THE TINIEST THREAD
Because I needed to give Deacon some closure, and start building the bridges again between him and Scarlett. Following 4x03/4x04, and the heartbreak that entailed (More due to Deacon/Scarlett's reactions, I was never particularly attached to Beverly). Because with one life lost, a number of lives were saved.
Only the obvious spoiler.
Disclaimer: Doesn't belong to me.
He's never seen the woman knocking on his door before. She can't be much younger than Rayna, but there's something tired beyond her years in her face. He opens the door, prepared for a cleverly concealed tabloid reporter (they've been all over him, these last five weeks, since Beverly died and he took himself away to his cabin to hide from everyone).
For a moment, she doesn't speak, like she's bracing herself for something.
"Can I help you?" it comes out sounding slightly gruffer than he'd intended, but he's had a hard few weeks. He doesn't even apologise to himself.
"I'm… I'm Claire Bryant." She breathes, but with a level of confidence in her voice that doesn't quite suit her slightly nervous expression. He frowns, raising his eyebrows slightly. She flushes a little when she realises he doesn't know who on earth she is. "I wanted to thank you. I… I got one of your sister's kidneys."
Bruce Kennedy fought for six years in Vietnam, starting when he wasn't even twenty, almost straight out of high school. He'd come home as often as he could to his mother, and then his girlfriend, and then his fiancée, but he'd never really been able to let it go. He'd gotten married after his final tour, and she'd stayed by his side all that time, despite everything; despite not being able to have children, despite never being able to let Vietnam go, she'd still been there.
He'd spent what felt like his whole life unable to shake the nightmares, unable to forget the screaming children, unable to quite all of him return home. Somewhat ironically, it wasn't until he was diagnosed with rapidly progressing severe heart failure at the age of only 61 that he'd realised history was history, the past was always going to remain the past, and he needed to start living.
He'd taken his wife on a sudden, spur-of-the-moment holiday in Europe, and she'd blushed and smiled and said he'd never done anything so wonderful, never shown her he loved her quite like that.
When he told her he was dying, when they finally got home, she felt sick. Suddenly they were living on limited time.
Bruce Kennedy received Beverly's heart on October 17th.
For a moment, Deacon stands there, staring. Because he still hasn't managed to wrap his head around Beverly being gone, let alone parts of her being in people he's never seen before, people who'd never known Beverly.
She blushes a slightly darker shade of red. "I'm sorry, I managed to get the name of my donor, and then I knew who she was, you've been all over the news, and I wanted to thank someone, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have, I'll just go…"
She turns, starting down the steps. And suddenly it's a tiny piece of Beverly that's leaving him again, and he needs to do something about it.
"You want to come in for coffee?" Deacon manages, and it sounds slightly strangled, because he's not sure he's quite wrapping his head around this, but it comes out, and that's enough, for now. She looks at him slightly confusedly for a moment, but then gives him a small smile and follows him through the door.
Sarah Johnson had been fighting cystic fibrosis her entire life. She'd nearly died 3 times before her thirteenth birthday, and loving parents had been so sheltering she's looked back on her early years as 'not a real childhood'. The last two years the disease had been progressing more rapidly and she'd had to go into a home when her long suffering mother had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. She'd started counting the days, because every one could be the last.
Sarah Johnson received two brand new lungs from Beverly O'Connor on October 16th.
He sets the mug of coffee in front of her, sinking into the chair opposite, suddenly having no idea what to say. Claire looks down into her mug for a moment, and then looks up at him with a tentative smile. When she doesn't say anything for another moment, he realises he needs to break the silence.
"Tell me why you needed it. Tell me what Bev's kidney's doing." He tries to force a smile with those words, but one doesn't quite surface. It's still too early to talk about one of Beverly's body parts like that.
"I've had chronic kidney disease almost my whole life, and it's been slowly getting worse… I had an infection as a teenager that left me with irreparable damage." She stares down at her coffee, swallowing. "Don't get me wrong, I've had a life, I married my high school best friend, we've got two kids… I just… I feel like I'm missing everything."
Deacon notices tears starting in her eyes. "How old are your kids?"
"Liza's 12, and Harry graduated high school in the summer." She swallows again, but looks up to meet his eyes, a shocking honesty in her own. "I wasn't there, though. I… I never seem to be there when I should be. I had to have emergency extended dialysis at the last minute… Until they gave me the kidney, I've been on dialysis for whole afternoons three times a week… it seems I've missed everything important…"
Father Oliver Connelly had been working for his church in foreign, third world countries since the moment he'd been able. It wasn't until he was teaching seven and eight year olds to read in Malawi at the age of 47 he managed to contract hepatitis A which, as undiagnosed for a considerable period of time, resulted in liver damage that lead to liver failure.
