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“Mel?” I whispered, but it wasn’t her coming out. A doctor pulled off his scrub cap, exposing his red hair as he took a deep breath before his eyes locked with mine. “My wife?”
“She’s stable.”
I took a deep breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Fighting back the tears, I nodded. “When can I see her—”
“Mr. Callahan, I’m Doctor Fortmen. Your wife is stable, but she needs a heart. We have her in a medically induced coma right now and she is being moved to the intensive care unit. Her condition is critical, but we managed to stop the bleeding. However, if she doesn’t get a new heart in the next day or so—”
“Get her a fucking heart, then! She’s the goddamn governor!” I barked into his face. What was this? If she needed a heart, then give her heart. What the fuck! I’d rip mine out right then.
“Mr. Callahan, it can’t be just any heart. Rejection is high in critical cases such as these, and on top of that, her blood type is the rarest in the world. It will take time. She is at the very top of the list but—”
“But nothing.” Fine, they needed a heart, I was going to get her a heart. “The person needs to be AB negative, what else?”
“Mr. Callahan, I’m not sure what you are thinking—”
“WHAT ELSE!” I was tempted to kill him right there.
Stepping right in his face, making sure he saw me clearly, I asked simply, “Do you know who I am?”
“I know she is the governor, but—”
“I didn’t ask if you knew who my wife was. I asked if you knew who I am. Me, Liam Alec Callahan.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again, saying nothing at all.
“I can be your savior, I can cloak you in gold, or I can be your worst nightmare. I can destroy your life, your career, everything can come crashing down around you. Chicago will become a place worse than hell because I get whatever I want when I want it. Those who get in my way never get back up after I knock them down. Nothing and no one is out of reach for me. So doctor, when I ask you what else, speak, and when you speak, don’t waste my time preaching ethics and morality to me…I have and want none.”
“AB negative, a healthy woman in her late twenties or early thirties, preferably brain dead. Those are the best conditions for her to not reject the heart,” he said quickly and softly under his breath.
Backing away from him, I shot a look to Mina who was already dialing.
“After the surgery…will she be all right? I thought heart transplant recipients barely live twenty years after a new heart?” Did a countdown of our lives just start?
“No,” he said, thankfully. “Heart transplants have come a long way in the last decade. She can live well into her nineties. We will give her everything she needs to make sure she doesn’t reject the heart, but we need one that meets the standards.”
“Take me to my wife.”
“This way,” he muttered, leading me away from the OR doors.
I was torn between needing to see her and being terrified of what I might see. With each step I took, my heart pounded loudly and painfully against my ribcage until he finally opened the door. It took all of my strength not to keel over there.
“Get out,” I murmured so softly I wasn’t sure they heard me, nor did I care. The nurse adjusting her IV dropped it and backed away as I came forward. “Mel?”
It couldn’t be her.
The pale, sickly woman with tubes down her throat and wires sticking out from everywhere…it couldn’t be my Mel.
“What did they do to you?” My hand shook as I brushed her hair from the side of her face. “Wife…”
It hurt. Breathing hurt, and soon I wasn’t standing anymore. My legs went out from under me and I held on to her as I wept. I cried as if someone had killed her, as if my world was on fire…because I just needed that moment. Like all moments, it came and went, as did my tears. Taking a deep breath, I got back on my feet, dragged the chair over to her bedside, and sat down.
“This will be the last time you go to the hospital, Mel.” I squeezed her hand. “You can’t keep putting me through this shit.”
DECLAN
3:37 PM
It seemed simple—find a healthy female with the blood type AB negative between the ages of twenty-six and thirty-five—until you realized this was Chicago and the term ‘healthy’ could only be applied loosely. Within the first five minutes I was able to find three people, the first a chain smoker, the second already in the hospital going through labor which made her impossible to get at the moment, and the third—well, she was ironically our own customer.
