Save Me

Save Me

By Natasha Preston

Copyright 2014 Natasha Preston

The right Natasha Preston to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to my lovely beta readers and friends. Thanks for all that extra work you made me do… Ladies, I couldn’t do it without you.

To Mollie Wilson from MJWilson Design for creating the cover.

And to my editor Eileen Proksch.

Dedication

Kirsty, this one could only ever be for you!

Chapter One

Tegan

I sat in the small family room with my mum and sister, waiting to hear if our worst nightmare – the one we didn’t speak aloud in case we jinxed it – was about to come true.

Dad’s parents and brother were on their way but at the minute it was just us three.
I needed more people here; more to focus on so I could pretend the surgeons weren’t fighting to save my dad’s life right now.

The
room we were in was all wrong. It was light and welcoming, with bright flowers in a tall vase on the coffee table. It was cheerful and gave false hope. Not everyone that came in here was going to leave happy.

Ava sniffed and wip
ed her nose. She and Mum clung to each other. They were close. I was close to Dad. Whenever anything bad happened it was just assumed Dad would comfort me, and Mum would comfort Ava. I wanted, needed, the support they were offering but I knew the only person that could do that was in emergency surgery.

“What’s taking them so long?”
Ava said. She already knew what. They were fighting to stop a pretty serious bleeding in his brain
.
I was terrified that they wouldn’t be able to.

“He’ll be fine,” Mum said
, nodding more to herself than anyone else.

I tensed my body, stupidly telling myself that if
I just stayed as still as I could he’d be fine. That was ridiculous, though. If I sat as still as a statue or did cartwheels around the room it made absolutely no difference to what the outcome of the operation would be. That was all down to Dad and the surgeons.

We’d only
been here forty-five minutes but it felt like hours, days even. Dad was already in surgery when we received
that
call. I didn’t know how long something like that took to fix and I didn’t know if it was a good sign that we hadn’t heard anything since we arrived or not.

“Alison!
” Nan said, bursting through the door. Tears streamed down her face, taking her mascara with it. Mum stood up and hugged her tight. They cried together for a minute before Nan pulled away and sat in Mum’s seat between me and Ava and put an arm around each of us. Her
son
was in surgery but she was doing her best to comfort us.

Ava cried harder,
turning to sob on Mum’s shoulder on the other side of her now. I couldn’t cry at all. I didn’t want to. It would be like accepting there was a possibility that my
strong
dad wouldn’t make it. Deep down I knew there was a chance that could happen, of course. He was going to make it, though.

Next in the room
were Grandad and Uncle Sam, just minutes behind Nan. I watched them talk, exchanging comforting words almost animatedly but I didn’t really hear a thing.

“Tegan, are you okay?” Mum asked softly. She knelt down in front of me, worry e
tched on her tear-stained face. How long had she been there for?

I nodded,
at least I think I did. I didn’t want her worrying. “I’m fine,” I replied. Fine wasn’t how I felt at all; petrified was a much better fit. She smiled and sat back on her chair, wrapping her arm around Ava again.

Waiting was excruciating
. What if they came with bad news? What if they couldn’t stop the bleeding? His car was hit by a lorry, what chance did he really have against that?

“Mrs
Pennells?”

I leapt up with everyone else
at the doctor’s words. My world stopped. The doctor’s face was blank, giving nothing away.
I could feel my heart racing at a hundred miles an hour.

“I’m so sorry. We did everything that we could–”

I
spaced out, muscles locking in position, hearing only the ringing in my ears as I tried to think of a way that I’d misheard that. Black spots danced in front of my face. My lungs burned where I couldn’t get enough oxygen. Then I was falling.

When I came around the doctor was kneeling above me with my mum at the other side, sobbing hysterically. It hit me like a bus.
Dad’s gone.

A crushing, stabbing
pain pierced through my body as I lay on the rough carpet. No. No, he couldn’t die. He
couldn’t
. I wasn’t ready to lose him, I should be in my sixties, not fucking seventeen.

I opened my mouth but the suffocating pain stopped any sound coming out. I was plunged into ice-cold water, sinking lower and lower while the doctor tried to get a response from me.

I couldn’t lose him. It already felt so painful I could barely breathe. How could I do it? The thought of getting off the floor made me want to curl up in a ball and stop existing.

“Tegan,” Mum sobbed.

In a trance I sat up, falling straight into her lap. Her arms curled around me and we cried together. It was the first time Mum had really held me since I was a little kid.

“Mrs
Pennells?” the doctor said once she was satisfied I was okay. “I’m sorry to have to bring this up now but I’d like to talk to you about organ donation if that’s okay?”

I froze
again and felt Mum nod against the top of my head. “Simon would want that. Do you need me to sign anything?”

“
No, he carried a donor card. I just wanted to make sure you’re aware that your husband is doing an incredible thing for others.”

