Amanda Stevens - Confessions of the Heart

“Lean forward.” Michael blew gently on the stethoscope before placing the warmed instrument against her back, and then he moved it around to her chest. Next he took her pulse, his brows drawing together in concentration as he counted.

He really was a handsome man. It would have been very easy to cross the line from professional to personal, Anna had to admit. He wasn’t just easy on the eyes, but was charming and funny and he loved to tease her. She couldn’t remember being teased that way since her mother had died of heart failure when Anna was thirteen.

She’d inherited her mother’s bad heart, but not her sense of humor. Always prone to a serious disposition, Anna had become even more intense and driven as a teenager, especially after her father remarried. She’d bitterly rebelled against her stepmother and had cut herself off from her family all through college and law school. Not until Anna learned her father was battling lung cancer had she finally taken the first step toward reconciliation.

She was grateful they’d made their peace before he died, but she knew she hadn’t given him the one thing he’d wanted most—her acceptance of Laurel. Even in their mutual grief, Anna hadn’t been able to warm up to her stepmother.

So it was ironic, she supposed, that Laurel was the one who’d talked her into seeing a doctor when she’d started having dizzy spells, Laurel who’d insisted Anna seek a second opinion when her first cardiologist had sent her home after treating her for an irregular heartbeat.

It was Laurel who moved in and took care of Anna when, several months later, the dizzy spells turned into exhaustion, Laurel who commiserated with her when she had to cut back her caseload at Matthews, Conley and Hart and later, when she had to take an extended leave of absence.

It was Laurel who’d been by Anna’s side when she got the news that in the year since her first diagnosis, her heart had taken a complete nosedive, and a transplant was her only hope.

It was Laurel who’d driven her to the hospital when the call had come that a heart had been found for her.

A new heart. A new life. A new Anna.

At least, she was trying for the latter. Facing her own mortality had made her take a long hard look at herself, and Anna had been a little shocked by what she’d found. Her whole adult life had been focused on her career to the exclusion of all else, including friendships, relationships and family.

The decisions she’d made had been brought painfully home to her when Laurel had kept a lonely vigil at the hospital, when only a smattering of cards and letters from well-wishers had been delivered to her apartment. She’d been forced to accept the unpleasant truth that, except for her stepmother—a woman Anna had treated badly for years—no one much cared whether she lived or died.

Of course, the senior partners at Matthews, Conley and Hart had a financial interest in her survival, but if she’d never made it off the operating table, they wouldn’t have shed any tears. They would have coldly and analytically gone about the business of minimizing the impact of her demise on the firm, perhaps even finding a way to capitalize on it, just as she would have done if she were in their place.

Her ex-husband had once accused her of being a cold, heartless bitch, and she supposed in a lot of ways she had been.

Michael was taking a blood pressure reading, and Anna knew better than to say anything until he was through.

“So,” he said, returning the pressure cuff to the wall over her bed. “What did you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said someone knows about you. What did you do?”

“I think someone from the donor’s family knows who I am.”

He lifted his brows in surprise. “That’s impossible. Both the donor and the recipient’s identification are kept anonymous. The surgeons don’t even know who the donors are. The OPOs are designed that way.”

“I realize that, but I don’t know how else to explain the weird things that have been happening to me lately.”

He frowned. “What kind of weird things?”

Anna lay silent for a moment. “This is going to make me sound completely paranoid, but I’ve been getting these phone calls. They always come at night, after I’ve gone to bed, and they usually wake me up. No one seems to be on the line, but I can hear music playing in the background. You know that tune ‘Heart and soul, da-da, da-da, da-da…’ Okay, I’m way off key, but you know the one I mean?”

He gave her a strange look. “You say these phone calls always come at night and they wake you up? Are you sure you’re not dreaming? You’ve been through an ordeal, Anna. Both physically and mentally. Your whole life has changed in a matter of months—”

“I know,” she broke in. “But that’s not it. I’m not dreaming. I think the phone calls have something to do with my transplant.”

“But even if they do that doesn’t mean they’re coming from the donor’s family,” Michael argued. “It could be someone who knows you. Someone with a grudge who’s trying to get under your skin a little.”

She’d thought of that. Her aggressive style as a divorce attorney hadn’t exactly endeared her to the spouses of her clients, or to some of her own colleagues, for that matter. Still, there was something deeply disturbing and symbolic about the phone calls.

“Look,” Michael said. “I don’t want you worrying about this. The last thing you need is added stress.”

“I’m not stressed. God knows some days I feel as if I’m almost comatose.” Anna didn’t exactly miss the pressure cooker environment at the law firm, but a year post-op, she knew it was time to either go back to work on a limited basis or find something else to occupy her time. She couldn’t exist for the rest of her life in a world of little more than meds, naps and daily walks. She knew of other heart transplant recipients who were climbing mountains. She needed a mountain.

“You’re right. It’s probably nothing.” She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I thought I’d mention it, though, in case you want to report a possible security breach to Gift of Life.”

He made a final notation in her file. “A security breach is highly unlikely.”

“Right.” Anna knew of computer experts who could hack into the offshore accounts of major banks to search for hidden assets. In the right hands, she doubted the systems at most organ procurement organizations would present much of a challenge.

Michael slipped his pen into the pocket of his lab coat and closed her file. “You’re doing great, Anna. Your lab and blood work all look good. You keep this up, and I won’t need to see you again for another three months.”

He walked to the door, then turned and gave her a stern look. “But I’m serious about the stress. Don’t get all worked up about these calls. Unplug your phone at night if you have to. Give it a few days, and whoever this joker is, he’ll get tired of his little pranks and move on to something else.”

Move on to something else.

That was exactly what Anna was afraid of.

“SORRY YOU HAD TO WAIT so long,” she told Laurel a little while later as her stepmother carefully navigated her Lexus through the massive Texas Medical Center parking garage.

Laurel smiled. “Don’t be sorry. I know it sounds strange, but I always enjoy coming to the institute. The place is so amazing. Have you seen the Celebration of Hearts exhibit in the museum?”

The Denton A. Cooley Building, which housed the Texas Heart Institute, was indeed a marvel of twenty-first century technology, a state-of-the-art research, education and patient care facility named for one of the pioneers in heart transplant surgery. But Anna’s familiarity with the hospital was limited primarily to the eighth floor. “I never made it down to the museum.”