"Sabrina, just listen to what I have to say about Beau."
She told me about the Kesslers' house, about Beau having driven to Queens, about Marta, Simon, and Dylan on the couch with a one-eyed dinosaur, and about the Philadelphia evaluation Beau had set up overnight.
She told me about Langone Health.
She told me Beau had spent three days sitting in a family room near the ICU with the parents of a girl named Lily, who had been in a coma for some months.
She told me about Lily's mother signing the papers. She told me the Kesslers had flown to Philadelphia. The Wednesday surgery was tomorrow. Beau had personally funded the transport, the lodging, and the surgery. He had set up the donor lead. He had been at Langone Health every day until Lily's parents had decided.
She told me about the board.
The board had gotten wind of it. A board member had leaked what he did. The story broke — there were three news vans atthe corner of Beau's block. The board had met and had stripped Beau of his allocation authority. They had reversed the priority on the foundation queue. Beau was still chairman in name. He no longer made the queue calls. He wasn't, by the board's emergency action, going to be making decisions like the one he had made for Bonnie ever again.
He hadn't called me.
He had been in his apartment alone since.
"He won't come here," Vivienne said. "He doesn't believe he deserves a reason to."
I looked at the ceiling. "Vivienne, did he do it the way I asked?"
"Exactly the way you asked. He didn't tell you. He did it because it was right. He didn't protect himself."
I looked at the ceiling for a long time. "I have to go see him."
"Bonnie is asleep. I'm here. I’ll watch over her."
I drove to Beau's building.
There were three news vans on the corner, two photographers on the sidewalk, and a group of people with phones up. They were ordinary people who had heard that something was happening on this block and had come to see if they could find something to put on their phones.
They didn't know my face.
I walked past them with my head down. The doorman knew me. He had been in the lobby the night Beau had taken me up to his apartment for the first time. He let me pass.
The elevator went up, and I got off at Beau's floor. I walked to his door and knocked.
Beau opened the door.
He looked like a man who hadn't slept in five days. His beard had grown since he hadn't shaved. He wore the same gray sweater he'd been wearing the night I sent him to the hospitallounge to fix his mistake. He had a coffee in one hand. The coffee was cold by the look of it.
He stepped back as I walked in.
He wasn't going to put his hands anywhere near me until he had been asked to. I had to start. My heart was pounding out of my chest. My hands were sweating. I had to tell him. I was ready to face it.
"Beau." His name left my mouth before I could stop it.
"Sabrina, are you okay?” He placed his coffee on the entry table. He kept his eyes on me when I said it, steady and warm, the way they always were when it was just the two of us.
I took a breath. Let it out. My palms were damp, and my throat burned, but the words had been pressing against my ribs, and I was so tired of holding them in.
"I love you."
He looked at me and didn't move. He didn't breathe for a second.
"Sabrina, I — "
"I love you. I have loved you for some weeks. I had told myself I wouldn't say it ever, but I had told myself I was going to say it after the surgery…"
