Chapter One
December 26th - Five Years Ago
Miracles don’t happen.Especially not two days after a “miracle-less” Christmas. So, what is this? Is this real? I stare at the pager on my nightstand, watching as it vibrates against the old wood. My breath hitches in my throat and I’m not sure I can find a way to make my lungs start working again as I slowly pull my weakened arm out from my under me, while also silently praying this isn’t a mistake.Do mistakes like this happen?I suppose they could, but could God be so cruel? My trembling hand closes around the pager and I bring it in front of my face, waiting for my eyes to focus well enough to read the blurry number staring back atme.
Oh my God. Ohmy—
“Mom!” I shout through the dryness in my throat. “Mom!”
I hear her feet stomping down the hall as she nearly trips herself running into my bedroom. She drops down at the edge of my bed. “What is it? Are you okay? Does something hurt?” She pulls open my nightstand drawer, fishing out a handful of pill bottles. She inspects each one as quickly as she can, probably looking for the right bottle that will relieve the pain she thinks I’m in. She’s been through this drill so many times before. I watch her for a minute, observing how the pain and fear she has worn on her face for the past seven years has taken a toll. She’s aged so much in the short period of time that has passed since I received news of the impending, untimely death I willface.
There are bags under her bottom lashes and red veins line the whites of her eyes. Her once steady hands constantly shake and tremble now. She used to spend time on her hair and makeup, but now she barely looks in the mirror. I can understand that. I have avoided the mirror too. No one wants to watch herself turn into a person they weren’t meant to be—a person becoming a muted shadow of who they oncewere.
Mom places one of the pill bottles aside and tucks the others back into the drawer. Unscrewing the cap, she taps a couple of tablets into her hand and settles in closer. This is where she sits for hours every day, watching me die. I’ve wondered what it might be like for her to watch me disintegrate, and I’m curious if she has ever secretly wished for a time when she wouldn’t have to sit here and wait for “the day” as we call it. Though, there may be hope that I don’t have to wonder thatnow.
“Look.” I uncurl my fingers from around the pager and turn it around so she can seeit.
Her hand cups around her mouth, and her eyes fill with tears. I watch her read and re-read the number on the pager before she glances down at me. Mom opens her mouth to say something, but words don’t come out. Instead, sobs break from her throat as she takes my hand in hers and places it against her soft cheek. Maybe I’m still in shock, but I feel happier for her than I am for myself. The burden I have been at twenty five years old is one no parent should have toendure.
“A donor,” she utters to herself. “There’s a donor for you. You’re getting your heart. Ari, you’re getting your heart!” Tears rush down her cheeks, and her mouth falls agape. “Sweetheart, you’re going to live. You’re going to be okay.” She falls into me, embracing my body with all her strength as she squeezes me against her like I were no stronger than a rag doll. The description isn’t far off, considering it’s the appearance I have owned for the past year. “Our prayers have been answered. Finally, our prayers have been answered.” With realization seeping into every fragment of my body, I want to wonder where the heart came from, but I don’t think I have to wonder atall.
Placing me back down against my pillow, she springs off my bed and the zipper screams as she rips the case open. With her hands placed on the rim, she looks inside blankly. Maybe she’s wondering what a person might wear when they’re getting a new heart, but it doesn’tmatter.
After a quick pause, she spins around toward my bureau and pulls out an armful of clothes as she blindly fills thesuitcase.
Within minutes, my room is more or less packed up into the one large suitcase and we’re ready to go. “I’m going to go call Dr. Drake,” Mom says, sounding encouraged for the first time in months…maybe evenyears.
My excitement over the news comes and goes fleetingly as I lose myself in the thought of where this heart is coming from. Dr. Drake has told me many times that I’m far down on the transplant list due to my blood type being AB negative. He told me that unless I had a personal connection with an expectant donor, I would likely never receive a heart in time to survive. In addition to that, things don’t exactly work thatway.
“Ari, are you ready?” Mom comes in with the bags in hand and her coat on, all ready to go. While her undying excitement is calming, or should be calming, I also know the risks involved with this surgery. I know the statistical chances of coming out on the other side. I know the possible side effects and everything else that goes along with it. Of course, I feel like I’ve just been given a second chance to live, but I’ve worked hard to keep my thoughtsgrounded.
Mom helps me up from the bed and places a coat around my shoulders. Normally, I close my eyes when I walk past the mirror on my wall, but today I take a look. I glance at the alien I have become. With a tube up my nose strung along the back sides of my ears, puffy eyelids, sunken cheeks, skin paler than snow, and the whites of my eyes taking on a pink hue, I look horrifying. I look like I’mdying.
