Dr.

Lee keeps talking for a moment, as I sit back and allow the idea to wash over
me. She stands up. �I will leave you two to discuss it.�

Stacy and I sit alone. In retrospect, I don�t think either of us had a moment�s
doubt. I am the writer, the overexplainer who strains to shut up so that others can
avail themselves of oxygen. But it is Stacy who finds and speaks the words we need:
�I need it to mean something,� she tells me. �Maybe this way, it won�t be for
nothing.�

I nod. I do not know from what clear water source she is drawing, but I know that
she has found her way directly to our truth for both of us.

We send immediately for Dr. Lee and tell her: We want to pursue organ donation. It
is the only simple decision we make.

My parents arrive that evening and take their places with us. Together, we fan out
like figures in a religious painting. My mother sits behind me on a windowsill. I
am on the floor, my head resting on her knees in an echo of my childhood.

Susan is at the foot of Greta�s bed, weeping softly. �Why couldn�t it have been
me,� she asks of no one in particular.

I glance up at her, and her heartbreak is so acute it is like the sun � I can�t
look at it. No one answers, but I think at her: It shouldn�t have been you. It
shouldn�t have been Greta. It should have been no one.

Stacy and I take turns sleeping at the foot of her bed. There are no dreams in
trauma sleep: Exhaustion and shock are reliable copilots, seizing the controls when
you most need them. Occasionally I repeat, out loud and with no apparent awareness
of anyone listening, �I should just die. Why can�t I just die?� I lie down on the
windowsill, telling my mother I do not know how to live.

�You had better not do anything stupid,� she responds gently.

I wander around the wing in my socks for the better part of the night, making 20 or
30 trips to the bathroom, sometimes only to pointlessly wash my hands and return to
my daughter�s bedside. I hear my own howls of grief in the bathroom, the gray
tiling covering the floor and the walls like a hyperbaric chamber, and think they
must belong to someone else. I avoid my gaze in the mirror; I have no interest in
learning what it feels like to meet my eyes.

No matter where I walk, I see empty hallways � no one in the waiting rooms, no
other planned surgeries, no one in sight. This first night is the beginning of my
reeducation: Earth is now an alien planet, and I am a visitor treading its surface.
I graciously, passively accept the hug and words of a night nurse, her eyes welling
with kindness, who urges me not to �give up� on our baby. The Lord Jesus, after
all, works miracles.

In the morning I shower in the bathroom, changing into a pair of track pants and a
T-shirt my mother has bought me from a nearby Gap. My brother arrives, haggard from
a red-eye flight from Colorado. Liz, Stacy�s childhood best friend and sister in
all but name, arrives from London. Stacy, delirious from exhaustion and trauma,
murmurs instinctively, �How was your flight?�

Liz looks at her and begins laughing, her voice reassuringly vinegary through
tears. �It was awesome, Stace,� she says wryly. �Just great.�

We catch everyone up as best we can. The doctors will arrive in a few hours to
declare Greta brain dead. They will disconnect her briefly from the ventilator,
monitoring closely for any signs of independent respiratory movement. They will
test her brain-stem reflexes, the kind that register life at its most primitive. We
emphasize, dully, that they do not expect to find anything.