She Asked Him To Cancel Their Daughter’s Surgery For A Game Chapter 04

She Asked Him To Cancel Their Daughter’s Surgery For A Game Chapter 04

Willa coded early the next morning.

Her blood pressure kept plummeting. Her weakened heart was barely pumping.

On the way to the OR, her eyes fluttered open, just barely.

From her gurney, she reached out and caught my scrub sleeve.

“Are you having surgery too, Mommy?”

I was already dressed in surgical scrubs, my hair tucked under a blue bouffant cap.

“I’m just going to take a little nap right next to you.”

Willa’s lips were paper-white.

“When I wake up, can I have strawberry ice cream?”

I stroked her cold cheek.

“Only once a week.”

She smiled weakly.

“When’s Daddy coming back?”

My hand went dead still.

The overhead intercom crackled: [All non-essential personnel, please clear the surgical corridor.]

I bent down and pressed my forehead gently to hers.

“Willa, close your eyes and count for me.”

“When you get to a hundred, my special gift will be there.”

She obediently closed her eyes.

“One… two… three…”

They wheeled our gurneys in opposite directions down the hall.

Right before the heavy OR doors shut, I heard her voice, faint and far away.

“Seventeen… eighteen…”

The anesthesiologist lowered the clear mask over my face.

Dr. Mercer stood under the blinding surgical lights. His eyes were red and raw.

“You can still change your mind, Elise.”

I stared up at the lights.

“Yesterday she asked me if her life was only meant to last five years.”

“Dr. Mercer, I’m not letting it end at five.”

The IV pushed the cold propofol into my vein.

Forty minutes into the operation, I started hemorrhaging.

My blood pressure dropped from ninety to fifty. The monitors began to scream.

“Right kidney is out. Start cold perfusion now!”

“Donor’s pressure is still dropping! She’s not clotting, and we can’t control the bleeding!”

Dr. Mercer’s gloved hands were slick with my blood.

“Push another unit of O-negative, and get the bypass machine ready!”

A circulating nurse choked out an update from the adjacent room.

“Willa’s side is done. The kidney’s connected, and it’s producing urine!”

I was still bleeding out.

Dr. Mercer pushed another round of epinephrine.

Once. Twice. Three times.

The jagged green line on the heart monitor grew weaker and weaker.

Dr. Mercer’s voice broke through the chaos.

“Elise, stay with me! Willa made it! Do you hear me? She made it!”

My index finger twitched one last time, and the line on the monitor went into a continuous, deafening flatline.

Everett walked into the hospital lobby at that exact moment.

Vanessa had fallen apart on Mount Alder, hysterically claiming the snow reminded her of the accident.

He’d spent hours calming her down. Then, his assistant forwarded him an emergency surgery notification from the hospital network.

The patient listed was Willa Caldwell.

Blind panic hit him. He abandoned Vanessa and raced back to the city.

Everett pushed his way into the wing of the transplant center.

The elevator doors opened, and he heard it: the faint crying of a child from the Pediatric ICU.

It was barely more than a whimper. But it meant she was alive. The sickening tension drained out of his chest.

He caught a passing nurse by the shoulder.

“My daughter, Willa. Did the surgery work?”

The nurse’s face was ghostly white.

“The transplanted kidney has blood flow. It’s functioning perfectly.”

Everett exhaled. A massive wave of relief washed through him.

“Where’s Elise? God, she must’ve been out of her mind with worry.”

The nurse burst into tears.

The double OR doors flew open.

Dr. Mercer stormed out, covered head-to-toe in Elise’s blood, and slammed his fist hard into Everett’s face.

“You fucking bastard!”