Michael Connelly - Blood Work

“Murdered? What are you talking about?”

“She was murdered.”

“How?”

“I don’t know exactly. She got caught in the middle of a robbery in some convenience store up in the Valley. Shot in the head. She died and I got her heart.”

“You’re not supposed to know anything about your donor. How do you know this?”

“Because her sister came and saw me on Saturday. She told me the whole thing… It sort of changes things, you know?”

Fox sat on the hospital bed and leaned over him. A stern look came over her face.

“First of all, I had no idea where your heart came from. We never do. It came through BOPRA. All we were told was that an organ was available with a blood work match to a recipient we had on call and at the top of our list. That was you. You know how BOPRA works. You watched the film during orientation. We get limited information because it works best that way. I told you exactly what we knew. Female, twenty-six years old, if I remember. Perfect health, perfect blood typing, perfect donor. That’s it.”

“Then I’m sorry. I thought maybe you knew and just held that back.”

“I didn’t. We didn’t. So if we didn’t know who and where it came from, how did the sister know who and where it went? How did she find you? This could be some kind of a scam she’s-”

“No. It’s her. I know.”

“How do you know?”

“The newspaper article last Sunday, that ‘Whatever Happened to…’ column in the Times Metro section. It said I got the heart on February ninth and that I’d been waiting a long time because my blood type was rare. The sister read it and put it together. She obviously knew when her sister died, knew her heart was donated and knew she also had a rare blood type. She’s an ER nurse up at Holy Cross and figured out it was me.”

“It still doesn’t mean you have her sister’s-”

“She also had the letter I wrote.”

“What letter?”

“The one everybody writes afterward. The anonymous thank you note to the family of your donor. The one the hospital mails. She had mine. I looked at it and it’s mine. I remember what I wrote.”

“This is not supposed to happen, Terry. What does she want? Money?”

“No, not money. Don’t you see? She wants me to find out who did it. Who killed her sister. The cops never closed it. It’s two months later and no arrest. She knows they’ve given up. Then she sees this story about me in the paper, about what I used to do for the bureau. She figures out I got her sister’s heart and thinks maybe I can do what the cops apparently can’t. Break the case. She spent an hour walking around the San Pedro marinas looking for my boat Saturday. All she had was the name of the boat from the paper. She came looking for me.”

“This is crazy. Give me this woman’s name and I’ll-”

“No. I don’t want you to do anything to her. Think if you were her and you loved your sister. You’d do what she did, too.”

Fox got off the bed, a wide-eyed look on her face.

“You’re not actually thinking of doing this.”

She said it as a statement, a doctor’s order. He didn’t answer and that in itself was an answer. He could see anger once again working itself into Fox’s expression.

“Listen to me. You are in no condition to be doing anything like this. You are sixty days post-transplant surgery and you want to run around playing detective?”

“I’m only thinking about it, okay? I told her I’d think about it. I know the risks. I also know that I’m not an FBI agent anymore. It would be a whole different thing.”

Fox angrily folded her thin arms across her chest.

“You shouldn’t even be thinking about it. As your doctor, I am telling you not to do this. That’s an order.”

Her voice then changed in tone and softened.

“You have to respect the gift you were given, Terry. This second chance.”

“But that respect goes two ways. If I didn’t have her heart, I’d be dead by now. I owe her. It’s that-”

“You don’t owe her or her family anything more than that note you sent them. That’s it. She’d be dead whether you or anybody else got her heart. You are wrong about this.”

He nodded that he understood her point but it wasn’t enough for him. He knew that just because something makes sense on an intellectual level, it doesn’t play any better in the twists of your guts. She read his thoughts.

“But what?”

“I don’t know. It’s just that I thought if I ever found out what happened, I would find out it was an accident. That’s what I prepared myself for. That’s what they tell you in orientation and even you told me when we started. That ninety-nine out of a hundred times it’s an accident leading to fatal head injury. Car crash or somebody falls down the steps or dumps their motorcycle. But this is different. It changes things.”

“You keep saying that. How can it be different? The heart is just an organ-a biological pump. It’s the same no matter how its original owner dies.”

“An accident I could live with. All that time I was waiting, knowing that somebody had to die for me to live, I was getting myself ready to accept it as an accident. With an accident it’s like it was fated or something. But a murder… that comes with evil intent attached. It’s not happenstance. It means that I’m the benefactor of an act of evil, Doctor, and that’s why it’s different now.”

Fox was silent for a few moments. She shoved her hands into the side pockets of her lab coat. McCaleb thought that she was finally beginning to see his point.

“That’s what my life was about for a long time,” he added quietly. “I was searching out evil. That was my job. And I was good at it but in the long run it was better than me. It got the best of me. I think-no, I know-that’s what took my heart. But now it’s like none of that meant anything because here I am, I have this new heart, a new life, this second chance you talk about, and the only reason I have it is because of this evil, hateful thing that someone did.”

He blew out a deep breath before going on.

“She went into that store to get a candy bar for her kid and she ends up-look, it’s just different. I can’t explain it.”

“You’re not making a lot of sense.”

“It’s hard for me to put it into the words I want. I just know what I’m feeling. It makes sense to me.”

Fox had a resigned look on her face.

“Look, I know what you’re going to want to do. You’re going to want to help this lady. But you’re not ready. Physically, no way. And emotionally, after hearing what you just said, I don’t think you’re ready to investigate even a car accident. Remember what I told you about the equilibrium between physical and mental health? One feeds off the other. And I’m scared that what you have going on in your head now is going to affect your physical progress.”

“I understand.”

“No, I don’t think you do. You are gambling with your own life here. If this goes south, if you start getting infection or rejection, we’re not going to be able to save you, Terry. We waited twenty-two months for that heart you have now. You think another one with matching blood work is going to just pop up because you messed up this one? No chance. I’ve got a patient down the hall on a machine. He’s waiting on a heart that isn’t coming. That could be you, Terry. This is your one chance. Do not blow it!”

She reached across the bed and placed her hand on his chest. It reminded him of what Graciela Rivers had done. He felt its warmth there.

“Tell this woman no. Save yourself and tell her no.”

THE MOON WAS LIKE a balloon being kept aloft by children poking at it with sticks. The masts of dozens of sailboats stood raised beneath it, ready to keep it from falling. McCaleb watched it hover in the black sky until it finally escaped by slipping behind the clouds somewhere out over Catalina. As good a hiding spot as any, he thought, as he looked down at the empty coffee cup in his hand. He missed being able to sit in the stern at the end of the day with an ice-cold beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. But cigarettes had been part of the problem and were gone for good now. And it would be a few months before the medication therapy would relax enough to allow a dose of alcohol into the mix. For now, if he had just one beer, it might give him what Bonnie Fox called a fatal hangover.