With Every Heartbeat

“Well, sure. Let me help you.”

I don’t know how Cora had managed to find such an amazing apartment building, but I was grateful for Terrance’s help, especially five trips to my car later when my back was screaming and weakened leg muscles were shaking from carrying so many boxes. The doorman helped cut the work in half, but it still left me feeling sweaty and gross.

I didn’t stop working, though. I was so out of place here, I needed one small touch to make me feel at home. Finding the box I was seeking, I popped off the lid and let out a sigh of relief to find all my three-ring binders tucked neatly inside. I drifted my fingers over the cool, metal coils holding them together and pulled one free to flip open the pages.

The stories I wrote were silly. They were usually about lost little girls who’d strayed from home and found themselves in colorful, magical kingdoms full of new and frightening, yet wonderful things to explore. And there was always a love interest with a happily ever after. But they were everything to me. Writing was my peace, my sanity, and my heart and soul.

I spent the next half hour carefully lining the notebooks up on the bare shelves above my new bed. It was easy to tell which ones were older by their colored, frayed condition so I put them in order from oldest to newest. Then I blew out a relieved breath, feeling better about being here.

Resolved to my new future, I made Cora breakfast. It was way past noon; she needed sustenance, and I was beginning to get hungry for lunch myself.

She still wasn’t up when I finished, so I carried a tray into her room and set it on the nightstand, then I sat on the mattress beside her and drew the blonde hair out of her face carefully.

“Cora,” I sang softly. “Time to wake up.”

She groaned and rolled over onto her stomach, where she buried her head under a pillow. “Why am I wearing clothes?” came the vexed, muffled question.

I blinked, not sure what to say. “Um...because you passed out before you made it all the way home to undress, I guess.”

She made a very irritated sound before asking, “Where’s Quinn?”

“He went home.” I took the pillow away. “I made you breakfast.”

She lifted her face, her bloodshot eyes hopeful. “Waffles?”

I shook my head. “Scrambled egg whites. I heard they’re good for people on dialysis.”

“Ugh.” She flopped her face back onto the mattress with a dramatic sigh. “Don’t mention that word today. I just want to forget about anything medical for the next twenty-four hours.”

It was all I could think about, though, so...no. Forgetting wasn’t an option for me. I’d obsessed about her health for the past six weeks, ever since the night I’d received that dreaded phone call from her.

“How about some water and ibuprofen?” I asked, remembering Quinn’s instructions from last night.

She sat up, looking cross and still tired. I bit my lip, beyond worried as she silently took the pain reliever.

Her voice was raspy as she said, “Mmm. Warm water, good. The cold water Quinn brings me first thing in the morning always hurts my teeth.”

Her morning voice reminded me vaguely of how she’d sounded when she’d been sobbing and hysterical on the phone. “I’ve entered the fifth stage of kidney failure. They’ve started me on dialysis three times a week. This is the end stage, Zoey. If I don’t get a transplant, I could die.”

Those four sentences had haunted me every night since hearing them. I didn’t want my best friend on earth—my only friend—to die. So I’d made a life-altering decision before that dreaded conversation was over.

I’d offered to be a living donor. The problem was, I couldn’t tell my father because he’d never agree to it. He’d find a way to keep me from helping her.

But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. Instead of preparing to attend the college nearest my hometown where he’d enrolled me, I had secretly applied for admission into ESU, the college Cora attended some six hundred miles away from Ernest K. Blakeland.

The day I’d gotten the acceptance letter from them, my planning had started. I was already pretty good at saving back money. Father had never allowed me to do or get anything, so the monthly allowance from my mother’s inheritance trust fund merely sat in the bank, gaining interest. Transferring money over to an account my father knew nothing about was a bit of a challenge, since he happened to be the president of the bank. But I managed to get it done. To be safe, I’d transferred it again, and then once more for good measure, so he wouldn’t know which financial institution the money ended up in.