“You don’t owe her or her family anything more than that note you sent them. That’s it. She’d be dead whether you or anybody else got her heart. You are wrong about this.”

He nodded that he understood her point but it wasn’t enough for him. He knew that just because something makes sense on an intellectual level, it doesn’t play any better in the twists of your guts. She read his thoughts.

“But what?”

“I don’t know. It’s just that I thought if I ever found out what happened, I would find out it was an accident. That’s what I prepared myself for. That’s what they tell you in orientation and even you told me when we started. That ninety-nine out of a hundred times it’s an accident leading to fatal head injury. Car crash or somebody falls down the steps or dumps their motorcycle. But this is different. It changes things.”

“You keep saying that. How can it be different? The heart is just an organ-a biological pump. It’s the same no matter how its original owner dies.”

“An accident I could live with. All that time I was waiting, knowing that somebody had to die for me to live, I was getting myself ready to accept it as an accident. With an accident it’s like it was fated or something. But a murder… that comes with evil intent attached. It’s not happenstance. It means that I’m the benefactor of an act of evil, Doctor, and that’s why it’s different now.”

Fox was silent for a few moments. She shoved her hands into the side pockets of her lab coat. McCaleb thought that she was finally beginning to see his point.

“That’s what my life was about for a long time,” he added quietly. “I was searching out evil. That was my job. And I was good at it but in the long run it was better than me. It got the best of me. I think-no, I know-that’s what took my heart. But now it’s like none of that meant anything because here I am, I have this new heart, a new life, this second chance you talk about, and the only reason I have it is because of this evil, hateful thing that someone did.”