In a Heartbeat (12 page)

24

Amelia

It was a simple chair, a wooden rocker. All the pediatric rooms had one. I hadn’t paid much attention to it before. It had rounded spindles and curved arms. I stared at it for a long time, as if I knew that chair. The longer I stared, the more I felt it, a strong sensation rising up inside me. I wanted to run my hand over the wood and feel the flow of the grain. I wanted to put my nose up to the headrest and smell the wood and varnish.

I’d never seen the chair before I came here, but I recognized it. How was that possible?

Was it a side effect of the cyclosporine or prednisone? Were the drugs tricking more than just my immune system? Were they causing chaos in my mind as well?

I tried to talk to the social worker. Really, I did. But she kept talking about stuff like guilt and self-esteem. I didn’t know how to tell her that my problem went beyond feeling good about myself.

Ari told me to believe in my new heart, to listen to what it was telling me. His brother had shown me his scar, a reminder that his organ was a loaner from someone else, a person who would always be a part of him from now on.

It made me wonder why God created the heart the way He did, so small a part only the size of a fist but in charge of the whole works. It moved all that blood through the body and never took a rest, even when we slept. Was it any wonder that my new heart made me feel more than just energized now? But that didn’t mean this heart had forgotten
her
.

Did that chair mean something? I drew the horse I remembered from my dream in my notebook. I filled in the landscape: silky prairie grass leaning in the direction of the wind with tall buttercups spinning an enchanted walkway for the horse to follow. Pillow clouds reached down to the treetops. I drew the horse running, her mane whipping in the air and her nostrils flared to capture the feeling I’d had riding her. Free. Powerful.

Since the transplant, my body had felt so alive. Everything felt more vivid, even the pain. But the Amelia inside remembered the sick, puffy, tired feeling of the last six years. She had no memory of a heart that beat even and consistent and strong.

Rain splattered against the window. I got out of bed and threw on my robe, then pulled the IV stand with me to the window, where I ran my finger along the drips down the pane. People below were running, covering their heads with newspapers and purses. Mom avoided taking me out in the rain as much as possible. When she did, she dropped me off at the door and made me hurry inside. Now I wished I could stick my head outside and catch raindrops on my tongue, but the window didn’t open. I had to go outside. I had to experience that rain.

I unplugged the power cord to the IV and snuck into the hallway with my IV stand rattling along the patterned linoleum. It was quiet except for the muffled pagers going off and the hungry beeps of empty IV bags. I made sure none of the nurses saw me slip into an empty elevator, where I pushed the button for the ground floor. The elevator jerked down and my stomach felt queasy.

On the third floor, a woman got on. I smiled and made eye contact as though I was supposed to be there. She smiled back and returned her gaze to the closed door. When the elevator reached the first floor, I exited in the opposite direction.

A side door was close by. Three people passed me as I walked out into the cold rain, dragging my IV stand with me. I stood outside and looked up into the sky. I stretched out my arms wide, feeling the cold wetness dribble down inside my robe, where a large bandage covered my scar. I wasn’t supposed to get it wet. I didn’t care.

I splashed my bare feet in a puddle, squished dirt between my toes. I put my head back, opened my mouth, and felt the cool liquid slide down my throat.

This felt like life. Not the beeping of a heart monitor that kept track of how many beats per minute my new heart could do. What good were beats if you didn’t really
feel
alive?

Fingers tapped my shoulder. “Excuse me, young lady. What are you doing out here in the rain?”

A woman frowned at me. The name tag attached to her pink smock read “Ms. Lansing.”

I shrugged. “Getting wet?” I turned and went back inside. She followed me to the elevator.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.

I pushed the button to close the door. “Back to my room. I promise.” I shivered in the elevator. The air inside felt colder now, and I couldn’t wait to snuggle under the covers in my hospital bed.

Maybe Ms. Lansing had put in a call, because there was a nurse outside my room. But I was too tired to stop and explain my wet condition. I walked past her into my room, cleaned myself up, and had just gotten back in bed when Dr. Michael walked in, studying my chart.

“How’re you feeling this afternoon?”

I thought of the rain and the chair and the memory that couldn’t be explained. I thought of how I’d just gone outside for the first time in over a week. “Good.”

He looked up.

“I just got out of the shower,” I said, running a hand through my wet hair. “When do I get to go home?”

“How about Tuesday?”

“Tuesday?” As in the day after tomorrow?

He nodded. “We’ll take another biopsy before you leave. You’ll have to come back once a week at first. Also, the nurses will go over your home health care with you and your parents: what to expect, your regimen of medicine, diet.”

