Chapter 121 - Organ Donor (2/2)
'C'mon Katie,' Abby thought desperately. 'Just hang in there until I get to you. You're going to be fine.'
She booked the first flight out, not caring that it cost her nearly $300, and touched down in Phoenix around 11 PM. Despite her exhaustion she rushed straight to the ER and asked about her sister.
A man in scrubs came out to talk to her and led her quietly to an empty hallway. ”Are you Katrina Pullman's sister?” he asked.
Abby nodded around the lump in her throat. This did not sound promising. Desperation made her voice crack. ”How is she?”
”I am terribly sorry to tell you this…but she lost too much blood and received irreversible damage to her brain. We couldn't do anything to help her. She was declared legally dead two hours ago.”
Dead. Dead! She couldn't be! Abby had texted her this morning while she was in the waiting room for her doctor's appointment. This wasn't possible.
She sunk to her knees and couldn't prevent herself from sobbing so hard she thought she would crack in half. Her heart certainly had. Sure, she had friends at school but Katie was the only family she had left. Now she was completely alone.
Her sweet sister who pushed herself too hard despite being so sick all the time would never tease her again. Had Abby even said 'I love you' when signing off this morning? When was the last time she had said it?
After coming all this way Abby still didn't get to say goodbye. Katie had died completely alone.
She finally pulled herself together after a while to go see her sister's body. Her expression was completely blank and her eyes were closed. This thing didn't look like her sister at all.
The mortician promised to make her look pretty for the funeral. He gently told Abby that because her sister had been an organ donor that multiple people's lives were saved, as if it that was any consolation.
Katie was gone. Yet her heart, kidneys, liver, and who knows what else would live on in other people.
Abby had been totally creeped out when Katie said she was going to be an organ donor. She had shrugged it off, saying ”well I won't need them anymore, will I? May as well help somebody else out.”
She never would have imagined that it actually would have happened this way. Organ donation only occurred under very specific circ.u.mstances. The body had to be hooked up to a respirator when the brain died for it to even work.
Katie's body had still been alive for a little while even though everything that made her Katie was already gone. That big beautiful brain full of random facts and movie quotes had died. How could this have happened?