How to Save a Life (4 page)

He laughs. “I figured, given the Dr. Seuss scrubs.”

I look down and register that I’m wearing a Cat in the Hat print today. “The kids like it.”

He grins at me again. “Of course they do. But I have to correct you. I’m not a groundskeeper.”

I can feel my cheeks getting warm. “Sorry, is that not the right term? Horticulturist?”

His smile widens. “I don’t know what the term is, actually. I’m just a hospital volunteer.”

“Oh.” I feel like an idiot. “I saw you watering the tree in the lobby, and I guess I just assumed.”

“I actually donated the tree, so I take its upkeep pretty seriously. At first, the hospital took care of watering and pruning it, but it didn’t seem to be thriving. So I offered to take over.”

“You donated the tree?”

He nods and looks away. “In memory of my daughter. Caroline. She died at Atlanta Children’s six years ago.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Thanks. She actually received great care there. It was a heart defect that they just couldn’t fix. But they tried. And she was happy. I gave the hospital the tree in her memory a few months after she died. It makes me happy to see it growing in a place where she once lived.”

I can feel tears in my eyes. “How old was she?”

He grimaces. “Just six. That’s way too young to go, don’t you think?”

I nod. “I work in pediatric oncology. I see too many kids go way too soon. It breaks my heart every time.”

“Time is never a guarantee, is it?”

I look away as I shake my head. “No.”

“I guess that’s why we have to live each day the best way we know how.”

I look back at him. I’m sure he’s noticed the tears in my eyes, because he looks suddenly concerned, but he doesn’t say anything. “One of my patients really loves that tree,” I tell him. Of course I’d sound like a lunatic if I repeated what Logan had told me, so I settle for saying, “He visits it every day.”

“Really?” He smiles. “You know, I think that would make Caroline very happy.”

“I’m very sorry you lost her.” I pause and glance at his unadorned ring finger. “It must have been very hard on you and your wife.” I resist the urge to roll my eyes at myself. I’m dying, and I’m fishing for information about whether this attractive man is married. Clearly, there
is
something wrong with my brain.

“I’m not married anymore,” he says immediately. “My ex, well, she had trouble handling what was going on with Caroline. The second time Caroline was admitted to the hospital, Jen moved back to California, where she’d grown up.”

I stare at him. “She
left
?”

He nods. “Right in the middle of Caroline’s treatments. I couldn’t convince her to come back.” He pauses, and something in his face twitches. I recognize it as pain. “She came back for the funeral, though.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Me too. Caroline deserved more.”

We’re silent for a moment. “She had you,” I say eventually. “And I bet that really helped.”

He holds my gaze for a long moment. “Thank you,” he says. “I hope that was the case. It always felt like I couldn’t quite do enough. There’s nothing worse than watching your child slip away and knowing there isn’t a thing you can do to save her.” He doesn’t wait for me to reply before asking, “Do you have kids?”

I shake my head, a pang of pain shooting through me. “I always thought I would, but . . .”

He places a hand on my shoulder when I don’t continue. “Maybe you will one day.”

I bite my lip and look away as the reality of my situation—that I’ll never know the joy of being a parent—crashes back in.

“I’m sorry,” Jamie says after a minute. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

I swipe tears away and smile at him. “No, you didn’t. I just—I don’t know that being a mother is in the cards for me.”

He squeezes my shoulder gently. “There are lots of ways to make a family, Jill.”

I almost laugh. Still, he’s being kind, and as he offers a hand and helps me up from the bench, I look once more into his clear green eyes and feel a warmth spreading through me that has nothing to do with my malfunctioning brain cells and everything to do with a different kind of chemistry.

J
AMIE WALKS ME to my car, and after I’ve watched him walk away, I bang my head against the steering wheel and let the tears come. “Seriously, universe?” I demand aloud. “I’m dying, and
that’s
when I meet the perfect guy?”

