In a Heartbeat (10 page)

20

Amelia

His voice floated from the hallway through my open door. He sounded unsure. “Could you ask Amelia if she wants a visitor? Could you tell her it’s Ari?”

“No problem,” Sara responded. “I’ll ask her.”

Sara peeked her head around the corner. “A cute guy is here to see you.”

“Can you give me a minute?” I was already reaching for a brush.

“Sure.” She looked at her watch. “But keep it short. Visiting hours are over in half an hour.”

I switched off the TV and brushed my hair. I was so glad Mom and Dad had left for dinner. I hoped they went to a real restaurant, not the hospital cafeteria. I hoped they wouldn’t come back too soon.

At least my baby blanket was tucked away. I thought of hiding the horse, but Ari had already seen it. He’d practically stared at it.

My hand shook as I studied my reflection in the mirror. I wished I was strikingly beautiful like Rachel with her perfect features, her shaped eyebrows, and clear skin. I wished I’d inherited Mom’s blond hair and blue eyes, the ones Rachel had somehow gotten instead. My straight brown hair and hazel eyes were so ordinary. A few freckles dotted my nose. Some annoying pimples sprinkled my forehead from the medicine I was taking. There was nothing striking about me except for the scar under my gown. And Ari was here because the social worker sent him, nothing more. He probably thought of me like he thought of Tomas. Just a kid. But I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. I couldn’t help feeling excited. I’d never felt this way about a boy before, a boy I’d met for just half an hour.

I was straightening the sheet on my bed when Ari knocked lightly on the wall.

“Knock, knock.”

“Hi, Ari.”

“You’re a hard girl to track down,” he said. “I didn’t think to look in pediatrics.”

The word “pediatrics” made me sound even more like a kid. “Where’s Tomas?”

“Home. I was driving by and thought I’d stop in.”

“Oh. That’s nice.” So lame. I definitely didn’t know how to talk to a guy.

He took a deep breath. “To be honest, I wanted to talk to you without my little brother around.”

My heart fluttered. I searched his eyes, wondering if he was just feeling sorry for me, the poor girl with the bad heart. But then I remembered that I had a different heart now, a healthy one.

His dark brown eyes looked away, as though it had been hard for him to say that. He had large, serious eyes, the kind that drew attention to them. The kind of eyes I could dream about.

Ari tugged on his button-down long-sleeved shirt, a bluestriped one that he wore untucked over his jeans. I concentrated on the brown locks of hair that swept his collar, while stealing glances at his eyes without being too obvious.

A beeper went off in the hallway. I turned toward the sound, aware that the door was open. I wondered if anyone was standing outside the door listening.

Ari frowned. “There are a couple of reasons I wanted to see you. One is that I could tell you wanted to know more about your donor.”

“I do,” I admitted.

“So here’s the thing. I need to warn you.”

“Warn me?”

“To be careful what you wish for.”

“Why shouldn’t I want to know who my donor is?”

Ari put a hand up. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t. But you need to know what you’re getting into first. Tomas was lucky. The donor family was great, and Tomas learned a lot about his donor. But you never know what you’re going to find when you start digging.

“There was another heart transplant recipient, a kid named Pompilio. He found his donor too. But it didn’t turn out so good for him.”

“What do you mean?”

Ari pushed the door shut before he spoke. He stepped close. His pants rubbed the side of the bed, and I thought for a moment that he was going to sit down right next to me. His voice was low. “Pompilio’s heart came from a girl who was murdered. The family said there was no way they wanted to meet Pompilio, and he became really depressed. Plus, Pompilio kept having these nightmares.”

I hadn’t thought of that. What if my donor died that way? “That must have been hard for him,” I said.

Ari didn’t answer right away. “I’m not telling you this to scare you. But after that, Pompilio had a rejection. He’s okay now, but I sometimes wonder if that stress caused the rejection.”

He shifted up against the bed. “Tomas’s doctor said that there’s a human element to healing. I wouldn’t want this to be a bad experience for you. I wouldn’t want it to interfere with your getting better.”

Maybe that should have scared me. Maybe that’s what he really meant to do, after all. But it had the opposite effect. “You know what it’s like when you throw a stone in the water and the waves spread out farther and farther?” I said.

“Yes?”

“Well, that’s what’s happening to me. I’m getting farther and farther away from myself, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to get back. I’m sorry about what happened to that boy, but maybe he would have had the rejection episode anyway. I have a feeling that my donor wants me to find her. It sounds weird, I know.”

Ari shook his head. “No. Not weird at all. Tomas said almost the same thing.”

“You wanted to warn me. That’s why you’re here.” The flutter of my heart gave way to embarrassment. How could I have thought Ari was interested in me as more than just a heart transplant patient?

