Tales From Sea Glass Inn (28 page)

Mostly, though, Tam was held in place by her
smile. Genuine and freely given. Her entire face was transformed into something
open and positive by it. Tam would put her life in this woman’s hands without a
second thought.

“You must be Mr. Kalburg’s daughter. Tamsyn,
isn’t it? What a beautiful name. I’m Dr. Sherman, but call me Maggie, please.”

“Tam,” she said, shaking the proffered hand
and not wanting to let go. She’d been feeling shaky, angry, and disoriented
since receiving her dad’s letter, but Maggie’s touch calmed her. She cleared
her throat and attempted a complete sentence. “Most people call me Tam.”

“Tam. I like it. Shall we sit and talk about
your dad’s condition?”

Tam liked the way her name sounded coming out
of Maggie’s mouth and she almost let the word
dad
slide by without noticing it. She hadn’t called him that ever. He had been
Daddy, and then he’d been gone.

She sat on the edge of a vinyl recliner and
clenched her hands on her lap. She wasn’t sure where to look, torn between a
fascination with the man who shared her blood—similar to the lurid way people
seemed to want to stare at car accidents—and the desire to watch Maggie talk.
Maggie was ahead in drawing her gaze, especially when she started to talk about
his prognosis.

“How much have you told Tam about your
condition, Markus?”

“Not much.” Even his voice sounded hoarse and
worn-out, as if every part of him was slowly dying. “I asked her to come. I
wanted her here but didn’t want to ask…We haven’t spoken in a long time.”

Maggie nodded with a sympathetic expression.
“I’ll fill her in on the details then, shall I?”

“Please.”

Tam hadn’t ever sat in a room like this one
with other family members, having lost touch with all of them long ago, but
she’d been in enough hospitals to recognize the respectful way Maggie treated
her patient. She didn’t talk down to him or act as if he wasn’t even in the
room and address all her comments and questions to Tam, the healthy one. She
seemed ready to be his voice and advocate, without taking control away from
him.

“Tam, your father has hepatocellular
carcinoma. Primary liver cancer. By the time he began showing symptoms, the
cancer was in an advanced stage. He needs a transplant to survive, and even
though he’s already on a waiting list for a donor, he might not survive long
enough to be selected. If you’re willing to be tested, we can ascertain if—”

“Whoa, whoa.” Tam waved her hands frantically
and Maggie stopped talking. “I came just to…to…I don’t even know why I’m here,
but I sure as hell know it wasn’t to give him any part of me. How can you take
my liver, anyway? What am I supposed to do after that?”

Maggie took a deep breath, and Tam found
herself doing the same in spite of herself. She relaxed a fraction, but she was
ready to bolt for the door if anyone came near her with a scalpel.

“A living donor can give part of a healthy
liver. That portion is transplanted to the recipient, and both partial livers
will grow to an adequate size fairly quickly. A donor”—she held her hand up to
stop Tam’s protest—“not you, necessarily, would be in the hospital for a week
or so. Off work for a couple months. We don’t even know if you’d be a suitable
match, but if you are, you’d be his best hope for survival. Markus and I have
discussed this, and I think you should know he only has two months, maybe
three, to live if he doesn’t get a transplant.”

Tam stared at the blood pressure monitor on
the wall behind Maggie. She was glad they didn’t have it attached to her,
because she’d probably blow it up and put a hole in the fancy new oncology
ward. Give her father a piece of her liver? What the hell were he and Maggie
thinking? She put a hand on her stomach as if to keep her organs from jumping
ship.

“I don’t…I’ve got to go,” she said. She was
off the chair and halfway down the hall when she heard Maggie calling her name.
She wanted to keep running, but she turned to face her. She had to put an end
to this organ quest once and for all.

“Don’t even try to talk me into this,” she
hissed, keeping her voice low but determined in the busy hallway. “I barely
know that man. He has no right to ask me for anything. You can think I’m a bad
person if you want, but I’m not ready to just forgive and sacrifice part of myself
because he finally sent me a letter after all these years.”