After being managed on various different unsuccessful treatments for months, in Wisconsin – he'd been told he couldn't leave an hour's radius of his hospital, let alone go abroad – he'd started to decide that maybe he wasn't long for this world anymore. And he began to question what plan God had for his life if it wasn't charity work. He was ready to give up.
Father Oliver Connelly received some of Beverly's liver on October 17th.
"The day I got the phone call about the transplant..." a shaky smile comes onto her face, "… I'd just heard that Liza's next clarinet recital was going to be when dialysis was scheduled, and all of a sudden there was someone on the phone telling me a matching kidney would be coming into Piedmont Hospital for the following morning." She takes a long sip of coffee, as if for some kind of caffeinated Dutch courage. "I was coming round from the anaesthetic the following afternoon, it seemed to happen so quickly… I'll never be able to thank you enough, Mr Claybourne."
"Deacon, please." He grits his teeth. "It's not me you need to thank, it was Beverly."
She seems to turn a shade paler. "But… but you must have given the doctors the go ahead, and for that I can't-"
"Scarlett." He breathes. Claire frowns. "It wasn't me. Scarlett O'Connor, Bev's daughter, she made the call. She decided…" there's something in his eyes that suggests he's just realising something, "…she decided when I couldn't…"
His last words sound choked, and without thinking, Claire reaches out and takes his hand.
"I'm going to Liza's clarinet recital next Tuesday."
When Lily Stevens was born with Down's Syndrome, her mother promised she'd do everything for her, she'd make her life as normal as she could. When it was discovered Lily had an unstable variety of diabetes at the age of eight, everything got even harder, and the next twenty years were filled with a struggle of hypoglycaemic shock and insulin doses forever changing, for a girl, and then a woman who couldn't understand.
Lily Stevens received Beverly's pancreas on October 16th.
Her hand feels somewhat alien in his, but still somehow comforting. Like there's the tiniest piece of Beverly once more.
"Nothing was ever straight forward between us." He begins, and he's no idea why he's telling this woman anything, other than the fact that she's the only other human he's seen in the last week (Rayna seemed to realise he really did just need to be alone after the third time she turned up) and she's the tiniest thread of Beverly. "But she was my sister, and she came good in the end… she saved my life, giving me the piece of her liver."
Claire smiles slightly wider. "She gave me a life I'd never had a chance to have."
Benjamin Dunn was only eight years old when his congenital kidney disease reared its ugly head. All of a sudden the boy was hooked up to dialysis machines instead of tearing around on the soccer field, and he couldn't understand any of it. He would ask his Mom every day when he was going to be allowed back outside with the other kids, and every day, with a heartbreakingly cheerful smile, she had to tell him it would be soon, waiting with baited breath for another loving family member to be tested, and always, cruelly, find themselves not to be a match.
Benjamin Dunn received Beverly's left kidney on October 18th.
When she finishes her cup of coffee, Claire Bryant gives him another sunshiny smile.
"I'd better get going. I promised Jake I'd make meatloaf tonight." Everything about that's so pleasantly normal Deacon feels a lump in his throat. Beverly really had given this woman a chance to be a regular human being. "Thank you so much for everything, and thank Scarlett from me… I don't think it's easy to understand what a difference this kidney's made to my life, but it's changed everything…"
He stares down at his hand for a moment, as if contemplating something. When he looks up at her, there are tears in his eyes. "I will do. You… you enjoy every moment of your life, every moment with your kids… I know more than maybe I should about missing the important things, but you've got all the time in the world now… you live that life Bev gave you…"
Claire smiles, giving his hand a final squeeze. "I won't waste one minute."
He follows her out, unlocking his van.
"You going back into town?" she asks before she goes to shut her car door, and she's very good, but she hasn't quite concealed the knowledge she's had from the tabloids of his almost month of being a recluse.
He gives her a weary smile. "I think so. I think I'm gonna go talk to Scarlett, and then go home to Rayna and the girls."
"That sounds good. You've gotta live that new life your sister gave you as much as I have."
And with that, she shuts the door, and starts her engine without so much as a goodbye, cruising out of sight down the track, almost as if she'd never been there.
Deacon starts the van, and heads back into Nashville.
That's a wrap! I hope you liked, would love to hear what you think! I did do research regarding all the organs transplanted and in what conditions and cases they are used, hope I got everything right!