Safe With Me Read Free Page B

apartment with her, and there was no way her mother could pay the bills on her own.
    “You would? Really?”
    James nodded. “Of course. She’d be my family, too.” Stunned by his generosity, Olivia accepted the flawless, three-carat diamond ring he presented to her. James kept his word, purchasing and moving her mother into an elegant two-bedroom condo near the beach. He helped Olivia hire a wonderful, live-in Jamaican nurse named Tanesa to care for her. A month later, they were married and left Florida, returning only when Maddie was born, and then again, three years after that, when Olivia’s mother passed away after a heart attack.
    Now, eighteen years later, Olivia runs her hands down her simple gray cardigan, smoothing out the wrinkles, wondering what James would think if he walked in and observed this moment with Dr. Steele. What he’d assume they had been doing. The thought lights a spark of panic in her chest and she swallows hard to extinguish it.
    “I’ll keep you posted,” Dr. Steele says. “The social worker will be along soon. I’ve found a younger, less gullible member of the team. I think Maddie might like her.”
    Despite the weight of the moment, Olivia can’t help but smile, remembering how a week ago, a meek, older woman with mousy hair and orthopedic shoes attempted to get Maddie to talk about any fears or concerns she might be having about becoming an organ recipient. Maddie peered at her, then cocked her head to the side. “Yeah,” she said, deadpan. “I’m afraid of becoming possessed by the other person’s soul.”
    “Maddie,” Olivia said, knowing her daughter was testing the worker. Maddie couldn’t rebel like a typical teenager—shecouldn’t miss curfew or make out with a boy beneath the bleachers—so she tended to channel her hormonal angst into harassing hospital workers.
    “What, Mom?” Maddie said, blinking. “I mean it.”
    Despite Olivia’s best efforts to intervene, the poor woman went on for at least twenty minutes, trying to convince Maddie that those tales of possession were false, until Maddie could no longer keep a straight face. “I can’t believe you fell for that one,” she snickered, and the woman blushed, whipped around, and fled the room.
    Now, Olivia nods and thanks the doctor again, watching as he strides out of the suite and down the hall. Then her gaze moves over to Maddie. Her daughter, petite for fifteen but unnaturally swollen, lies hooked up to machines pumping her full of the medications that are the only things keeping her alive. Her head is turned to the side, her sandy brown hair is straggly and limp, and her eyelids—covering beautiful hazel irises—are fluttery but closed.
    As always, Olivia’s gut clenches at seeing her daughter so distorted, so ill. Since she was seven, she has been plagued by a rare case of type 2 autoimmune hepatitis. When the immunosuppressant meds that controlled Maddie’s disease stopped working a few months ago, her skin and eyes yellowed, and her belly plumped up as it began to retain more fluid and toxins than her bedraggled liver could process. The scarring on her organ has progressed to the point of her needing a transplant; if she doesn’t get one, it is likely she will die in a few weeks. The thought makes Olivia feel as though she has been gutted. The past eight years have been tenuous, with Maddie in the hospital more often than she was out of it. Her health has beenso fragile that she couldn’t go to school or play with other children, for fear of picking up an infection that might kill her. All Olivia wants for her daughter is a normal life; a transplant is her only hope to have one.
    Reaching over, Olivia pushes a stray lock of hair back from Maddie’s face. “It’s going to be okay, baby,” she whispers, knowing she is reassuring herself as much as her daughter. I can’t lose her. I can’t. “We’re going to get you well.”
    Maddie stirs, turns her head back and forth across the pillow.