“Tuesday,” I repeated.

“Only if you want to get out of here.” He peered down at me. “From what the nurses are telling me, you’ve already flown the coop.”

His voice was light, but that was all it took for me to regret what I’d done. I hoped my parents wouldn’t find out.

As he listened to my heart and examined my scar, Dr. Michael’s warm hand brushed my skin, which sent tingles all the way up my arm and down to my fingers. I turned my head away. I imagined what it would be like to be grown-up, to be married to someone like him, to feel his soft hands on my skin in a different way. Then I thought of Ari, of how his hands would feel. But I didn’t want Dr. Michael to see all that in my eyes. I focused on the chair.

“You’re doing great. Your body is responding to this heart like it was meant for you. No reason to keep you here.”

I was ready to go home. “How soon can I go back to school?”

“If everything goes well, you can go back to school in the spring.”

School. Back-to-school shopping. Regular activities I’d stuffed away in the back of my mind for so long. Dr. Michael bent over. The dark curl on his forehead made a curly
Q
. I could see under his lab coat, where his shirt hung open, a patch of dark hair. “Can I go on dates?”

Dr. Michael’s lips drew up into a smile. “Absolutely. I’ll bet you’ll be going on many of those. Although you might want to consult your parents on that too.”

My cheeks burned and I turned away again. The rocking chair seemed to nod to me as a slight breeze from the vent pushed the air around it.

Dr. Michael touched my drawing on the bed next to me. “You’re very artistic. Is that what you want to do when you grow up?”

I tucked the sheets over the picture, embarrassed. “I was just bored.”

Dr. Michael lightly patted the covers over my leg. “Well, you have lots of time to decide. And plenty of time for boys.”

I picked up my notebook, feeling stupid. All my life, drawing horses had helped to calm me. My fingers automatically knew how to sketch the circles of the basic form, the length of the ears to the nose, the spacing of the legs.

Now all my drawings seemed childish. The rocker moved slightly as though agreeing with me.

“Any concerns?”

“Um, the prednisone. Is there anything else I can take?”

“Why? Are you having problems?”

“A little bit.” My face felt hot again and I kept my eyes down. “My face is breaking out.” I’d asked the nurses about it. A mild side effect of the drug. There were many worse side effects I could get instead.

Dr. Michael bent down again. “Any rashes?”

“No.”

He patted my cheek. “That should go away as we lower the dose. Sometimes it’s just a question of maintaining the right level. But we’ll stick to a higher dosage for a while.”

He wasn’t the one with zits popping up on his face. I felt them on my back and shoulders too.

When Dr. Michael stood up, he patted his pocket. He had one of those sports buttons pinned to the outside. A picture of a little boy with dark skin and the same curly hair as Dr. Michael posed on the ice in his hockey gear. His skates were slanted inward. The blades—there was something wrong about them. They weren’t the right kind of skates.

My heart sped up. I wanted to reach out and touch that button.

“Any other questions?”

“Can I do sports?” I blurted out.

Dr. Michael raised his eyebrows. “Well, it’s something you’ll have to work up to. No contact sports. Some of our patients go skiing and swimming. A few play tennis and golf. What sport are you interested in?”

“How about skating?”

25

EAGAN

I swish a hand through the gray murkiness. I’m pissed. “So let’s say for the sake of argument that I’m dead. Who dies during a figure skating competition anyway? A car accident would make more sense. I just got my driver’s license. But I hit my head on a board. A stupid half inch of board.”

Miki tilts her curly head. “Would you have preferred to die in a car accident?”

“Yes. No. I mean, I can’t be dead. I don’t want to die.”

“Most people don’t. But you knew you would. Didn’t you?”

I want to say no. But here, in this place, you can’t lie to yourself. The evidence is flashing all around you in your kaleidoscope memories. “Yeah,” I say in a small voice. “Maybe I knew.”

“What is this?” Mom asked. I’d just come out of the bathroom and had a towel wrapped around me. She was in my room. She’d discovered my stash. She’d piled the batteries, bars, and bottles of water in the middle of my bed. It was an impressive pile, stacked high like a volcano.

“What are these for?” she said accusingly, confronting me as though she’d found drugs or something worse.

“For an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?”

“End-of-the-world emergency.”

“Eagan, you have to stop reading all that crap that makes you do these things.”

“It’s not the books, Mom. You ever have the feeling that something bad is going to happen? I just want to be prepared.”

Mom threw her hands in the air. “What’s going to happen? Where do you get these ridiculous ideas?”

