In the quiet, still early morning hours, the ringing of a phone is as loud as the whistle of a freight train.  Sunday, April 14, 2002 at 2:00 a.m., we were jolted awake by the beautiful sound of that phone jangling.  The first ring didn’t even finish before Drew picked it up and said “yes?”  Every time one of us answered the phone, it was with apprehension.  I didn’t even have time to feel that apprehension before Drew blurted out joyfully, “You’re kidding”!  I knew immediately what the call was about.  I jumped out of bed, my body trembling.  Drew hung up the phone, and with a quivery voice and tear filled eyes; he choked out “We have a heart”.  Then he pointed to the floor by the bed, and grabbed my arm, pulling me down beside him.  Like two children saying nighttime prayers, we knelt beside the bed, sides touching.  We poured out our thanks to God for this gift, and prayed earnestly for the unknown family that undoubtedly was in emotional torment.  Pulling me to my feet, Drew looked intently into my eyes and said, “They said we get to tell her”. 

 Crying and shaking, my mind was racing.  I didn’t know what to do first.  I picked up my cell phone and called my sister’s house.  Groggily, Carl answered the phone.  I blurted out “We have a heart”!  Carl said “What”?  After repeating my announcement, he told me he would have Rhonda call me.  Within seconds, my phone rang.  Rhonda was almost as excited as I was.  She told me she would go get Dad and be right there.   My second call was to Rich, who also promised to come right away.

Drew and I dressed as quickly as we could, trying to plan ahead and bring what supplies we may need.  Hand in hand, we raced down the hallways of the Ronald McDonald House, trying not to awaken anyone.  The few people that were awake were the first to hear our news.  Darting across the street together, still hand in hand, we found that we had to walk all the way around the hospital to get to an open entrance.  Undaunted, we circled the hospital in record time.  After ten days of navigating its corridors, we knew them quite well.   Half walking and half running through the quiet, semi-darkened hallways, we boarded the elevators that would take us to the sixth floor.  Bursting through the doors of the CVICU, we could see the nurses huddled together.  The air was bursting with barely contained excitement.  We rushed up to Valarie, her evening nurse.  She had a huge smile on her face as she greeted us with a teasing tone, saying, “no one has ever gotten here that fast before”!  Valarie explained that the Dr had flown to get the heart, and Charis was scheduled for 6:30 a.m. surgery.  The words we had been waiting for came next, “would you like to go and tell her”?  We couldn’t get to her bedside quickly enough.  There is no way to pre-plan a moment like this.  I had never considered that I would be the one that got to tell her the news.  I had not mentally planned a speech so this would be spontaneous.  Drew stood on one side of her bed, grabbed her hand and put his other hand on top of her head.  I stood on the other side of her bed, with her other hand clasped in both of mine.  Drew leaned over and woke her up gently.  She looked at him and then at me.  Drew took a breath and said “honey, we have something to tell you”.  Charis raised her eyebrows, with her eyes half open.  She was still groggy from being woken up.  He looked at me across the bed, and said, “Honey, you tell her”.  I could see Charis’ eyes dart from his face to mine expectantly.  “Guess what”!  I softly said to her.  Her eyebrows again raised in a questioning way, her eyes still about half open. Trying hard to choke back the tears, I said, “We have a heart”!  Immediately, her eyes popped wide open, and around the hated respirator tube, she smiled a huge, beautiful smile.  Then her eyes closed again and she sighed a relieved sigh.  She grabbed my hand and squeezed tightly and held on.  A movement caught the corner of my eye, and I turned to see people moving away from the curtain at the foot of her bed.  Stepping around it, I could see the nurses standing just outside her room smiling and wiping tears from their cheeks.  I had not noticed that there had been an audience witnessing that spectacular moment.  

 Valarie returned to get things rolling.  She asked if I would like to help give Charis a bath, as she needed to be bathed with a special soap.  I agreed eagerly, and Drew excused himself to phone relatives.  Valarie explained to me that certain blood tests needed to be run ahead of time, and an echocardiogram and x-rays done.  I helped bathe her one last time before I was asked to leave for the other tests.  Stepping out into the dark, quiet waiting room, I sank into a chair.  Looking around, I reflected on the hopelessness that I had been feeling only hours before.  I was terrified at the surgery that Charis was facing in a few hours, but was hopeful that she would finally be back with us.  Drew told me that he had called Scott, our minister, who was on his way also.  Rhonda arrived with Grandpa, Heather, Jennifer, John, Hannah and even Cody.  Everyone found a comfortable chair, and some even slept.  Scott showed up at about the same time as Rich, Leeah and Jared did.  We all eagerly paraded back to pray together around her bed.  I could see her expression, she was trying not to show the terror she obviously was feeling.  Everyone wanted a turn to spend time with her before surgery.  Two at a time, we would go back and sit with her.   I combed out and re-braided her hair.  Cody spent time snuggling up and holding her hands.  Each of us squeezed out as much precious time as we could around the sporadic appearance of technicians arriving to perform various tests. 