“I would never judge you, Tam. The decision
is yours to make, and no one else’s.” Maggie fidgeted with a heart-shaped
locket, twisting the chain around her slender finger. Tam stared at Maggie’s
hands, and then shook her head, not understanding the pull Maggie had over her.
How was she able to distract Tam at a time like this?

“Markus told me you two are estranged, and
even though I don’t know the details, I can tell you I’ve seen other families
in a similar situation,” Maggie continued. “Even a simple meeting with your dad
right now would be stressful and overwhelming, let alone having his disease and
prognosis added to the mix. Every situation is different, of course, but I’ve
witnessed reunions like this before. I know it’s not easy for you. Or for him.”

“And I suppose all of those people cried and
hugged each other and jumped right on a gurney bound for the operating room?”

“No. Some did, some didn’t.”

Tam looked away, wishing she’d wake up from
this dream. “And the ones who said no. Did they feel guilty after?”

“I have a suggestion, Tam,” Maggie said
without answering her directly. “We don’t even know if you’re a good match, and
there are several tests we’d need to perform. The first ones are relatively
noninvasive, just a blood test, a health assessment, and a CT scan. We can
start with those and give you time to process this information before you make
a decision. If the results look good, we can reevaluate and determine whether
you want to go forward from there. You can say no at any time, and we’ll stop.”

“I already said no.”

“Promise me you’ll consider it,” Maggie said.
“Yes, you’ll be potentially saving a man’s life, your father’s life, but think
about yourself, too. I know you believe you’re doing that right now by saying
no, but imagine how you’ll feel in the future. You can always go through the
surgery, then walk away and never see each other again. If you refuse to do it
now, there’s no changing your mind six months down the road.”

Tam gave a sort of nod, like she was an
inanimate bobblehead, and turned toward the exit. This time, Maggie didn’t try
to stop her, but Tam felt her gaze burning through her back as she walked away.

Once outside, Tam bent over and put her hands
on her knees. She probably looked as bad as Mel and Pam had yesterday. She had
a feeling Maggie was trying to protect her from something, some guilt or
remorse she’d seen in other family members who had refused to help. But the
thought of going through with the surgery seemed just as impossible to handle.

Tam stood up again and walked to her car. She
got inside and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. Did she really have a
choice? She acted as if she did, but presented in Maggie’s soothing voice, her
choice was clear. Go through the preliminary tests. She didn’t even have to
speak with her father to do it. Hopefully, she’d be a bad match and wouldn’t
have to face the ultimate decision.

And if she was suitable? Given her luck, she
probably was. Maybe she’d say no. Or maybe she’d do what Maggie had said. Go
through with the surgery and walk away from him without looking back.

Like father, like daughter.

*

Maggie sat on a folding chair and watched the
skydiving video with a growing feeling of dread. She had no doubt about what
happened if
anything
went wrong. Splat. Why did she need to be told the different possibilities when
the final outcome of all of them was her plummeting to earth?

She signed a release waiver with a shaking
hand and sat on the bench waiting for her name to be called while she reviewed
the instructions from the short film. She was supposed to have a lesson with
her tandem jump instructor, but she went through the process in her mind over
and over again. Arms bent and held out from her side at ninety degree angles.
Knees bent between the instructor’s legs. Head up. Don’t panic. She added that
one on her own.

What the hell was she doing here, anyway?
Just because her last girlfriend had gone off to sail around the world or down
the Pacific coast or wherever, why had Maggie needed to reevaluate her own
life? She’d said no when Gem had asked her to come along, even though she could
easily have managed at least a sabbatical for a short trip if she wasn’t ready
to commit to a full year of adventure. She didn’t miss the girlfriend all that
much, and they’d never have been able to stand each other in such close
quarters for months at a time, but she’d felt like something was missing in her
life once Gem was gone. Something about Maggie herself seemed off once she’d
realized how fear ruled her world and dictated her choices.

She jumped out of her seat when her name was
called and rubbed sweaty palms on her jeans as she walked to the side of the
room and through the door. The back room was hectic, with people everywhere and
brightly colored parachutes laid out on the floor. The guy who had called her
introduced himself as Mike and pulled a blue jumpsuit off a rack crammed full
of them.

