{"product_id":"changes-isbn-9780440111818","title":"Changes","description":"Top TV anchorwoman Melanie Adams had given up on love after a failed marriage and  an unhappy affair.  With her two teenage children and her television news career,  she had no room in her life for a man.  Then she met famous heart surgeon Peter Hallam,  a widower with three children of his own.  Suddenly Melanie was experiencing feelings  she thought were gone forever.  But two families (one in New York and one in Los  Angeles), two exciting careers, and two strong-willed people were too much to handle.   And Melanie faced a painful choice between her  glamorous life in the public eye,  her private life, the needs of her family, and the new family she took on.  Changes  lead each of them to new places, new problems, new people, and the new life they  begin.\u003cb\u003ePraise for Danielle Steel\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Steel is one of the best!”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Few modern writers convey the pathos of family and material life with such heartfelt empathy.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Philadelphia Inquirer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Steel pulls out all the emotional stops. . . . She delivers!”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What counts for the reader is the ring of authenticity.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eDanielle Steel\u003c\/b\u003e has been hailed as one of the world’s most popular authors, with over 650 million copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include \u003ci\u003eCountry, Prodigal Son, Pegasus,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eA Perfect Life, Power Play, Winners, First Sight, Until the End of Time, The Sins of the Mother, \u003c\/i\u003eand other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of \u003ci\u003eHis Bright Light,\u003c\/i\u003e the story of her son Nick Traina’s life and death; \u003ci\u003eA Gift of Hope, \u003c\/i\u003ea memoir of her work with the homeless; \u003ci\u003ePure Joy, \u003c\/i\u003eabout the dogs she and her family have loved; and the children’s book \u003ci\u003ePretty Minnie in Paris.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eChapter One\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Dr. Hallam...Dr. Peter Hallam...Dr. Hallam...Cardiac Intensive, Dr.  Hallam...\" The voice droned on mechanically as Peter Hallam sped through the lobby  of Center City Hospital, never stopping to answer the page since the team already  knew he was on his way.  He furrowed his brow as he pressed six, his mind already  totally engaged with the data he had been given twenty minutes before on the phone.   They had waited weeks for this donor, and it was almost too late.  Almost.  His  mind raced as the elevator doors ground open, and he walked quickly to the nurses'  station marked Cardiac Intensive Care.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Have they sent Sally Block upstairs yet?\"  A nurse looked up, seeming to snap to attention as her eyes met his.  Something inside  her always leapt a little when she saw him.  There was something infinitely impressive  about the man, tall, slender, gray-  haired, blue-eyed, soft-spoken.  He had the  looks of the doctors one read about in women's novels.  There was something so basically  kind and gentle about him, and yet something powerful as well.  The aura of a highly  trained racehorse always straining at the reins, aching to go faster, farther...to  do more...to fight time...to conquer odds beyond hope...to steal back just one life...one  man...one woman...one child...one more.  And often he won.  Often.  But not always.   And that irked him.  More than that, it pained him.  It was the cause for the lines  beside his eyes, the sorrow one saw deep within him.  It wasn't enough that he wrought  miracles almost daily.  He wanted more than that, better odds, he wanted to save  them all, and there was no way he could.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Yes, Doctor.\" The nurse nodded quickly.   \"She just went up.\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Was she ready?\" That was the other thing about him and the  nurse marveled at the question.  She knew instantly what he meant by \"ready\"; not  the I.V. in the patient's arm, or the mild sedative administered before she left  her room to be wheeled to surgery.  He was questioning what she was thinking, feeling,  who had spoken to her, who went with her.  He wanted each of them to know what they  were facing, how hard the team would work, how much they cared, how desperately they  would all try to save each life.  He wanted each patient to be ready to enter the  battle with him.  \"If they don't believe they have a fighting chance when they go  in there, we've lost them right from the beginning,\" the nurse had heard him tell  his students, and he meant it.  He fought with every fiber of his being, and it cost  him, but it was worth it.  The results he'd gotten in the past five years were amazing,  with few exceptions.  Exceptions which mattered deeply to Peter Hallam.  Everything  did.  He was remarkable and intense and brilliant...and so goddamn handsome, the  nurse reminded herself with a smile as he hurried past her to a small elevator in  the corridor behind her.  It sped up one floor and deposited him outside the operating  rooms where he and his team performed bypasses and transplants and occasionally more  ordinary cardiac surgery, but not often.  Most of the time, Peter Hallam and his  team did the big stuff, as they would tonight.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Sally Block was a twenty-two- year-old  girl who had lived most of her adult life as an invalid, crippled by rheumatic fever  as a child, and she had suffered through multiple valve replacements and a decade  of medication.  He and his associates had agreed weeks before when she'd been admitted  to Center City that a transplant was the only answer for her.  But thus far, there  had been no donor.  Until tonight, at two thirty in the morning, when a group of  juvenile delinquents had engaged in their own private drag races in the San Fernando  Valley; three of them had died on impact, and after a series of businesslike phone  calls from the splendidly run organization for the location and placement of donors,  Peter Hallam knew he had a good one.  