I drive home, and when I walk in the front door of my condo, I’m struck by how terribly alone I am. The place is silent; I don’t even have a cat or a dog. I work such long hours that it would be unfair to have a pet relying on me. I’ve always thought,
I’ll get a puppy someday, when things have calmed down a little
. But my somedays are almost up, and I’m acutely aware, all of a sudden, of how terribly unfair that is.

I heat up a frozen burrito and sit down at the kitchen table with my cell phone in hand, debating whether to try my father again or not. Finally, I put the phone down. I can barely handle my own shock and grief right now. Maybe today’s not the day to take on someone else’s. Or worse, what if my father doesn’t have much of a reaction at all? What if my impending death is just an inconvenient blip on the screen of his perfect life with Sharon?

I lay out my scrubs for tomorrow, as I always do, and add a hoodie to the arm of my chair, because the forecast calls for rain. Then I call Atlanta Memorial and ask for Melissa Peterson, the nurse who helped me earlier, but the head nurse on her floor comes on and tells me Melissa is in surgery. “I’m a nurse across the street at Children’s,” I tell her. “I helped bring an older man in today around five thirty. I’m just checking on his condition.”

“Name?” she asks.

“I don’t know. He was unconscious when I found him.”

“Hold, please.” I can hear rustling in the background, then keystrokes on a computer. When she returns to the line, she says, “His name was Merel Friedl. He had a heart attack, and we weren’t able to save him. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, and hang up before she can say anything else.

Finally, at just past nine, with my head throbbing, I crawl into bed. My last thought before I fall is asleep is how much I wish the reality Logan had created in his head actually existed. It would be nice to get an endless supply of second chances, but unfortunately, that’s not how the world works.

4

I
WAKE UP
to my alarm the next morning at seven, and for the first few blissful seconds, I forget all about the fact that I’ve been given a death sentence. The realization jolts me awake, and then my second coherent thought of the day is that it’s far too sunny out. I’d listened to the weather on the way home yesterday, and they’d said the rain would begin overnight, continuing through midafternoon. And yet the sky outside my window is a brilliant, post-dawn blue.

I haul myself out of bed and stare at myself in the bathroom mirror as I brush my teeth. I don’t
look
like I’m dying. I should look exhausted or sickly, shouldn’t I? But I just look like . . . me.

I pile my hair into a bun and take a quick shower, and then I head into the bedroom to get dressed for work. I blink in confusion as I realize that the scrubs I set out for myself last night are the same Cat in the Hat ones I wore yesterday. “That makes no sense,” I murmur, picking up the uniform top suspiciously. It doesn’t look rumpled or worn, but I must have absentmindedly laid it back out on my chair rather than tossing it in the laundry basket. “Weird,” I say as a chill goes through me. It sounds like exactly the kind of thing a person with a brain tumor would forget about. It’s a reminder that as normal as I might look on the outside, I’m very sick.

I blink back sudden tears and toss the scrubs into the laundry basket. I reach into my drawer, pull out Mickey Mouse scrubs instead and pull those on before I can question myself further. “You’re sick,” I tell myself. “But you’re fine for now.” As I swipe on some concealer, lipstick, and mascara and brush my hair into a low ponytail, though, I wonder how long that will last.

I
BEGIN MY day with some paperwork at the nursing station, and my mind wanders as I think about when to tell the rest of my colleagues my news. There will come a point in the not-too-distant future when I won’t be able to work anymore, and I should be planning now to transition the kids I care for to other nurses. Of course we all share the responsibilities on the pediatric oncology floor, and we all know most of the patients, but each of us has kids who are special to us.

That’s what I’m thinking about as Sheila approaches.

“Please tell me you got laid last night,” she says without any preamble.

I stare at her, slack-jawed for a moment. She knows I found out yesterday that I have only a month or two to live, and she thinks I spent one precious night of my remaining time having random sex? “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say.

