For a father, that beat had been the last sound to remember. Then, months later, he returned to feel it inside a teddy bear.
Dakota Reid was 16 when he was involved in a serious road accident. The consequences were irreversible and on January 25, 2019 he died.
His father, John, made a very difficult decision: to authorize the donation of the organs of his son.
Five people received a chance to continue to live.
Among them was Robert O’Connor, a man who lived for about ten years with a heart disease. When his condition deteriorated suddenly, he ended up being attacked by machines waiting for a transplant.
Dakota's heart arrived in time.
And saved his life.
During a check at the Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Robert had an idea.
He asked health personnel to record the sound of his transplanted heart.
That heartbeat wasn't just his.
It was also Dakota's.
Robert entered the recording in a Build-a-Bear teddy bear, dressed him with a shirt with the word "Best Dad Ever" and sent it to John Reid.
When John opened the package and squeezed the bear, he felt his son’s heart again.
That sound immediately brought it back to the last days spent next to Dakota.
He learned that, in the hospital, he leaned his head on the boy's chest every night and he was listening to his heartbeat.
He thought he could never do that again.
Thanks to Robert, instead, that sound was back.
The donation had already transformed a tragedy into five new possibilities of life.
But in that gesture there was something extra.
A man had received a heart.
And he had found a way to return to a father at least part of what he had lost: the sound of his son still alive somewhere in the world.