The mix of emotions during those few early morning hours was overwhelming.  I was terrified at the thought of the Doctors opening up my daughter’s chest and removing her heart.  On the other hand, the excitement of knowing she was being given a chance to live filled me with elation.  My heart was battling with fear and excitement.  Charis was scared, and asked me to stay.  I complied eagerly, not wanting to leave her side.  She dozed off and on, and would write notes in between.  After what seemed like a very long time, I looked up to see a small crowd of scrub-clad people coming toward her room.   It was the anesthesiologists coming to unhook her machinery and take her to the operating room.  Rich, Leeah, Scott, Rhonda, Grandpa, Drew and I stood outside her cubicle watching the careful preparations.  They wheeled her entire bed out, stopping briefly for one final kiss from each of us.  I stood with my back against Drew’s chest, his arms wrapped around me, watching as my daughter was taken from me.  I kept my eyes on her as long as I could, standing on tip toes until all I could see was her blond head as the double doors swung shut behind them.  I turned in Drew’s arms, buried my head into his neck and began to cry.  Sobs shook my body as the pent up fears from the past 12 days rose to the surface.  I leaned against Drew, as my knees became week.  He hugged me tightly while I cried, kissing the top of my head, and smoothing my hair. 

I dragged myself out to the waiting room.  Scott gathered us all together in a circle to pray one more time before he left for church.  It was the most comforting, uplifting feeling to know that while she was in surgery, the church would be meeting together and praying at that exact moment.  We had been told that she would not be in the same room, and would be moved into the glass enclosed isolation room for a period of time after the surgery.  Leeah and I took charge of cleaning her belongings out of her room.  She would not be allowed to have the stuffed animals in isolation, so we bagged them all up to take home.  I needed the distraction of sorting through her things, packing them up, and organizing.   I stood in the doorway of the room, looking at the emptiness, remembering the hopeless feelings from the past week and a half, remembering a time only 12 days before when I stood in an empty ER room surveying it, and thinking my daughter was dying.  I tried to concentrate on a positive outcome, tried to believe that she would come through the surgery and be a normal person again.   I kept imagining in my mind a Mother somewhere that was going through a time of horrible emptiness, praying for her silently.

We took turns a few at a time going to the cafeteria for breakfast.  Whoever was closest to the phone in the waiting room at the time it rang would jump to pick it up.  The operating room nurse would call with updates frequently.  They called to tell us when she was put under, when she was successfully placed on the heart-lung bypass machine, when the donor heart arrived in the operating room, and when her old heart had been removed.  One call reported that the surgeon was stitching in the donor heart, and only 40 minutes later, it was completed.  We got a report that the donor heart had started beating on its own, and they were just watching for leaks before closing up.  For those in the operating room, I’m sure the miracle of modern medicine is not such a wonder.  For us sitting in a waiting room in fear and awe, every report is met with relief and happiness. 

Around 10:30 they called to tell us that the surgery was complete, and her chest had been closed.  They told us that she would be brought up to her room within an hour.  We hugged each other with joy.  Our girl was alive, and was starting the road to recovery! 

Drew’s brother, Jeff and his family, arrived from Austin around the time that surgery was complete.  The waiting room was crowded with people that were there just for Charis.  A sudden silence descended on the room as Dr. Dimaio walked in.  We all knew that this was the man that had performed the miraculous surgery.  He came over and sat down right beside me.  Everyone in the waiting room leaned forward in their chairs to listen to him speak.  He began to describe the surgery to us, giving us basic details about what had been done to her.  During this surgery, she had not had any problems at all.  Everything went textbook normal, if you can consider taking someone’s heart from their chest and replacing it with a dead person’s heart normal.  He told us that the heart had begun to beat on its own, and that there was no leakage, and that she had woken up from the surgery in good shape.  We were told that we would be unable to go in to see her for the whole day, but could look through the glass at her later, and go in to see her the next day. 

We looked at each other and decided that we couldn’t wait to see our girl.  Hand in hand, we walked back to the CVICU to just look at her.  She was in the glass walled isolation room at the very back.  The curtains were drawn and we could look in and see her lying on the bed, still deeply asleep.  The familiar respirator was hissing away as it diligently breathed for her.  She looked so thin, like a tiny little fragile fairy in the middle of all those machines.  As our eyes took in the changes, we noticed that there were even more IV’s connected.  Looking up at the monitor that we had been so obsessive about for the past 2 weeks, we couldn’t contain our gasps of surprise.  Those green peaks that symbolized heartbeats were comparatively huge!  While previously, the peaks were always there; our untrained eyes didn’t know that they had been so small.  We looked at each other, eyes wide, pointing out the difference to the nurse.  She smiled and gently told us while pointing to the machine “That is how a heartbeat is supposed to look”.  She went on to tell us that she would be sleeping all night, and suggested that we go get some dinner and a good night’s sleep.

As we walked out of the CVICU, arm in arm, and a thousand pounds lighter, Drew looked at me and said “Mrs. Rutkowski, let’s go out to a real restaurant and have dinner.”  I grinned at him and for the first time in almost two weeks, looked forward to doing  something and not worrying about her.  We climbed into our car together, and started driving to the only area we were somewhat familiar with.  We soon saw an Olive Garden, one of our favorite restaurants.  As we sat at our table, snuggled together on the same side, as was our custom, we realized how really and truly exhausted we were.  Drew sighed and looking at the menu said, “I can’t believe that I’m really not very hungry”.  I suggested buying one dinner and splitting it.  “Perfect idea!” he agreed.   The cute little college aged waitress came over and greeted us with “and how are you tonight?!”  Drew took a breath and said, “Well, in all honesty, we are celebrating tonight!”  She grinned at him and asked “OH?  What are we celebrating?”  Drew told her “Our 16 year old daughter got her heart transplant today!”  She gasped and half-whispered “Praise God!”  As I looked at her, she was swallowing hard, as tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over.  I put my head on Drew’s shoulder and told him “Look!  You made her cry!”  She shook her head and said “Happy tears!”