Whippet Tales May 2013 Edition 1 VOL.1, Issue 1, May 2013 | Page 17

beyond compare. Just knowing she had done this to her mother broke her heart all over again.
“Mom, are you okay?”
Her mom looked up at her, tears rolling down her cheeks and pain in her eyes. “I don't
know how to tell you this.”
Staring at her mom's eyes, she prepared herself for the inevitable. “Just say it.”
“The doctor said...he said...you're not going to make it unless you get a liver transplant,” she
said, breaking off on a sob.
“No one in the family is a matched donor. There's nothing I can do.”
Lila closed her eyes, sure that this was best. She had taken someone else's life and now
it was time for the act to be repaid. Just then, a doctor, clad in light green scrubs and a light blue
face mask, entered the hospital room along with several nurses. “We have a matched donor, but
we have to operate now.”
“But how-”
“No time for questions.”
The nurses rolled her bed into an operation room alongside a man about her age. He
had his eyes closed and his light blonde hair fell over his forehead in a sweaty mass, flushing out
the color in his face with his already pale pallor. When he opened his light green eyes she was
sure she had never seen anyone more beautiful in her entire life.
He gave her a pained smile but he was in so much pain it looked more like a wince. She
couldn't help but wonder what was wrong with him. It was hard to tell the cause of his pain but
he didn't look like he was faring too well. In fact, he looked like each breath he took would be
his last. He seemed so weak and much too pale. What was so wrong that a man in the peak of
youth – early twenties at the oldest – would willingly show his pain when he was at the age
when he's supposed to feel invincible? Lila knew that something very, very bad must have
happened to him.
For no apparent reason, she felt the urge to hold his hand, maybe to give him strength
or maybe for the sake of her own weakness, but she couldn't say for sure. Reaching to take the
hand of the man who was saving her life, she lifted his dangling arm in order to massage his
hand that was clenched in a fist. His hand slowly relaxed and opened as he trained his gaze on
her. What kind of condition was this poor man in to be giving her his liver? A sudden thought
struck her. Was he dying? She asked quietly, “Are you alright? You look like you need your liver
more than I do.”
He attempted to smile and said, “I'll be fine. And I have plenty of liver to share. I just
hope that half will be enough to keep you going.”
17

Whippet Tales 2.0

May 2013