He had had calls out to every hospital in Southern  California for a donor for Sally, and now they had one–if Sally could just survive  the surgery, and her body didn't sabotage them by rejecting the new heart they gave  her.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e He peeled off his street clothes without ceremony, donned the limp green cotton  surgery pajamas, scrubbed intensely, and was gowned and masked by surgical assistants.   Three other doctors and two residents did likewise as did a fleet of nurses.  But  Peter Hallam seemed not even to see them, as he walked into the operating room.   His eyes immediately sought Sally, lying silent and still on the operating-room table,  her own eyes seemingly mesmerized by the bright lights above her.  Even lying there  in the sterile garb with her long blond hair tucked into a green cotton cap she looked  pretty.  She was not only a beautiful young woman but a decent human being as well.   She wanted desperately to be an artist...to go to college...to go to a prom...to  be kissed...to have babies.... She recognized him even with the cap and mask and  she smiled sleepily through a haze of medication.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Hi.\" She looked frail, her eyes  enormous in the fragile face, like a broken china doll, waiting for him to repair  her.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Hello, Sally.  How're you feeling?\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Funny.\" Her eyes fluttered for a moment  and she smiled at the familiar eyes. She had come to know him in the last few weeks,  better than she had known anyone in years.  He had opened doors of hope to her, of  tenderness, and of caring, and the loneliness and isolation she had felt for years  had finally seemed less acute to her.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"We're going to be pretty busy for the next  few hours.  All you have to do is lie there and snooze.\"  He watched her and glanced  at the monitors nearby before looking back at her again.  \"Scared?\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Sort of.\"   But he knew she was well prepared.  He had spent weeks explaining the surgery to  her, the intricate process, and the dangers and medications afterward.  She knew  what to expect now, and their big moment had come.  It was almost like giving birth.  And he would be giving birth to her, almost as though she would spring from his very  soul, from his fingertips as they fought to save her.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The anesthetist moved closer  to her head and searched Peter Hallam's eyes.  He nodded slowly and then smiled at  Sally again.  \"See you in a little while.\" Except it wouldn't be a little while.   It would be more like five or six hours before she was conscious again, and then  only barely, as they watched her in the recovery room, before moving her to intensive  care.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Will you be there when I wake up?\" A frown of fear creased her brows and  he was quick to nod.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"I sure will.  I'll be right there with you when you wake  up.  Just like I'm here with you now.\" He nodded to the anesthetist then, and her  eyes fluttered closed briefly from the sedative they had administered before.  The  sodium pentothal was administered through the intravenous tube already implanted  in her arm; a moment later, Sally Block was asleep, and within minutes, the delicate  surgery began.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e For the next four hours, Peter Hallam worked relentlessly to hook  up the new heart, and there was a wondrous look of victory on his face, as it began  to pump.  For just a fraction of a second, his eyes met those of the nurse standing  across from him, and beneath the mask he smiled.  \"There she goes.\" But they had  only won the first round, he knew only too well.  It remained to be seen if Sally's  body would accept or reject the new heart.  And as with all transplant patients,  the odds weren't great.  But they were better than they would have been if she hadn't  had the surgery at all.  In her case, as with the other people he operated on, it  was her only hope.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e At nine fifteen that morning, Sally Block was wheeled into the  recovery room, and Peter Hallam took his first break since four thirty A.M.  It would  be a while before the anesthetic wore off, and he had time for a cup of coffee, and  a few moments of his own thoughts.  Transplants like Sally's drained everything from  him.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"That was spectacular, Doctor.\" A young resident stood next to him, still  in awe, as Peter poured himself a cup of black coffee and turned to the young man.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Thank you.\" Peter smiled, thinking how much the young resident looked like his  own son.  It would have pleased him no end if Mark had had ambitions in medicine,  but Mark already had other plans, business school, or law.  He wanted to be part  of a broader world than this, and he had seen over the years how much his father  had given of himself and what it had cost him emotionally each time one of his transplant  patients died.  That wasn't for him.  Peter narrowed his eyes as he took a sip of  the inky brew, thinking that maybe it was just as well.  And then he turned to the  young resident again.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Is this the first transplant you've seen?\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"The second.   You performed the other one too.\" And performed somehow seemed the appropriate word.   Both transplants had been the most theatrical kind of surgery the young man had  witnessed.  There was more tension and drama in the operating room than he had ever  experienced in his life, and watching Peter Hallam operate was like watching Nijinsky  dance.  He was the best there was. \"How do you think this one will do?\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"It's too  soon to tell.  Hopefully, she'll do fine.\" And he prayed that what he said was true,  as he covered his operating-room garb with another sterile gown and headed toward  the recovery room.  He left his coffee outside, and went to sit quietly in one of  the chairs near where Sally lay.  A recovery-room nurse and a battery of monitors  were watching Sally's every breath, and so far all was well.  