His voice faltered. “That was one reason I wanted to talk to you. The other was . . . I could help you find your donor.” He looked down. “If you want help.”

“Of course,” I said, and felt my heart soar again. His voice sounded sincere, and I thought I heard something extra. I couldn’t really tell what. Rachel knew about these things, not me.

Mom and Dad came in just then. Kyle was with them, wearing a white surgical mask. They didn’t require it here in pediatrics, but Kyle probably wanted to wear one, anyway.

“Meely!” Kyle ran next to my bed then stopped. “How’s your new heart?”

“Great. I feel all better,” I said, which was mostly true except for the lingering pain down my chest where they’d cut me open. I patted an empty space at the end of my bed with my foot.

Kyle climbed up and sat there, kicking his legs out. He was eyeing the controls next to me. I could tell he wanted to push the buttons. “Aunt Sophie bought me a hamster. His name is Patches.”

“I can’t wait to see him.”

He noticed Ari then. Ari introduced himself to Kyle and my parents. He told them about his brother, Tomas, and how well he was doing. And he said that the social worker had asked them to visit me.

“I was just leaving,” he said. “Nice meeting you.”

As he turned to leave, Mom’s eyebrows shot up. “He’s cute,” she mouthed.

Ari stopped at the door. “There’s one other thing, Amelia.”

“What is it?”

“I wanted to ask if I could visit you again.”

I felt my face heat up. The first time a guy acts interested in me, and it happens right in front of my parents. “Sure,” I said.

Mom winked at me and I rolled my eyes.

“Polite kid,” Dad said when he’d left. “Needs a haircut, though.”

21

EAGAN

There’s a saying in figure skating:
you must either find a way
or make one.
If I can land a triple salchow, then I’m not about to let go of my life without a fight. I’m done crying and feeling sorry for myself. It’s time to get tough.

“I have to go back. There has to be a way out of here,” I say. I walk toward the lighter side of the fog. Miki follows me.

“Where are the other people here? The millions you talked about?”

She gestures around me. “All over. You can’t see them?”

I’m wondering if it’s the truth. As far as I can tell, there’s no one here but me. My voice becomes combative, like when I’m fighting with Mom. “Why can I see you? And why aren’t you gray like me?”

She shrinks away. “Are you angry with me?”

I’m afraid she’ll leave. Then I’ll be alone again. “I’m sorry. It’s just frustrating. I don’t know what’s going on.”

She comes back and twirls around, watching the folds in her dress move in and out in the mist. “I’m here to help you. You asked for me.”

I don’t remember asking for some frilly airhead girl. I’ve always been so focused that it’s painful watching her act so carefree, as though she doesn’t have a worry in the world. As she’s twirling, I smell something sweet. It reminds me of blossoming plumerias, the flowers on the lei Mom brought back from Hawaii. It’s the first thing I’ve smelled that didn’t belong to one of my flashbacks.

“Do you smell that?”

She sniffs the air and smiles. “Flowers.”

“Where’s it coming from?”

She points toward the people. “The other side.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. “Do you know how I get to the other side?”

She points at my life, still flashing in front of me. “I think that’s how.”

“No. I can’t waste any more time looking back.” I follow the scent of the flowers. Maybe there’s a way across that abyss that I didn’t see. A bridge or something.

She follows me. I’m jogging and she’s strolling, spending way too much time looking around when all there is to see is gray nothingness. Three times I have to stop and wait for her to catch up.

“I’m probably missing skating practice, and ice time isn’t cheap,” I tell her, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference in her stride. The scent changes as we walk. Now it smells like medicine, disinfectant, bland food, and death. I can’t help being drawn to the memory of the last time I saw Grandpa.

“Look, Grandpa. I brought your slippers.”

Grandpa nodded. He’d had trouble talking since the stroke because his left side didn’t work well. Part of his lip hung down, and that whole side of his face drooped.

That wasn’t the worst. He was here, in this place, Scenic Acres, in a twelve-by-twelve-foot room that smelled worse than a hospital room. He was supposedly here to rehab. But we all knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Mom had a For Sale sign in front of his house. Did Grandpa know about that? Of course he did. How could he let her do that? How could he still act so upbeat?

I placed the brown loafers next to him on the bed. “Of course, you’ll have to get up off your lazy butt to use them.”

Grandpa’s eyes flashed, and I saw a hint of the man I used to know.

“Tell me the truth,” I said as I crossed the tiled floor to the room’s one window, which looked out at the parking lot of the church next door. Not what I’d call scenic. Nothing like the lilac bushes and cottonwoods at Grandpa’s house. “How are you feeling?”

