The Best of Me - Nicholas Sparks [118]
“What should I say?”
“Just talk to him,” he answered. “You’ll know what to say. You’re his mother.”
Outside the recovery room, Amanda took a deep breath, and Dr. Mills pushed open the door. She entered the brightly lit room, immediately spotting her son in a bed with the curtains drawn back.
Jared was ghostly pale, and his cheeks were still hollowed out. He rolled his head to the side, a brief smile crossing his face.
“Hi, Mom,” he whispered, his words fuzzy with the remnants of anesthesia.
Amanda touched his arm, careful not to disturb the countless tubes and swaths of medical tape and instruments attached to his body. “Hey, sweetheart. How are you?”
“Tired,” he mumbled. “Sore.”
“I know,” she said. She brushed the hair from his forehead before taking a seat in the hard plastic chair beside him. “And you’ll probably be sore for a while. But you won’t have to be here long. Just a week or so.”
He blinked, his eyelids moving slowly. Like he used to do as a little boy, right before she turned out the lights at bedtime.
“I have a new heart,” he said. “The doctor said I had no choice.”
“Yes,” she answered.
“What does that mean?” Jared’s arm jerked in agitation. “Am I going to have a normal life?”
“Of course you will,” she said soothingly.
“They took out my heart, Mom.” He gripped the sheet on the bed. “They told me that I’m going to be taking drugs forever.”
Confusion and apprehension played across his youthful features. He understood that his future had been irrevocably altered, and while she wished she could shield him from this new reality, she knew she couldn’t.
“Yes,” she said, her gaze never wavering. “You had a heart transplant. And yes, you’ll be on drugs forever. But those things also mean you’re alive.”
“For how long? Even the doctors can’t tell me that.”
“Does that really matter right now?”
“Of course it matters,” Jared snapped. “They told me that the average transplant lasts fifteen to twenty years. And then I’ll probably need another heart.”
“Then you’ll get another one. And in between, you’re going to live, and after that, you’ll live some more. Just like everyone else.”
“You don’t understand what I’m trying to say.” Jared turned his face away, toward the wall on the far side of the bed.
Amanda saw his reaction and searched for the right words to reach him, to help him accept this new world he’d woken up to. “When I was waiting in the hospital for the last couple of days, do you know what I was thinking?” she began. “I was thinking that there were so many things that you still haven’t done, things you still haven’t experienced. Like the satisfaction of graduating from college, or the thrill of buying a house, or the excitement of landing that perfect job, or meeting the girl of your dreams and falling in love.”
Jared didn’t show any signs of having heard her, but she could tell by his alert stillness that he was listening. “You’ll still be able to do all those things,” she went on. “You’ll make mistakes and struggle like everyone, but when you’re with the right person, you’ll feel almost perfect joy, like you’re luckiest person who ever lived.” She reached over to pat his arm. “And in the end, a heart transplant has nothing to do with any of those things. Because you’re still alive. And that means you’ll love and be loved… and in the end, nothing else really matters.”
Jared lay without moving, long enough to make Amanda wonder if he’d fallen asleep in his postoperative haze. Then he gradually turned his head.
“You really believe everything you just said?” His voice was tentative.
For the first time since she’d heard about the accident, Amanda thought of Dawson Cole. She leaned in closer.
“Every word.”
23
Morgan Tanner stood in Tuck’s garage, his hands clasped before him as he examined the wreckage that had once been the Stingray. He grimaced, thinking that the owner wasn’t going to be happy about this.
The damage was obviously