Chapter 38

“Harold, do you think we should call the hotel to make sure the boys got back okay?” Jackie asked her husband, as they sat in the waiting room.

Harold shrugged. “I’m sure they’re fine, honey,” he said absently.

“Well, I’m going to call anyway,” Jackie said. She knew he thought she worried too much, but that’s what mothers were best at. She fished around in her purse for her small address book, where she had written down the number of Harry’s hotel room. She took out her cell phone and dialed the number. The phone rang and rang, but no one answered. She glanced at her watch. They had left about an hour before, so they should definitely be back at the hotel by then. She shrugged it off though, realizing they were probably both sound asleep and didn’t hear the phone.

***

“What do we have here?” Dr Adele asked Dr. Marks, one of the ER physicians. He had just been paged down to the ER, and he wasn’t sure why.

“Come here,” Dr. Marks said and led Dr. Adele down the hall to one of the ER rooms. He motioned to the patient who lay in the bed. It was a young man, hooked up to life support machines. “Do you recognize him?” he asked.

Confused, Dr. Adele stepped closer and peered down at the young man. “No, I don’t think so,” he said, eyeing Dr. Marks. “Is he one of my patients?”

“Not quite,” Dr. Marks said. “This is Harold Littrell, the brother of one of your patients.”

Dr. Adele gasped. He studied the man closer. Now he recognized him. It was indeed Harry. “What happened?” he asked in shock.

“MVA,” Dr. Marks said sadly. “He died on the scene, only moments before the paramedics arrived. Luckily, they were able to get his body here in record time so we could put him on life support.”

“Life support?” Dr. Adele asked, confused. If he was already dead, why would they put him on life support?

“Do you know a Nickolas Carter?” Dr. Marks asked, sensing the other doctor’s confusion.

“Why yes, that’s Brian Littrell’s friend,” he replied.

“He was also in the crash,” Dr. Marks replied. “However, his injuries were not severe. He just has a dislocated shoulder, and some bad bruising. Other than that, he’s fine. A truck driver supposedly was the first one on the crash scene, and Mr. Carter was conscious when he got there, although Mr. Littrell was already dead. According to that truck driver, Mr. Carter told him that Mr. Littrell had requested for his heart to be transplanted into his brother.”

“Brian?” Dr. Adele asked in disbelief.

Dr. Marks nodded solemnly. “That’s why we have him on life support.”

“How bad are his injuries?” Dr. Adele asked.

“We ran some scans on him, and miraculously, although he had severe internal injuries, his heart was not damaged,” Dr. Marks said.

“Wow,” Dr. Adele gasped. “What on earth am I supposed to tell the family?”

Dr. Marks shook his head sadly. “This is going to be a hard thing to break to them,” he said softly. “How do you tell a family that one of their children is dead, but because of that, their other child is going to live?”

“What a tragedy,” Dr. Adele murmured. He picked up Harold’s chart and studied it. Sure enough, he and Brian matched up. They had the same blood type, and were very close in size. “I’d better go break it to them and then start getting Brian prepped for surgery. It’s horrible that a thing like this had to happen, but if it hadn’t have, I doubt Brian would live through the night. He already had a heart attack this afternoon. I don’t think his heart can take much more.”

Dr. Marks nodded. “I’ll call the OR and tell them to get ready for the organ harvesting.”

Dr. Adele nodded. “Thanks for having me paged,” he said. Dr. Marks just nodded grimly as Dr. Adele headed up to break the tragic news to the Littrells.

Chapter 39