It takes us several minutes to make it out of the house and up to the car while Mom holds me up as if I were an elderly woman who should be wheelchair bound. “I’m scared,” I tell her, as I slip into the passengerseat.
She places her hand down on my knee and looks at me with a smile filled with hope—a type of smile I haven’t seen her make in years. “I know in my heart that you are going to make it through this. You must believeme.”
“I do believe you, Mom.” She needs the hope more than I do right now. It’s the least I can do for her, but being honest with myself, I can’t imagine a life without waiting for this stupid pager to buzz. I can’t imagine going to bed at night, knowing I’ll wake up in the morning or leaving my house to run an errand and know I’ll return. With my heart failure at the stage it’s at, Dr. Drake made it clear that a heart attack could come out of nowhere. I even got the whole, “Live each day as if it were your last,” recommendation from him. I went more than five years living on the hope Dr. Drake continued to give us, but as things progressed, the hope he once had would have been a lie if he continued to fill my head withit.
For the last six months, I’ve been lying on my bed with nearly no energy to hardly lift a spoon, waiting each day for the last day to arrive. I’ve considered horrible ideas to relieve myself of the inhumane waiting game, but I’m not brave enough to follow through with any of them. I’ve even found online support groups for people like me—people who are waiting to die. Some of those people assist others in suicide. Others preach that prayers will be the answer and we will all eventually be healed. Let’s be real, though, if that were the case, fewer people would die every day.Right?
Life feels like it’s speeding by me in a blur as we amble in through the hospital entrance. With Mom’s hands clenched tightly around my arm, she ushers me to the reception desk to find where we need to go. Usually, we go to the same floor, but maybe we’re going somewhere differenttoday.
While Mom is in the middle of a conversation with the receptionist, my focus is pulled toward a man crying in the corner. The wall looks to be holding him up as he holds a phone up to his ear, clutching it as ifitwere a lifeline. The hospital has never been a happy place for me. It’s always been the place I go to find out how much faster I’m running toward my death. However, I’ve seen people walking out with smiles on their faces, and moms holding their new babies, so I know this can be a happy place. I just haven’t experienced it. In any case, it looks like this guy might agree with mythoughts.
“She’s gone,” he cries into the phone through a guttural cry. I imagine this is what Mom and Dad would look and sound like on my last day—left with nothing but memories. “She died.” He places his hand over his face, squeezing his fingers around his temples. “An unforeseen complication—and I’m a dad. And I don’t know how I can do this alone. I don’t think I can. I can’t do this without her. I can’t even believe the words coming out of my mouth right now. She was just here two hours ago, full of life and excitement about our future as a family, and now she’s not. How can she be dead? How?” His voice is growing in volume and anger takes over for the pain he must be feeling as he drops the phone to the ground. In the instant his gaze lifts, finding mine staring back at him from across the corridor, I unexpectedly realize that I recognize him.I don’t want to recognize him. He doesn’t know who I am, but I have seen him in hundreds of photos his wife showed me—Ellie, my soulmate who selflessly offered me her heart while it was still beating in herchest.
Now I have my confirmation. Ellie’s heart is the heart waiting for me. She died. Ellie and her husband were supposed to have their baby soon. She called me just last week to see howIwas doing. She told me to hang in there a little longer. I knew why, and I told her to stop talking like that. This was never what I wanted for her, or her poor husband,Hunter.
“All set, sweetie,” Mom says, taking my arm. She guides us toward the elevators, but my gaze is still locked on the man who I only know through Ellie’s descriptions and pictures—the happy man who will now forever live with a brokenheart.
I’ve spent so many days and years feeling sorry for myself, feeling alone in this world like I’m the only one bad things happen to, but now I see I was wrong. I wonder if I’d rather be at the receiving end of life shattering news or if it’s better to be the cause of the earth-shattering news. I guess my pain would end if that day were to happen, but Mom and Dad’s pain would live on. I haven’t envied the two people who love me more than I love myself, and I don’t envyHunter.
“Where do you think the heart came from?” I ask Mom as we step into the elevator, wondering how much she knows. I never told her of the pact Ellie and I made, or the conversation we both had with Dr. Drake—the conversation that was highly improper and against all codes and regulations. My life was at stake, though, and Ellie’s heart was possibly up for the taking. The part that sealed the deal was the ironic realization of our blood types matching. It was like we found each other for this onereason.
“Does it really matter, sweetie? That’s not something you should be worrying about rightnow.”
It doesmatter.
