I reach out and take her hand. She squeezes my fingers.
“I know you’re upset that it’s his sister. I know I can never understand what you’ve gone through or what you’re going through right now. But I will never be sorry you got this heart. I’ll never be sorry you didn’t come out of that hospital in a casket.”
I clench my teeth, trying to keep the tears from gathering, but Talia is already crying, so I can’t stop my own vision from blurring.
“And ... I know Hunter is devastated right now, but I think once he gets over the shock of it all, he’ll realize he’s glad you got her heart too. He’ll be grateful such a horrible tragedy led to such an incredible miracle.”
I swipe at my face with my free hand and shake my head. “I’ll never be the girl he was falling for again—I’ll only be the girl who is alive because Lyla’s dead. I don’t think it’s possible for us to be happy when I have his sister’s heart.” The heart that clenches in my chest, even as I speak. I press the heel of my hand to my sternum.
“Are you okay?” Talia’s expression immediately turns to one of concern.
“Yeah. Heartburn, I think.”
“Do you need me to come in and make sure?”
“That I can find the Tums?” I tease. “No, I’ll be fine. You better go finish that report. But drive safe, okay?”
Talia nods.
I open the door and duck out into the rain, arcing my arms over my head to try to ward off the torrent of water—futilely.
I make it to the porch and fumble in my pocket for my keys when I feel my heart stop beating, then restart with a flip-flop in my chest. A premature ventricular contraction.I’ve had them many times before, but this one is immediately followed by another and another; increasingly sharp pain stabs through my ribs from my struggling heart. It’s so intense it makes my breath catch. I stumble forward and barely catch myself on the brick wall next to the door. The headache I’ve been fighting intensifies until I see stars.
A wave of dizziness hits me, followed by another painful run of PVCs beneath my rib cage, even longer and more intense. I clutch at my shirt, pressing the heel of my hand into my scarred sternum. My vision swims.
“Liv! Liv, what’s happening?!”
I hear Talia only dimly, as if she’s shouting through a tunnel.
My heart flops in my chest, the beats arewrong, wrong, wrong,andagonizing—stealing my ability to breathe, driving me to my knees.
Talia skids to the cement next to me, grabbing me just under my shoulders. “Liv! Do I need to call your mom? What’s going on? Is it a panic attack?”
“911,” I gasp, still clutching my chest, where my heart is struggling and failing to beat right. And then with one final flop, followed by a terrible nothingness, I sink forward into Talia’s arms.
30.
The sirens are the first thing I remember. The sound I hate more than anything in the world.
Then comes the pain in waves.
The paramedics try to keep me awake as they load me into the ambulance. I’m vaguely aware of Talia sobbing off to the side. I want to tell them she can ride with us, but they’ve put an oxygen mask over my mouth and nose and are starting an IV. I think my shirt is cut open, my bra exposed.
What happened? What did they do?
The doors slam shut with her still outside in the rain.
My heart is still thrashing, struggling,wrong, wrong, wrong—
I slide backward into the dark.
When I resurface again, the gurney is bouncing over the breaks in the cement of the hospital ambulance bay. A doctor is running alongside me while the paramedics read off my vitals. They’re not great—but not as bad as they could be.
And my heart is no longer flopping like a fish out of water in my chest, gasping for some way to live, to survive when everything is wrong.
I’m rushed into a trauma room, where a steady stream of doctors and nurses go to work on me, strapping on a blood-pressure cuff, attaching leads all over my upper body, drawing blood for myriad tests. I can hear the alarm going off overand over again because my heart is beating too fast, some of the rhythms are still off, and my blood pressure is too low.
“We need to get her up to echo, and schedule her for a chest x-ray. And page cardio!”