“What?” Sheila asks. “It’s a normal question. You’re a thirty-nine-year-old woman who’s never been married and who probably can’t even remember the last time she had a man in her bed. You getting a bit of action would be a service to society. The whole world would rejoice with you.”

I drop my iPad on the counter. “Sheila, you said the exact same thing yesterday. Word for word.”

“I most certainly did not!” she responds hotly. “But I’m gathering from your expression that your love life hasn’t improved much since we last talked.”

I shake my head. “Really? You think that’s the best use of my time after what the doctor told me? Not, for example, getting a second opinion, or somehow contributing to world peace or something?”

She looks at me blankly. “What doctor?”

“Dr. Frost.”

She checks her watch. “Jill, your appointment is today.”

“What are you talking about? It was yesterday.”

She steps forward and puts a hand on my forehead. “You feeling okay, honey? Because my calendar most certainly says you’ll be out for an appointment with Dr. Frost today from eleven to twelve. And you know I run a tight ship around here. No room for scheduling mistakes.”

I gape at her. “Okay. So you’re in denial. But I don’t have time for this, Sheila. This is my crisis, not yours. I would have thought you’d be more supportive.” I grab my iPad and stride away before she can reply.

I head into Megan’s room next. “Morning, sunshine,” I say cheerfully as she nods at me and rearranges herself on the bed into a sitting position. “How are you feeling this morning?”

She shrugs. “You know, the usual.”

I check her temperature and blood pressure, and then I step back, suddenly noticing something. “Hey, kiddo, where are your balloons?”

Her nose crinkles. “Balloons?”

“The ones I gave you yesterday.”

She gives me a look. “You didn’t give me any balloons, Jill.”

“Of course I did. To celebrate your last round of chemo.”

She narrows her eyes. “That’s not funny.”

“What’s not funny?”

“My chemo is today, Jill. I don’t get your joke.”

I stare at her blankly. “Megan, honey, your chemo was yesterday. Don’t you remember?” I reach forward to feel her forehead, even though the thermometer just told me her temperature was a reliable and healthy 98.6. “I brought you balloons in the morning.”

She stares at me. “And what, I ate them overnight? What exactly do you think happened to them?”

“I—” I’m at a loss. “Maybe the custodial crew took them?”

“Right. They steal balloons from kids all the time. And I just happen to have forgotten the balloons existed in the first place.”

“But I’m sure I gave them to you,” I say weakly. “We had a whole conversation about them.”

Her face softens as she realizes I’m not joking. Now she just looks concerned. “Maybe you dreamed about giving me balloons or something. Anyways, I’m too old for balloons.”

“That’s what you said yesterday,” I say weakly, no longer convinced of my own sanity as I say good-bye to Megan and head out of her room.

My stops to check on Frankie, Katelyn, and a quiet nine-year-old named Conner are normal and uneventful; none of them makes me think I’m crazy. By the time I head into Logan’s room twenty minutes before eleven, I’ve regained my composure and come to the conclusion that Sheila is having a hard time dealing with my diagnosis, and Megan is simply being absentminded. Still, I’ve sent her supervising physician an email expressing concern over her forgetfulness, in case it’s indicative of a problem.

“Morning, buddy,” I say as I walk over to Logan’s bed and take his temperature and BP. “How are we feeling today?”

“I’m feeling great,” he says brightly. “How are
you
feeling?”

I smile at him. “Not too badly, all things considered. But it looks like your tree didn’t work, kiddo.”

He raises an eyebrow at me. “And what makes you say that?”

“Well, today’s today, isn’t it? I’m not repeating yesterday.” I smile at him. “But it was a fun fantasy, right? Wouldn’t that be amazing if something like that really worked? If we really had all those second chances at living?”

He frowns. “And what makes you think you don’t?”

“Oh, I’m too old to dream like that, Logan,” I say.

“Hmm.” He studies me for a minute. “Okay. So just work with me here for a second. If what I said was true, and you could keep repeating the same day over and over, what would you want to do with all that time?”

