The Forgetting
Authors: Nicole Maggi
Copyright © 2015 by Nicole Maggi
Cover and internal design © 2015 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Eileen Carey
Cover image © Wolfgang Lienbacher/Getty Images
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To Chris and Emilia, for teaching me the art of love.
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.
âRichard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton
The last thing I remember is a push. Two strong hands, fighting for their own life, pushing me out of mine. The world went white all around me and then I was gone, forced out of the darkness that had always surrounded me and into the light.
But part of me got left behind.
The first thing I remembered was a great big push. Air rushed up from my lungs and out of my mouth. My spine tingled from the imaginary touch where the two invisible hands had been, pushing me back into consciousness. Whose were they?
I pulled at my memory. Somewhere nearby, a machine beeped. My eyes would not open; it was like they were nailed shut. The thing nearby beeped again, echoing the drum of my heartbeat. Deep inside I felt a shift, a change within the fabric of my inner being. What had changed? What had gone wrong? My fingers grappled at something, anything, to hold on to⦠My oboe, where was my oboe? It was never more than an arm's length away from me.
The thing beeped again. In its wake other sounds grew clearer. Voices. Footsteps. My fingers found nothing but air. I balled my hands into fists. Another beep, loud and insistent, right next to my ear, and my eyes flew open.
Spots pricked painfully at my vision. Everything around me was white. The gauze taped across my chest, the hospital gown I was dressed in, the sheets and pillows, even the wires running from my body to the machines next to my bed were white. Nearby, a voice said, “She's awake.”
“Baby? Baby, can you hear me?” My mother's face bloomed in front of my own, her mouth and nose covered by a white paper mask. I tried to answer and couldn't. With a little squirm of panic, I realized there was a tube running out of my mouth to a ventilator just behind me. I put my hand on the tube, but my mother gently took my hand in hers. “It's okay, baby. They're going to take that out soon.” Her voice was thick behind the mask.
“Her vitals are good,” said the other voice. “I'll let Dr. Harrison know she's awake.” Footsteps echoed away.
Dr. Harrison. The name was a familiar piece among all the strange bits flying around my brain. I clicked it into place in my memory. The holidaysâ¦no, the holidays were over. I'd gone back to school after winter break, but then Mom kept me home because I had a fever. It didn't go away. I furrowed my brow; wading through the memories was like cross-country skiing through deep, powdery snow. I'd gone to the doctor I'd seen since I was a baby. He'd admitted me to the hospital for pneumonia. Was that right? I looked at my mother for confirmation, as though she could understand what I was thinking.
She nodded. “What do you remember, baby?”
It felt like a fever dream. Tests, the prick of an IV going into my arm. Not being able to breathe. The tube down my throat. The machine next to my bed beeping erratically. Alarms going off. Footsteps running. Getting hooked up to even more machines. Something
had
gone wrong⦠A calm, kind voice explaining to my parentsânot meâthat my heart was failing and I needed a new one.
“And luckily, there's a match right down the hall⦔
My hands scrabbled at the air again and came up empty. Mom grasped my shoulders, murmuring something that was supposed to be soothing. I shook my head. The motion made my whole body ache. I let Mom ease me backward and raised my hand to my chest, splaying my palm flat over the gauze.
That was the change. The rhythmâ
my
rhythmâwas different.
My heart was gone.
Someone else's heart had taken its place.
⢠⢠â¢
I curled my fingers into claws, as though I could reach through my skin and touch that strange, foreign thing. Mom grabbed my hand, softening my fingers into hers. She was wearing thin surgical gloves. “You're doing amazing. Better than even the doctors hoped.” She stroked the back of my hand the way she used to when I was a kid. “Dad's just outside. They only let one of us in at a time. And Colt's here too. He's been dying⦔âshe swallowedâ“waiting to see you, but they won't let him until you get moved to a nonsterile room. I told him to go to school, but he refused.”
Mom babbled on but her voice grew dim. All I could hear was the beat of my new heart, a Frankenstein body part that didn't belong. The rhythm of it sounded wrong, like a timpanist slightly off the beat. I dug my nails into my palms. Would my own rhythm be different now? What if this new heart changed the music that had always played inside me?
The door swished open and the nurse came back with a tall, dark-haired woman in tow. I recognized her as the doctor who'd done the surgery. “It's good to see you awake, Georgie,” Dr. Harrison said. “Let's see about getting you off this ventilator.” She unwound the stethoscope from her neck and plugged it into her ears, then slid the metal disk under the gauze.
“Don't you have machines to do that?” Mom asked.
