Let It Be Me by Becky Wade (top young adult novels .TXT) 📕

“We’ll keep you updated throughout,” Sebastian said.

They stopped at the entrance of the lounge. A large number of Ackerman family members of all different ages had already gathered. Their faces communicated eagerness, worry.

“This is Isabella’s doctor,” Timothy announced to them. “Dr. Grant. He’ll be performing the surgery.”

A wave of comments washed over him. Mostly greetings, thanks, and assurances that they’d be praying.

He was praised more than he deserved when a patient’s outcome was good. He disappointed people more than he deserved when a patient’s outcome wasn’t good. Either way, in this line of work, there was never any place to hide.

He excused himself. Keeping a close eye on the clock, he stopped by the break room for a snack and a drink, then did some stretches in his office.

The timing of a heart transplant required more precision than the gears of a Swiss watch. After scrubbing in, he entered the OR when the senior fellow was opening Isabella’s chest. The perfusionist stood ready with the heart and lung bypass machine. An anesthesiologist, two nurses, and Markie rounded out the group.

“Good morning,” Sebastian said.

“Morning,” they responded.

“Let’s get to work, people.”

“Some of us are already working,” Markie replied.

Sebastian watched Isabella’s numbers and answered friendly questions about his vacation days in Misty River until the new heart arrived. It floated inside sterile solution within a plastic bag, surrounded by a Playmate cooler’s icy water.

Sebastian set about removing Isabella’s defective heart. It was swollen, dark red in color, too deformed to be functional. Once he’d freed it, he handed it to the scrub nurse, who placed it on a towel on the set-up table. Immediately, it became an inanimate lump of ruined muscle. Useless.

Meticulously, Sebastian worked to secure the new heart—light pink, shiny, smooth—inside Isabella’s small chest.

After thirty minutes of stitching, he asked the perfusionist to begin warming the blood. Soon he’d be able to remove the cross clamp and allow her blood to flow.

Sebastian found Megan and Timothy waiting for him in the hallway outside the restricted area of the operating wing. The staff had sent them frequent messages regarding the stages of the surgery and their daughter’s stability. Even so, they both looked wrung out.

“Everything went as smoothly as it could possibly have gone,” Sebastian said.

Some of Megan’s tension appeared to ease. “Praise the Lord.”

“As you know, she has a long road ahead of her.” The first of many obstacles—the possibility that Isabella’s body would reject the heart. “But for now, she’s doing very well.”

“And the new heart,” Timothy said. “It just . . . started beating?”

“The new heart is flawless and strong. Sometimes, when we start blood flow, hearts are reluctant to start up again. But not this time. The second we started blood flow, the new heart began to beat in perfect sinus rhythm.”

Sebastian understood the science and medicine behind heart transplant. Even so, he regarded the fact that a donor’s heart could beat in a recipient’s body as a miracle. Every time he’d witnessed a heart transplant, he’d watched a miracle just as legitimate as the one God had performed when He’d defended Sebastian from death in El Salvador.

Megan started to cry.

In the past he’d removed his emotions as much as he could from his patients and their parents. But now, because of Leah, his own feelings were much closer to the surface.

Timothy turned Megan to him and hugged her.

“It’s a good day,” Sebastian assured them. “Your daughter has received a brand-new start.”

Leah treated herself to a dessert break at Polka Dot Apron Pies that afternoon. She’d stopped at the post office, and the pie truck was too conveniently close to pass up.

She sat at one of the round tables on the sidewalk near the food trucks delighting in a slice of pumpkin pie and contemplating how to further her investigation into Bonnie and Ian O’Reilly.

It wouldn’t hurt to reach out to Joyce Caffarella, Bonnie’s fellow nurse, one more time. Joyce remembered Bonnie. And Leah was fairly certain that Joyce had invited Leah to contact her again, if needed.

She consulted her text message conversation with Joyce. Sure enough, the older woman had said, Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.

Leah crafted a text.

Hi! This is Leah Montgomery. Thanks again for talking with me and sending me Bonnie and Tracy’s contact information. I’ve made some headway in my search for information on Bonnie O’Reilly, but now I’m stuck again. If, by chance, you remember anything else, please let me know.

Leah sectioned off another bite of pie. Crisp, buttery pastry crust supported rich filling and a dollop of whipped cream.

In addition to researching death certificates, Genevieve had mentioned that yearbooks and newspapers had proven helpful. Leah didn’t see how yearbooks could be relevant to her search, but a newspaper article might divulge facts she could use as a springboard to get in touch with friends, relatives, and employers of Bonnie’s—any of whom may have a phone number for her.

A return text from Joyce arrived.

I’ll think on it, hon! If anything occurs to me, or if I can find any Bonnie memorabilia in one of my closets, you’ll be the first to know.

I appreciate your help.

Bonnie had been living in Atlanta by the time Ian had been born. Atlanta was a city of half a million people. Trying to find Bonnie in an Atlanta newspaper brought to mind the proverbial needle in the haystack. She’d likely have better results searching for Bonnie in her hometown paper.

On her phone, Leah pulled up information about the town that had been listed as Bonnie’s birthplace on Ian’s death record. Oxford, Alabama. Its population had enjoyed a forty-six percent increase in the past twenty years and now boasted twenty-one thousand residents. It made sense that Bonnie might have migrated to Atlanta from Oxford, because even though the Alabama/Georgia line separated the two cities, they were located only eighty-eight miles apart.

She typed Newspaper for Oxford, AL into her Google app, then dialed the number provided.

“Calhoun County Post,” a young,