting from my mouth like a shout.
I would jump in front of a bus for this man. Take a bullet. Fight a mob. I would defend him to the death, kill someone for so much as looking at him wrong.
I wanted to go back in time and punch myself in the face for causing him even a moment of unhappiness. My devotion to him shot adrenaline into my system, made me feel frantic to find him so I could thank him, even though thanking him wasn’t and never would be enough.
I must have looked hysterical, tearing through the hallways sobbing, throwing open doors, mascara running down my face. It felt like a dream. One of the ones where your legs won’t move fast enough and you can’t find what you’re looking for.
And then there he was.
He was coming down the hallway from the direction of the locker rooms. This beautiful, benevolent angel of a man.
I ran at him, grabbed him by the hand, and yanked him toward a supply closet.
“Uh…” he said, letting himself be dragged. “What are we—”
I pulled him into the small room and shut the door behind me, panting. He stared at me. “Are you okay?”
I gasped for a moment before blurting it out. “Are you Benny’s kidney donor?”
I watched the question move across his face.
I shook my head. “I know you don’t want anyone to know. And I won’t tell anyone. Not even Benny. But I have to know, for myself, if it’s you. Please. Is it you?” My voice cracked on the last word.
He peered at me quietly. The moment stretched a thousand years.
I tried to read his expression, tried to glean the answer from the tic in his jaw or the resigned set of his eyebrows, the searching in his kind brown eyes. I had to know, I had to know.
I watched his lips part and then he said it: “Yes.” I threw myself at him.
