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doesn’t matter how long you’ve been waiting—the only thing that matters is how much you need the liver, and how likely you are to survive the surgery. In a way, Dad was lucky, because he was pretty healthy (other than his liver), and he desperately needed the transplant. So he shot right to the top of the list. That’s why it was only a few months after his diagnosis that he got called in for surgery.
    But there are so few healthy livers available that anytime someone is up for a transplant, the doctors always bring in a backup recipient, in case something goes wrong or the first person fails their final physical. If they didn’t have a backup person prepped and ready for surgery, the donor liver might not still be viable by the time they find someone else. They don’t tell you that you’re the backup, because they’re worried you might not take it seriously if they did.
    This time, Dad was the backup. I was crushed, but I tried not to let it show because I knew it was worse for him. When they wheeled him back to us, he was quieter than I’d ever seen him, as though his mind were far away.
    “Soon,” Dr. Katz told us. “You’re at the top of the list now.”
     
    Twelve days later, the hospital called again. This time, Dr. Katz assured us, it was the real deal. So we repacked our portable TV and headed back to the university.
    “Good luck,” I told Dad as they prepared to wheel him away. He held my hand gently.
    “I don’t need luck,” he said. “Remember, everything is going to be okay. I’ll see you when I’m done.”
    Outside the hospital windows, it was gray and chilly. January in Iowa can be viciously cold. But inside, I’d never felt so warm.
    “This is your father’s best shot for beating the cancer,” Dr. Katz had explained. As we sat in the waiting room, with its bright fluorescent lights and soft-carpeted floors, I imagined what it would be like to wake up tomorrow and know my father was better. It sounded like a dream come true.
    But as the hours passed with no word from the doctors, I grew more and more worried. What if something had gone wrong? We hunkered down in the waiting room like a city under siege. I tried to play a game, or read a book, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything. It grew dark outside, and the wind moaned against the bare trees. All the bad omens I’d looked for on the day of Dad’s diagnosis were here now. I just hoped they didn’t mean anything this time.
    Matt and I napped and ate and did our homework. Sometimes we talked, but it was hard to keep a conversation going when we all knew what was happening in the operating room. Just about the only thing I could pay attention to was The Princess Diaries , one of the few movies we’d brought with us. It was just the right amount of mindless fun. Matt and I must have watched it three or four times that day.
    Finally, after ten hours, Mom couldn’t take it anymore. Before I was born, she had interned at the hospital during her PhD program, and she still knew people in the administration. After a bunch of frantic calls and a whole lot of waiting, she got some answers.
    “They’re having trouble with the incisions they need to make to do the surgery,” an administrator told her. “And there have been some minor complications.”
    “What do you mean?” Mom asked.
    “The donor liver is unexpectedly large, but everything’s all right,” the administrator hurried to assure us. “Dr. Katz has him open on the surgical table, and he’s working on it.”
    My heart nearly stopped. I couldn’t believe what they were saying. My dad—my happy, loving dad—was on a table somewhere, cut open, empty. Unless they got the new liver in fast, they’d have to put his old one back in, which meant the cancer would have more time to spread. Every day he spent with his old liver inside him brought him closer to death. If I could have given him mine, I would have.
    Mom continued talking on the phone, and we found out it was