“Millie…” Julie yanked the bottle from me and chugged the vodka, wincing as it went down. “That sounds like stalking.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Not really. I’ll just walk into their place of work, or business, or school, and strike up a conversation. I just want that little bit of contact and then everything will be okay. I need to see that Colin is living on.”
Julie shook her head. “I’m not even sure that I have access to that shit. It’s all in UNOS. I could be fired for even looking.”
I nodded. “But wouldn’t it be in Colin’s file from that night? Couldn’t you try?”
I’d known Julie Anderson since middle school. She was my ride or die. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for each other.
She grabbed the bottle of vodka and started chugging.
* * *
The night passedin a blur of vodka and tequila shots and me crying. We’d long abandoned the wine and went straight for the hard stuff. At some point I think Julie threw me in the shower. The memories were hazy.
The next morning, when I woke, I thought I might actually be dead. Dead people didn’t feel pain though, right? A raging headache slammed into me before I’d even opened my eyes, which felt puffy and swollen shut. My stomach churned as finally I dared to crack my eyelids open.
“Ow.” Light crashed into my eyeballs and then into the back of my brain, causing pain to flare in my skull. I went to rub my face and felt a piece of paper stuck to my cheek.
“What the…?”
Peeling it off, I glanced at it with one blurry eye. I’d closed the other one in a survival effort to let in minimal light. In Julie’s drunken cursive script was a name and address.
Ashton Knight(28)
Wayne’s Place
300 Broadway Street, Nashville, TN 37208
Colin’s donor recipient
My breath hitchedin my throat at those three words.
Colin’s donor recipient.
Then my eyes flicked to a moving pile of clothes on the floor.
Julie.
She sat up and grabbed her head, groaning.
“Oh, God, I’m so going to get fired,” she said, looking at the paper in my hands.
“How did you get this?” Everything hurt, but I didn’t care. I knew who Colin’s recipient was. Last night was a blackout drunk night, but I remembered the sense of calm that came over me when I’d decided to get closure and seek out the heart donor recipient.
“You don’t remember?” She stood and started to pace the floor, “Oh, God, I can’t believe I called UNOS.”
My eyes widened while Julie pulled out her blender and then manically shoved different fruits and veggies into it.
“You what?” I screeched; I must have definitely blacked out, because other than the shower and lots of crying, I had no recollection of anything. I never drank, so it was stupid that I’d started the afternoon off by pounding a bottle of vodka.
She nodded. “I said my hospital was doing a research study about heart donor recipients and I gave her my badge number.”
“Oh crap.” I stood.
When she flicked the blender on, we both flinched, and she turned it off immediately.
“Maybe she won’t follow up,” I said. I would die if Julie lost her job over my drunken epiphany.