Dr. Harrison smiled, still focused on my chest as she listened. “Nothing can replace a good old-fashioned stethoscope.” She nodded once and slung the stethoscope back around her neck. “Sounds good. Let's look at the printout.”
“Right here.” The nurse handed her a sheet of paper, leaning over me slightly. She smelled like vanilla and spices. I saw now that the little name tag on her shirt read
Maureen
. A bracelet of yoga beads bulged beneath her surgical gloves. As she pulled back, she caught me looking at her and winked. “Glad you're back with us,” she said and tucked a stray hair behind my ear. The gesture made my throat grow hot.
Dr. Harrison flipped through the papers. “Her other organs are responding beautifully to the new heart.” She glanced at Mom. “She's definitely at the top end of recipients' recovery. It helps to be young,” she added with a little laugh.
“That's wonderful.” Tears gathered at the corners of Mom's eyes. “That'sâyou have no ideaâ” She leaned her elbows on the side of my bed and buried her face in her hands.
Dr. Harrison looked back at me, as if my mother's display of emotion was happening in another room. “Well, Georgie, I think we can get you off that ventilator. We'll keep you in this room for another day or so and then move you to a regular room where you can have more visitors. Not too many, though. You need to build your strength. You'll be here for at least another ten daysâ”
Ten
days?
I might as well have shouted it. Dr. Harrison could see the alarm on my face. “We need be sure that your body doesn't reject your new heart. And give you time to rest too, of course. You'll have a whole new regimen you'll need to get acclimated to.” She stopped, maybe sensing that my eyes were about to pop out of my skull. Mom had gathered herself together too. “But first things first. Maureen?”
Having the tube pulled out of my mouth felt like having the
Alien
creature pulled out of my throat instead of bursting out of my stomach. I gulped in air, letting the sweetness of it fill my mouth and lungs. “Long, slow breaths,” Maureen told me. I counted in and out, in and out, until I could breathe normally again.
“Good girl,” Dr. Harrison said. “I'll check back on you a little later.” She turned to go.
“Wait.” It came out raspy and hoarse. I took a deep breath. Pain seared across my chest. I pressed my hand there. “Are you sureâeverything's alright?”
Beside me, Mom tensed. Dr. Harrison stepped over to the machine that I was still hooked up to by the white wires. Maureen picked up my wrist and placed two fingers over my pulse. For several minutes, the beeping and whirring of the machine were the only sounds in the room. But I could hear my heartbeat as loud as though it was outside my body. It sounded out of tune with the rest of my body.
Finally, Dr. Harrison looked up, and Maureen laid my arm on the bed. “Her pulse is fine,” she said. “Strong.”
“And I see nothing unusual on the machine.”
Mom relaxed with a sigh. Dr. Harrison gave me a tight smile. “It's normal for transplant recipients to feel a little off for a while after the surgery,” she said. “I'm sure you'll feel like your old self in no time.” She looked at my mom. “Would you like me to update your husband on Georgie's condition?”
“Yes, of course.” Mom got up. She patted my leg. “I'll be right back, baby.”
The two of them left the room. “Let me arrange those pillows so you're more comfortable,” Maureen said.
As she moved around the back of the bed, I looked up at her. “Do you knowâwho it was? Whose heart, I mean?”
She paused for a moment in her work. “I'm sorry, Georgie. All organ donors are kept anonymous.”
“Oh. Of course.” I knew that. But as I watched her tuck one pillow behind another, I knew that she knew. It was completely unfair that she knew and I didn't. This person's heart was now living inside me. Didn't I deserve to know their name, at the very least?
Maureen told me to get some rest and dimmed the lights as she left. I lay back on the pillows and stared at the ceiling. What did Anonymous die of? Was it a kid like me? Was there another set of parents in another room grieving over their child? Bile rose in my throat. I took a deep, sharp breath in through my nose.
Don't think about it
, I told myself.
Think
about
Juilliard
. I forced myself to hear the Poulenc Oboe Sonata in my head, tapping out the fingerings on my thigh. But the sound of my new heart interfered, knocking me off the beat. A deep distrust stole through me. Nothing was safe anymore, not even my own heart.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Dr. Harrison said that I would feel like my old self in no time. I curled my fingers into a fist. Was that even possible now that I had someone else's heart? Was I still the same old Georgie?
And as if in answer, I heard the thing that was knocking my new heart off my old rhythm. A pause. A hiccup. A
catch
. Like my heart was thinking about something other than its next beat in that infinitesimal span of time.
Like my heart wasn't beating for me.
It was still beating for its old owner.