My mind finally pieced together exactly what that meant. His organs were going to be cut out.
No!
I wanted to stand up and scream. I couldn’t move an inch. They couldn’t cut him apart and take anything out of him. His heart? Were they taking his heart? That belonged to us. My dad was a person, not a body they could just take things out of. He was my dad and I wanted him whole. I wanted him back.

“Would you like to stay here and say goodbye when he’s out of surgery?” she asked. W
hen he’d had his organs removed, she meant. I didn’t want to see my dad dead.

“Yes,
I need to see my child,” Nan said between heavy sobs.

“O
f course. I’ll come back soon.”

Nothing was said as we wai
ted for the surgeons to remove God knows what. Was there a limit to what they could take? Dad would have his wishes listed but what if they took everything anyway? No one would know. I didn’t even know he was a registered donor. Why didn’t he tell me that so I had some warning? Mum and Ava didn’t look at all surprised, they knew.

I stayed curled up on Mum’s lap the whole time they were cutting his organs out. Mum must have been uncomfortable – I was – but neither of u
s had the energy to move.

“Mum,” I whispered, barely recognising my own voice.

“Y-Yes?” I didn’t know what I wanted to ask. I needed her to tell me they got it wrong. I needed her to tell me that Dad was okay and would walk into the room any second. I wanted my dad. “Shh, we’re going to be okay,” she whispered.
Liar.

Dad was the heart of our family.
Nothing was going to be okay.

Time passed, I didn’t know how much, but the doctor came back for us.

“Mrs Pennells? If you’d like to follow me you can come through now.”

I looked up through blurred eyes and shook my head. I didn’t want to see him like that.

Mum took a deep breath and stood up, lifting me with her. “You need to, Tegan. You have to say goodbye.”

No
, I didn’t. I didn’t want to tell the most important person in my life goodbye. “I don’t want to,” I replied, sitting down on a chair.

“A
re you sure, sweetheart?” Nan asked, kneeling in front of me.

“I don’t want to say goodbye
.” Why the fuck couldn’t they understand that? My stomach turned and bile burned my throat. Sobs racked my body as I tried to stop crying. It hurt so much. I needed it to stop.

Nan nodded. “Okay, I’ll stay with you.”

“No, you go. You want to, and I want to be alone.”

There was no way I was going to be the
reason Nan didn’t get to say bye to her son. I sat on the chair, gripping the seat painfully and forced myself to breathe deeply.

It’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.

I was fooling myself but I couldn’t help it. I desperately wanted to believe it could be okay, that I would get through it. I was scared for the next few days, weeks and months. I didn’t want to miss him. How would I deal with not seeing or speaking to him again? I breathed deeply through my nose, clenching my stomach muscles, just trying to stop from curling up and dying, too.

“Are you okay?” someone asked
.

I
jerked and looked up. A tall guy, maybe a few years older than me with ash brown hair towered over me. He looked down, eyes full of concern.

“No, I don’t
… I…”
I’m drowning.
I wanted it to stop. I wanted my heart to stop hurting, I wanted to shout and scream and hide. I felt like I itched all over, like my skin was crawling, like I was being held down and bugs were crawling all over me. I was too hot, too cold, too empty and alone.

He sat next to me
, drawing my attention back to him while what I assumed was his Mum, brother and sister sat over on the other side of the room. They all looked alike, the same shade of light brown hair and light green eyes.

“I’m Lucas,” he said, giving me a warm smile.
His voice was deep but friendly. I didn’t want to talk to him, as nice as he seemed. I didn’t feel that I could even hold a conversation right now. I wanted to be far, far away. The others didn’t say anything, just sat there and twiddled their thumbs or started clock watching.

“Tegan,” I
whispered, clearing my sore throat.

“Are you here alone, Tegan?”

I shook my head. “No, they’re saying…goodbye.”

I didn’t see his reaction but it took him a minute to talk again. “You’re not?”

“Can’t.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw him nod his head.

We fell into silence, which suited me fine, but I could tell he was searching for something to say. Maybe he needed to keep busy to pass the time? “Are you okay?” I asked.

He nodded, though his eyes told me otherwise. “Yeah. Do you want to talk about it?”

No. I didn’t want it to be happening, and I certainly didn’t want to talk about i
t. I shook my head and wrapped my arms around myself.

“Okay,” he said.

We sat mostly in silence, until Mum and Ava came back, clinging to each other and crying. Nan, Grandad and Sam were just behind. I didn’t move. Lucas’s mum, who’d tried to talk to me a few times, stood up.

“I’m so
sorry for your loss,” she said.

They’d managed to get that much out of me. They knew I’d lost my dad.

“Thank you,” Mum whispered, frowning and taking my hand.

“I’m Emily. Your daughter told us what happened. If there’s anything we can do? A lift home?”

“Alison. Thank you but I’ve got my car.” Taking a deep, composing breath, Mum asked, “Are you okay, Emily?”

“I’m not sure.
I should be. I am. I’m scared. My husband’s needed a heart transplant for six months and he’s finally getting it.”

I
sank deeper into the water.