I should have kept my mouth shut. But I couldn’t help it. “Why are my ideas ridiculous? Because you don’t want to hear them?”

“You’re sixteen, Eagan. You should be thinking about pleasant things. What about the mental imagery you’ve been doing for your performances? This,” she motioned toward the stack, “can’t be helping your mental preparation.”

There was a difference between imagining yourself performing your jumps successfully and having a gut feeling about some worldly disaster, but Mom didn’t want to listen. “I still have my eye on the goal,” I insisted, “but there are other things to think about in the world. I mean, more than the matching pillows on a sofa.”

Mom waved the batteries in the air. “Is that what you think I do all day?”

I went tight-lipped and put on my headphones, then turned up the music.

Mom threw the batteries on the bed and stomped out.

The next day I convinced Dad to take me to get my license. I’d passed the written and driving test already. I just had to stand in line and get my picture taken.

“I can miss first period,” I said. “It’s just a study session.”

I wasn’t prepared for the twenty-five-minute wait at the license office.

“Do you want to be an organ donor?”

“What?” I flashed a blank look at the woman standing behind the counter. I’d been watching a little kid running in circles around his mom’s legs, until he became so dizzy he fell into her arms. She reached down for him at the exact moment he started to fall, as if she had some telepathic link to her child. Is that what all mothers had? Why didn’t mine?

The woman behind the counter let out an exasperated sigh, but I didn’t flinch. I’d been in line all this time, plus I’d had to stare at the white mustache growing above her upper lip while she ruffled through papers and answered the phone. So what if I got caught not paying attention?

“You didn’t check the box for organ donor,” she said in a flat voice, as though this was a line she repeated a hundred times a day. She had white hair with crinkly tight curls that looked like they were made of metal. “Do you want to donate your organs if you die?”

“Do they, like, take stuff out of you while you’re still alive?” I didn’t want them yanking out parts while I still needed them.

She shook her head. Her hair stayed firmly in place. “Definitely not. Here.” She handed me a pamphlet about organ donation. “Read this and come back when you decide.”

Come back? The motor vehicle office was full. No way was I going to stand in line again.

“No, wait,” I protested, pushing back the pamphlet. “I’ve thought it over already. I want to be a donor.”

Her eyebrows shot up over her glasses. “Are you sure?”

“Of course. I’d want to know that through death, I’d saved or enhanced up to sixty lives through organ and tissue donation,” I said, reading from the front of the pamphlet.

“Fine. Check the box here,” she said, pointing. “You need parental consent if you’re under eighteen.”

“My dad is outside talking on his cell phone. Can I mark the box and then have him okay it?”

The woman clicked her tongue and looked at the long line behind me. “I suppose, but make sure you bring him back here before you leave so he can give his consent. Otherwise, your license will be held up.”

I drew a large check mark, satisfied with myself, even if I didn’t like the idea of being a human recycling plant. At least all my parts were in good working order. The man behind me with the cane and droopy eyelids probably didn’t have any parts worth donating.

She handed the pamphlet back to me. “In case you want to read it later.”

I doubted I would, but I took it anyway. The woman had me sit on a stool to get my picture taken.

The old man behind me winked. “Smile pretty.”

He reminded me of Grandpa with his wink, and I felt a small ache in my heart. A month ago, Grandpa could have driven me here. Amazing how much had changed in so little time. I smiled at the man before I sat on the metal stool in front of the camera.

Afterward, I searched for Dad. I found him out front on a bench still talking on his phone. He was using his work voice, so I sat down and waited. I took out the pamphlet the lady had given me. “The Gift of Life.” A picture of a little girl riding her bike, her father at her side, highlighted the fact that seventeen people die each day waiting for a transplant. It also stressed the importance of discussing your decision with your family to make sure that they were aware of your commitment.

Discuss your decision with your family? The picture showed people sitting in a living room, the expression on their faces serious but caring. So unreal. If I told Mom I was donating my organs, she’d probably flip.

Our fight yesterday showed me that we could never have a discussion without yelling, and we weren’t like the family in that stupid picture anyway. But I felt good about marking the box. I’d decided this myself, a real grown-up decision about my own body and my own wishes. Grandpa would be proud of me.

“Dad,” I said, when he’d finished his call, “I want to sign up to be an organ donor on my license. But I need you to sign the consent form.”

“Organ donation. That’s very mature of you,” Dad said as he closed his phone. It was the first time I’d noticed that he had the same receding hairline as Grandpa and the same pale blue eyes. “What made you decide to do that?”

I showed him the pamphlet. “Organ donation is a gift, Dad. And it’s free. It won’t cost us anything.”