“Put this on,” he said. “And this helmet.”

“Seriously?” Maggie had to laugh at the soft
leather hat he thrust in her hand. It wouldn’t offer adequate protection if she
fell off a bike, let alone out of the fucking sky. “What is this for? To keep
my brain from splattering all over the landing zone if we crash?”

He looked at her with raised eyebrows and she
sighed, tucking her hair behind her ears and pulling on the helmet. Not
everyone appreciated the morbid humor common among the doctors and nurses in
her ward. For them, it was a survival mechanism. She stepped into the jumpsuit
and zipped it closed. It was at least three sizes too big for her frame and
fell to the ground in folds. Mike motioned for her to follow, and she hiked up
the legs of her suit and hurried after him as he walked with quick, long
strides to a Jeep waiting outside.

Maggie squeezed in between a man and a woman
in the backseat. They wore equally ill-fitting suits and had the freaked-out
expression she was certain was on her own face, so she guessed they were also
first-timers. She’d seen the poster advertising an afternoon of introductory
skydiving lessons and had expected an atmosphere of camaraderie and laughter,
not the silence of people being transported to their doom. When was Mike going
to give her that lesson, anyway?

He and the other instructors chatted in the
front seat, and Maggie stared out the window as they drove the short distance
from the skydiving base to the runway. Soon she’d be parachuting back to that
base, where her sister Jocelyn would be to greet her with a hug and a bottle of
champagne. She was ready to skip right to the drinking portion of the
afternoon.

Still, she had made a vow to be more daring.
She had been living with too much care and caution, barely getting out of her
television and frozen meal rut long enough to go to lunch with Joss or to book
club. She faced life and death every day at her job, and she wouldn’t trade
what she did for anything, but she’d felt something slip out of her grasp when
she’d been immobilized by the thought of leaving with Gem.

So here she was, on some idiotic, quixotic
quest. Did she really want to jump out of an airplane that wasn’t on fire or
experiencing some other emergency? Or was it merely the most stereotypical
daredevil feat she could consider doing?

The Jeep hit a bump in the road, and Maggie
gasped audibly. She felt her face flush with embarrassment, but her two
seatmates didn’t seem to notice anything. They were probably too busy watching
their own lives flash through their own minds and couldn’t be bothered with
hers.

Maggie gave up pondering the steps that had
gotten her here and thought instead about the proud and angry woman she had met
two days ago. Tam. Striking, with her blond hair and green eyes that were as
impenetrable as an old-growth forest. Hurting like a child, but strong and
fiercely independent. Maggie had been dealing with Markus long enough to see
the similarities between the two. Somewhat in looks, and a whole lot in
bearing. Markus had stooped low enough to ask Tam to come to the hospital but
wouldn’t go further and ask her to be a potential donor. Tam would probably be
the exact same way if their roles were reversed. Well, would Tam have even
written to Markus at all? Probably not.

The Jeep stopped, interrupting Maggie’s
thoughts of Tam. She was a good distraction, even able to push the images of
ripped parachutes and broken ripcords from Maggie’s mind and replace them with
ones of Tam’s full lips curved in a frown or her beautifully muscled forearms
when she wrapped them protectively around herself.

Maybe Maggie should get her mind back on the
dangers of skydiving. Her attraction to Tam wasn’t exactly taboo—Tam wasn’t her
patient and never would be. The transplant, were it to occur, would happen at a
large hospital in Portland or Seattle. But Tam didn’t seem like the average
girl next door. Maggie had a feeling that dating her would be as hazardous to
her heart as jumping out of this plane could be to her body.

“Put this on,” Mike said, handing Maggie a
nylon harness with thick straps. Were those the only words he knew? She stepped
into the harness and he pulled the straps tight, bunching her baggy jumpsuit
until she looked like she was wearing an extra-large Hefty bag with a snug
belt.

“We’ll jump at thirteen thousand feet. I’ll
hook our harnesses together a few thousand feet before that. Once we’re out of
the plane, don’t grab me or any part of the harness or chute. Got it?”