A SECOND LIFE

For these parents, donating their child's organs so others could live was a way of accepting the unacceptable

- Harold Gagné

It's March 29, 2016, and to Josée Scantland and Patrick Grondin, the sunlight pouring into the CHU Sainte-Justine pediatric hospital centre in Montreal feels brighter than ever.

Their five-year-old daughter, Élissa, is about to be brought out of the operating room after receiving a new heart.

Outside the OR, the couple is bursting with joy as a TV camera zooms in. "Our daughter is going to live again!" Josée exclaims. "Thank you to the donor's family," adds Patrick. "We don't know you, but you can be proud. You saved our child's life!" Some 200 kilometres away in Gatineau, just across the Ottawa River from the nation's capital, Michel Carpentier and Danielle Lafrance are glued to the screen, moved to tears by the story.

Just a few days earlier, they made the decision to donate the organs of their 23-year-old daughter, Emmanuelle, who died by suicide; they had found her lifeless body in the garage of their family home. "She was so sensitive and wanted to save the world," her mother recalls. And so they chose to offer eight of her organs for transplantation.

Now, seeing Élissa's parents so happy allayed some of their grief: In death, Emmanuelle had saved the lives of whoever had received her organs.

What they didn't know was that the heart beating in Élissa's chest was actually their daughter's.

THE YEAR SHE was born, Élissa Grondin underwent two open heart surgeries to correct congenital anomalies. She'd led a normal life until the age of four, when she was struck by a virus that damaged her heart. Confined to the intensive care unit of the CHU SainteJustine hospital, she spent seven nightmarish months waiting for a donor.