The trouble, if it  arose, was likely to come later than this, unless of course everything went wrong  from the beginning.  And that had happened before too.  But not this time...not this  time...please God...not now...not to her...she's so young...not that he would have  felt any differently if she had been fifty-  five instead of twenty-two.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e It hadn't  made any difference when he lost his wife.  He sat looking at Sally now, trying not  to see a different face...a different time...and yet he always did...saw her as she  had been in those last hours, beyond fighting, beyond hope...beyond him.  She hadn't  even let him try.  No matter what he said, or how hard he had tried to convince her.   They had had a donor.  But she had refused it.  He had pounded the wall in her room  that night, and driven home on the freeway at a hundred and fifteen.  And when they  picked him up for speeding, he didn't give a damn.  He didn't care about anything  then...except her...and what she wouldn't let him do.  He had been so vague when  the highway patrol stopped him that they made him get out of the car and walk a straight  line.  But he wasn't drunk, he was numb with pain.  They had let him go with a citation  and a stiff fine, and he had gone home to wander through the house, thinking of her,  aching for her, needing all that she'd had to give, and would give no more.  He wondered  if he could bear living without her.  Even the children seemed remote to him then...all  he could think of was Anne.  She had been so strong for so long, and because of her  he had grown over the years. She filled him with a kind of strength he drew on constantly,  as well as his own skill.  And suddenly that wasn't there.  He had sat terrified  that night, alone and frightened, like a small child, and then suddenly at dawn,  he had felt an irresistible pull.  He had to go back to her...had to hold her once  more...had to tell her the things he had never said before...He had raced back to  the hospital again and quietly slipped into her room, where he dismissed the nurse  and watched her himself, gently holding her hand, and smoothing the fair hair back  from her pale brow.  She looked like a very fragile porcelain doll, and once just  before morning burst into the room, she opened her eyes...\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"...Peter...\" Her voice  was less than a whisper in the stillness.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"I love you, Anne...\" His eyes had filled  with tears and he had wanted to shout, \"Don't go.\" She smiled the magical smile that  always filled his heart, and then with the ease of a sigh she was gone, as he stood  in bereft horror and stared.  Why wouldn't she fight? Why wouldn't she let him try?  Why couldn't he accept what other people accepted from him every day? But he couldn't  accept it now.  He stood and he stared at her, sobbing softly, until one of his colleagues  led him away.  They had taken him home and put him to bed, and somehow in the next  days and weeks he had gone through all the motions that were expected of him.  But  it was like an ugly underwater dream, and he only surfaced now and then, until at  last he realized how desperately his children needed him.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e And slowly, he had come  back, and three weeks later he was back at work, but there was something missing  now.  Something that meant everything to him.  And that something was Anne.  She  never left his mind for very long.  She was there a thousand times a day, as he left  for work, as he walked in and out of patients' rooms, as he walked into surgery,  or back out to his car in the late afternoon.  And when he reached his front door,  it was like a knife in his heart again every time he went home, knowing that she  wouldn't be there.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e It had been over a year now, and the pain was dimmer, but not  yet gone.  And he somehow suspected that it never would be.  All he could do was  continue with his work, give everything he could to the people who turned to him  for help...and then of course there were Matthew, Mark, and Pam.  Thank God, he had  them.  Without them he would never have survived.  But he had.  He had come this  far, and he would live on...but so differently...without Anne...\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e He sat in the  stillness of the recovery room, his long legs stretched out before him, his face  tense, watching Sally breathe, and at last her eyes opened for an instant and fuzzily  swept the room.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Sally...Sally, it's Peter Hallam...I'm here, and you're fine...\"  For now.  But he didn't say that to her, nor did he even let himself think that.   She was alive.  She had done well.  She was going to live.  He was going to do everything  in his power to see to it.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e He sat at her bedside for another hour, watching her,  and speaking to her whenever she came around, and he even won a small, weak smile  from her before he left her shortly after one in the afternoon.  He stopped in the  cafeteria for a sandwich, and went back to his office briefly, before coming back  to the hospital to see patients at four o'clock, and at five thirty he was on the  freeway on his way home, his mind once again filled with Anne.  It was still difficult  to believe that she wouldn't be there when he got home.  When does one stop expecting  to see her again, he had asked a friend six months before. When will I finally understand  it? The pain he had come to know in the past year and a half had etched a certain  vulnerability into his face.  It hadn't been there before, that visible hurt of loss  and sorrow and pain.  There had only been strength there before, and confidence,  the certainty that nothing can ever go wrong.  He had three perfect children, the  perfect wife, a career he had mastered as few men do.  He had climbed to the top,  not brutally but beautifully, and he loved it there.  And now what?  Where was there  left to go, and with whom?","brand":"Dell","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300292940005,"sku":"NP9780440111818","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780440111818.jpg?v=1767723555","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/changes-isbn-9780440111818","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}