He motioned me closer and waved his fingers in front of him. “Wif my fingers.”

I smiled. I always fell for that joke no matter how many times Grandpa told it to me.

He struggled to speak. “Enjoy ife.”

“What?” I said, then immediately wanted to kick myself. I hated to see him screw up his face with such concentration just to spit out a few words.

“Enjoy . . . now. Before . . . you . . . get . . . old.”

“Okay. How?”

He shrugged, then made the slow effort again. “Sometime . . . ife . . . sucks.”

“Did you say life sucks? Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”

Grandpa nodded, and one side of his lip curled up. He was smiling. The first time I’d seen him smile since his stroke.

If I had to live in this place, I’d never smile. But then, I almost never smile anyway.

“It’s too quiet in here. Why don’t I turn on the radio?”

Dad had brought Grandpa’s thirteen-inch TV and propped it on a dresser across from his bed. But before, Grandpa had never watched TV much. He would putter around the basement with his tools when he wasn’t out walking to the coffee shop to meet his friends. Now he’d lost all that. Gone in one paralyzing stroke.

I fiddled with the dial of his radio, the one he’d kept on the corner of his workbench. Flecks of brown and white dried paint made it look out of place on the sterile steel nightstand. I found a station playing big band music.

Grandpa was trying to hold a notepad with his left hand, the bad one. His fingers curled up and out. The skin on his hands was translucent and shiny as he scribbled. He showed me the pad.

Aren’t you supposed to be at a dance?

I’d looked forward to the homecoming dance for weeks. It was all I thought about when I wasn’t skating. But now it seemed selfish to think about dancing when Grandpa couldn’t tie his own shoes. I shook my head. “It’s tonight, but I told Scott I didn’t feel like going. He’s okay with it—he’s out in the hall waiting for me.”

Grandpa touched my arm. “Bring . . . him . . . in.”

I hesitated. “Okay.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t want Scott to meet Grandpa. But I wanted him to meet the Grandpa I knew before the stroke, the one who was strong and independent and good with his hands, who could look at a piece of furniture in a store and go home and make the same thing without taking a single measurement.

I wasn’t ashamed of him now, but I still missed my old Grandpa.

Scott wasn’t where I’d left him. I expected to find him cowering in a corner, maybe holding his breath in case being old was contagious. Instead he was pushing a woman in a wheelchair down the hallway. What an image. Scott, the big football player, standing behind the hunched-up woman in the wheelchair. And was he ever moving!

“What are you doing?” I shouted after him.

He waved. “Giving Mrs. Solen a ride to the cafeteria. Be right back.”

Scott came back while I was browsing through the books Dad had brought Grandpa. A mystery, a book about World War II, and Tom Brokaw’s
The Greatest Generation.

“Hi, Mr. Lindeman.” Scott reached out and took Grandpa’s right hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Grandpa nodded and tried to pull himself up in his bed. He leaned against one side and inched his way up until I helped him find the remote that moved the bed. He took it from me and pressed it until he was almost sitting straight up, then he leaned back against the pillow, exhausted from the effort.

I wanted to tell Scott that this wasn’t what Grandpa was usually like, that Grandpa used to walk two miles a day and had a sharp tongue that matched my own.

Grandpa picked up the pad and showed Scott the same question he’d written before.

“Yeah, the dance,” Scott said. “She doesn’t want to go.”

Grandpa scribbled something underneath his writing. His tongue hung outside his mouth, trailing off to the side as he wrote. Then he spoke as he showed Scott the writing. “Make . . . er.”

“Make her,” Scott repeated, then raised an eyebrow. “You know Eagan better than I do. Can you make her do anything?”

Grandpa’s eyebrows narrowed. I could tell he was up to something. He scribbled for a long time and pulled on Scott’s arm. “Try,” he said as he showed him the paper, which I couldn’t see.

Scott grinned. “Okay. Got it.”

“Got what?” I said.

“Nothing.” He had a sly smirk on his face.

“Seepy,” Grandpa said, lowering himself back down on his pillow and waving his hand at me. “Go now.”

“You sneak.” I kissed him on the cheek and helped him lower the bed. As we were leaving, I confronted Scott in the hallway. “So what did he draw?”

“Football formation. A rough diagram of an inside trap.”

“What does that mean?”

“I think it means he really wants you to go to the dance.”

I sighed. “He’s always saying I have to enjoy life more.”

“He’s a smart guy,” Scott said.

I thought of the dress Kelly had lent me, a dark blue satin one with spaghetti straps. Kelly’s mom said it showed off my blue eyes.

“I guess we shouldn’t let the old guy down. Do you think we can still make it?”

Scott wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. “Hey, it’s just a little halftime adjustment.”