Chapter 25
Aweek after the transplant surgery, and after a series of tests and checkups that seemed to last days instead of hours, Matteo was finally cleared to go home.
But the celebration was short-lived when they learned it would only be Matteo.
“We need you to stay a little while longer,” Dr. Scott told Helena, his face stoic.
“It’s not that anything’s wrong. It's the common procedure in cases like this. Your body has gone through the brunt of the stress, as it were. Matteo’s liver has begun to regenerate, incredibly.
But we want to be close by in case your body rejects your new liver. ”
Helena looked over at Matteo, who sat up in bed, scowling at the doctor.
It was clear that he didn’t want to leave, that he wanted to stay with Helena, to wake up with Helena in the hospital room and complain about how bad the breakfast was, and watch television till they took their multiple daily naps.
They’d been cozy, strange days—days they wouldn’t forget.
But now, now that Matteo’s body had healed enough in the wake of losing part of its liver, it was time for him to move on.
Other people needed his hospital bed, Helena knew. She reached over to squeeze Matteo’s hand.
“I’ll be here all the time,” Matteo assured Helena. “I’ll be here in the morning when you wake up, like always.”
But the doctor shook his head. “I really need you to keep tabs on your health back at home, Matteo. You need to rest just as much when you’re there as you did here, if not more.
You need to eat healthy foods and drink plenty of water.
Read the pamphlets I gave you. Memorize what you need to do.
Those pamphlets are the key to moving beyond this and getting stronger. ”
When the doctor left Helena and Matteo alone, Matteo rolled his eyes.
“You need to take what he says seriously,” Helena said. What she didn’t want to say was, If you get sick from giving me your liver, I will never forgive myself. I won’t forgive you either!
“But I want to see you,” Matteo said.
“I’ll be home soon,” she said. “I don’t want you to risk anything. Please.”
With the doctor's clearance, Matteo got dressed and kissed Helena goodbye. “I love you, Helena,” he said, stroking her cheek and gazing into her eyes.
At this moment, with the weight of what had happened and what they still had to go through on her chest, Helena wasn’t sure if she could respond.
“I’m not going to leave till you say it back,” Matteo said with a laugh.
Helena blinked back tears. “I love you. I love you so much.” I love you so much that it terrifies me, she didn’t add.
“There we go,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”
Helena watched Matteo being wheeled out of the hospital, where Rod was waiting to pick him up and take him home. Bethany was going to come by later, Helena knew. But in the meantime, she allowed herself a brief and painful pity party.
The three weeks that Helena was in the hospital were some of the strangest of her life.
Every day, she was closely monitored, her body and blood tested to see if Matteo’s liver was assimilating into her system.
“So far so good,” Dr. Scott said over and over again.
But Helena always half expected him to say that something had gone wrong, that suddenly it was over.
She didn’t know how to get over that fear.
In mid-December, Matteo came to the hospital to pick her up.
She’d seen him nearly every day since he’d been released, but she hadn’t seen him like this: strong-looking with all his color back, wheeling her chair down the halls and helping her from the chair and into the passenger seat.
Because they were renting it for the time being, he closed up the chair and put it in the trunk before leaping in, cranking the heat, and kissing her.
Helena had the strangest idea that they’d just gotten married, that they were leaving the cathedral where they’d said their vows. But in actuality, what had happened was way weirder and more wonderful than that. Matteo had given her a piece of his body.
Maybe she really was going to live.
Tears shot down her face. Matteo brushed them aside and said, “I’m cooking all your favorite foods.”
“I’m starving,” Helena said.
And she felt she was hungry for all of it: for food and conversation and movies and snuggling on the sofa and watching the ocean through the back window.
She was hungry to paint again, to figure out what kind of an artist she was now that she’d had such an enormous surgery.
She knew it would be a slow and arduous battle.
But with Matteo by her side, she felt that she’d manage it. Somehow.
On Christmas Eve, while Helena and Matteo sat in front of the Christmas tree, watching old Christmas movies, drinking tea as the snow fell gently outside, Rebecca Sutton called to say that Bethany had gone into labor.
Helena’s heart pounded. Although Bethany had taken it easy for the past few months, although she’d put her health and the baby’s first, all births were terrifying to her.
Things could go wrong at the drop of a hat.
“She’s going to be okay,” Matteo said, stroking her hair.
But Helena couldn’t sleep that night. This was a rare thing for her, as she’d spent so much of the past few years asleep. But now, her heart and mind were on overdrive, thinking about Bethany and the pain she was probably in. She prayed almost constantly.
When the photo of Bethany and her baby boy arrived at three in the morning, Helena burst into tears, waking Matteo.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Are you in pain?”
Helena answered by flashing the photograph of Bethany and the baby his way. “Look,” she said.
Matteo gripped her phone for a long time, gazing at the picture. His expression was difficult to read. When he set the phone down, he burrowed his face in the pillow. Helena realized, then, that he was thinking of Jenny as a baby. He was thinking of Jenny’s birth.
“What if we…” Helena began, then trailed off, suddenly frightened of what she wanted.
It had only been a month since the surgery. They were eleven months from knowing if the liver had really accepted Helena’s body. But she was allowed to dream, now, wasn’t she? She’d taken steps in order to dream?
Matteo pulled his eyes from his pillow to look at her. “What were you saying?”
“I love you,” Helena said. “And I, um. I want to have a family with you.”
Matteo gazed at her longingly, lovingly. And then, he closed his eyes and kissed her. “You’re all the family I need, Helena.”
But she knew he was saying that because she couldn’t have children.
“Really,” she pushed it. “What if we looked into other options? What if we, I don’t know. Adopted?”
Matteo’s lips parted, as though he hadn’t thought of that before. “Adoption,” he repeated.
“I would love to help someone like that. To raise someone who doesn’t have anyone in the world to care for them,” Helena said, growing misty-eyed. “I mean, if we get through this year.”
Matteo laced his fingers through hers. He didn’t seem able to answer.
Slowly, they drifted off again, both dreaming of a future they could hardly name.
When they woke up the following morning, Helena called Bethany to see how she was. “He’s beautiful,” Bethany said, her voice soft and weak. “I can’t believe I was scared to go through this again. Now that he’s here, it’s like our family is perfect. We were waiting for him.”
Helena grinned. “What’s his name?”
They’d decided to name him after a relative in Rod’s family: Nicolas. Nick, for short.
“It suits him,” Helena said. “And it’s Christmas, remember? St. Nicholas. Nick for short.”
Bethany erupted with laughter. “You’re kidding. We didn’t even think about that. Rod, you’ll never guess what Helena just pointed out. I can’t believe we didn’t think of it.”
Helena listened as Bethany translated, and Rod cackled.
“We have baby brains already,” Rod said.
Soon after, Helena hung up, leaving the new parents alone.
She wondered how Nick’s teenage siblings were doing on Christmas without their parents around.
She guessed there was a whole lot of Christmas candy for breakfast. She guessed there were video games and laughter and a bit of fighting, too.
She prayed that the transition for all of them would be easy, that they would find a way to be a family together, and that their love would be enough.