God, it wasn’t even his voice anymore. There was nothing left of him, nothing….
Then a word stopped his fall, left him breathless and shaking and more afraid than he’d ever been in his life. DONOR.
He forced his eyes open again and stared up at Madelaine. He knew he was crying, he could feel the tears coursing down his cheeks, and he didn’t care. “Who?”
She flinched as if she’d been struck. “Angel,” she said in a voice so calm that for a second, he was swayed. All he wanted to do was fall into that voice, that look in her eyes. “Don’t think about those things now, just relax. The surgery went well. You’re doing fine. Fine.”
The surgery. He thought again of his heart, his own worthless heart, and the tears kept coming and coming. It felt as if he were grieving, but he didn’t know for whom, for what. He just knew that this heart wasn’t his and it was inside him, thumping too loudly, pumping too efficiently. His hands and feet were uncomfortably warm, and suddenly the cold numbness he’d had before was preferable to this … thing beating inside him.
The question came back to him, weighing on his thudding heart. Whose heart is it? He wanted to ask the question again, to demand an answer, but he couldn’t do it, couldn’t form the words or force them up his raw, burning throat. He wondered suddenly if he wanted to know. Sweet Jesus, did he want to know who was inside him, keeping him alive, warming his hands and toes?
Madelaine stroked the side of his face and it felt good, so good. He closed his eyes again and shook his head. He wanted to say something to her, but what? What?
The darkness came back for him, crooking its silent finger, drawing him back to the black cocoon where he didn’t remember, didn’t care.
“Angel, you’re going to be okay,” came her voice again, soothing, calming. “You’ll feel better when the anesthesia wears off completely. Trust me. You’re experiencing disorientation, it’s normal. To be expected. Don’t worry.”
He turned his head a little, felt the pillow sink beneath his cheek. Beside him, the cardiac monitor spat out reams of paper, showing its bright pink heart-line graph across the black screen. For a second he couldn’t focus, couldn’t make out what he was seeing. Then it struck him. There were two blurry pink lines running side by side on the computerized screen, where before there had only been one.
Fear welled up inside him, spilling through him in wave after wave. He started to shake, felt his insides knot up smaller and smaller.
Then he looked back at the monitor and it showed only one heartbeat. It should have calmed him, the realization that it had been a hallucination, but it didn’t.
He could feel the drugs whirring through his bloodstream, dulling this moment, blurring his vision, but it didn’t matter. The stranger’s heart kept beating, beating, beating….
“Oh, God,” he whimpered. He’d never been so sick or afraid in his life. “You should have let me die.”
“Just relax, Angel. Relax. We’ll talk later.”
He felt her squeeze his hand, felt her stroke his tear-soaked cheek, and he wanted to take comfort from her, ached to take comfort from her.
But he couldn’t. It didn’t matter what she said later, what she told him was normal or to be expected. He knew the truth, knew it with every beat of the stranger’s heart.
Someone was living inside him.
It was cold along the shadowy streambed where Lina stood alone, waiting for her friends to drift down the loose embankment. They’d appear on the rise like they always did, one by one, their bodies silhouetted against the cool blue of an autumn sky, their hands jammed in their pockets, cigarettes hanging limply from their mouths. She’d hear them talking before they reached the crest of the ridge, their voices high and exuberant.
It always brought a swift stab of longing, that first sound of their laughing conversations. She’d rise to her feet, craning her neck to see the first familiar face, hear the first called-out “Hey, Lina! Hold that spot for me!”
Whenever they came careening (town the ravine toward her, their tennis shoes skidding and sliding through the wet autumn leaves, their backpacks thumping against their bodies, she felt—for a few brief, shining moments—as if she belonged.
The crowd met here every morning before school, collecting like lost souls, drawn together to share cigarettes, booze, pot, and a sense of togetherness.
They were the “bad” kids, the problem ones. Everyone knew it, from the teachers to the counselors to the principal himself. Once a semester, one of the new teachers would come tearing down this crumbling bank, pointing an accusing finger and rousting them all. But by the end of the year, that teacher would be tired, and there would be more and more days when they stood here alone, talking among themselves, laughing at their own bravery, believing they were invincible.
But Lina didn’t feel invincible anymore, and nothing as easily obtainable as a few cigarettes would ease the ache that pressed on her lungs until sometimes she didn’t think she could breathe without starting to cry.
She jammed her hands in the baggy, linty confines of her jeans and sat down on a mossy rock. Two towering cedar trees stood stoically on either side of her, their graceful branches collapsing downward like an umbrella that had been left half-open after a rain.
“Hey, Lina!” It was Jett, standing at the crest of the hill, wearing all black, his buzz-cut hair dyed to match. He jumped over the edge like a skier, knees up, arms flung wide. His shoes hit the earth hard and skidded out from underneath him. With a whooping holler, he ran all the way down, leapt across the creek, and came to a breathless stop beside her.
She stared at him, this boy whom she’d had a crush on for almost two years, and felt suddenly as if she’d never seen him before. It made her feel a bit sick to her stomach, unsteady on her feet.
He grinned at her, flashing a set of white teeth. “Can I bum a smoke?”
It was always the first thing he said to her. “Sure,” she mumbled, reaching into her leather pocket, pulling out a pack. She knew the second she touched it that it was empty. A frown darted across her face. When had she smoked them all?
Then she remembered the other night, when they’d landed back at SeaTac Airport. Mom had put Lina into a taxi and sent her home.