“Logan, none of this is possible, so—”

“So what’s the harm in pretending? For me?”

I hesitate. “Fine. What would I do with the time?” I pause for a second and really think about it. My answer makes me sad, but I say it aloud anyhow. “I’d want to fall in love. And have a family of my own. And reconcile with my dad.” I shrug and look away. “But I won’t get to do any of that, Logan.”

“Sure you will.”

I laugh, despite the lump in my throat. “You sound awfully confident.”

“Look, Jill, no one ever gets enough time. It’s just that people like you and me are more aware that our time is limited, since we’re dying and everything. But it’s about making the most of what you have, you know? And the tree helps you to do that.”

“That isn’t possible.”

“Check your phone. What does the date say?”

I pull my iPhone out of my pocket and push the button to illuminate the screen. I swallow hard as the date appears.
Friday, August 7
. “That can’t be.”

“It’s not like I somehow hacked into your phone.”

“But how does it say August 7?”

“Because that’s today.”

I look at the phone again, then back at Logan. I’m just about to reply when my phone dings with an appointment reminder.
Dr. Frost, 11 a.m.
When I look up, Logan is grinning.

“What did your phone just remind you of?” he asks.

“The appointment I had yesterday,” I say weakly.

“No. It’s the appointment you had on your first today. Now it’s your second today. Since you’re repeating the day you had your doctor’s appointment, you’ll have the appointment scheduled each time. It’s pretty simple.”

“I—I don’t understand.”

“You will. Go see your doctor. And then come back here. I’ll explain everything once you’re ready to believe me.”

M
Y PHONE REMINDER dings again in the hallway after I’ve left Logan’s room, and I stare at it for a full minute before making up my mind. I’ll go to Dr. Frost’s office. He doesn’t know me well enough to joke around. Besides, he doesn’t seem like the type of guy who has a sense of humor anyhow. I’m sure I’ll get there, and he’ll act like I’m crazy for showing up two days in a row.

As I head out through the lobby of Atlanta Children’s, I nearly collide with Jamie, just like I did yesterday.

“Oh, sorry!” I say. I step back as he reaches out a hand to steady me. “Hey, Jamie.”

He smiles, but he looks confused. “Hey.”

“I’m like the clumsiest person on the planet.” I can feel the heat creeping up my cheeks. “I should watch where I’m going.”

“Oh, no, it was my fault too. I was watering.” Just like he did yesterday, he nods at the tree in the center of the atrium. “I get distracted sometimes.”

“So you’ve said,” I murmur.

He hesitates. “Sorry, have we met?”

My head suddenly feels like it’s spinning. “Yes, of course. Yesterday.”

He bites his lip. “I wasn’t actually here yesterday. I think you might be confusing me with someone else.”

I blink at him, then mumble an apology and hurry away. I can feel his eyes on my back as I go.

My heart is thudding as I settle into the same chair I sat in yesterday in Dr. Frost’s waiting room. As I listen for my name to be called, I think about what Logan said. Is there a chance he wasn’t making things up? After all, the strange occurrences are adding up.

But no, that’s crazy. Or at least that’s when I tell myself until I’m ushered into Dr. Frost’s office thirty-five minutes late—just like yesterday.

“Dr. Frost—” I begin, but he cuts me off.

“Miss Cooper, I have a bit of bad news,” he says.

“More bad news?”

He doesn’t acknowledge the question. “I’m afraid that you have an aggressive glioblastoma. It’s actually quite extraordinary that you’ve continued to function without any major side effects aside from the headaches. It has to do with the location of the tumor, but to be honest, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I gape at him. That’s exactly what he said yesterday when he gave me my diagnosis. “Dr. Frost, is it possible to be reliving the same day twice?” I blurt out.

He shoots me a strange look. “Of course not. I’m sure you know that. But in reference to your tumor: glioblastomas arise from the star-shaped cells, called astrocytes, which form the supportive structure of the brain. They’re supported by—”