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Dad clears his throat and leaves the room. Every time I have to get out of bed there’s a juggling of priorities where I have to decide whether to use my hands to keep my gown from flapping open in the back or stop all my cords from getting tangled in the bedrails. When Mom and Dad traverse the halls with me to different areas of the hospital for testing, I look like a jellyfish that has caught medical equipment and two confused adults in her tentacles.

Dad displays his solidarity by making the trip with us down to the lab, but exits again when the front of my gown is unceremoniously untied by a guy who is less interested in my body than even Heath ever was. His clinical eye and glancing touch is so much like my boyfriend’s that I feel a prickle in my eyes, unshed tears gathering.

I don’t even know if I can still call Heath my boyfriend, since I’ve had zero contact with the outside world. My phone is presumably in pieces on my bedroom floor, shiny reflective plastic waiting to stab into the soft sole of my foot when I get home.

The sonographer tells me the gel will feel cold, then squirts it right onto my boob. It makes an indecent noise and I stifle a giggle as he puts the probe next to my skin. Shanna shows up on the screen, a thumping mass of black, white, and gray. Mom leans in, studying the image as if her glancing experience with cardiac medicine has enabled her to understand what she’s looking at.

“Mom, can I get a new phone?” I ask.

She looks up, surprised. I must look pathetic as hell right now, hospital gown gaped open, a stranger putting things on places nothing unnatural should be. It’s a good time to ask.

“Is that smart?”

I drop my eyes. We haven’t talked about the why of my launching myself through the window. It’s taken a backseat to figuring out how we’re going to keep me alive long enough to explain it.

“I’ll talk to your father. And maybe that social worker.”

“Amanda.”

I nod as if grateful, but she just put two human hurdles in between me and phone ownership. “What about my laptop?”

Mom’s already shaking her head, but I keep talking. “I’ve got a lot of ebooks on it, Mom. I need something to read other than two-year-old issues of Seventeen.”

She bites her lip, fading against my argument because what kind of mother denies her terminally ill daughter reading material?

“You can take the internet applications off it,” I keep going. “I won’t even be able to use email.”

“I’ll think about it,” Mom says, just as the sonographer starts lacing up my gown, our oddly intimate and impersonal encounter at an end.

“Reading material!”

Mom’s chirpy greeting first thing in the morning matches some of the beeps from my bedside, a grating soprano of cheer that borders on panic. I toss aside a copy of People that’s three months out of date.

“Finally,” I say, hands out for my laptop. Instead I get a brochure with a smiling Asian kid on the front and a helpful-looking white doctor in the background. The Children’s Cardiac Center is written across the top, supposedly made endearing by primary colors and crayon print.

“What is this?” I ask as Dad comes in carrying a box of granola bars that I asked for.

Mom sits down next to me, putting her bags down on either side of her chair. I notice she always keeps the one that holds her notes about mental disorders on the far side where I can’t reach.

“It’s a program from the children’s hospital,” she explains. “It’s a really nice place, honey. You’d have your own room and—”

“I have my own room,” I interrupt. “It’s at home.”

Mom looks to Dad to deliver the bad news, her optimistic vocabulary not able to compute what comes next.

“You’re not going to be able to go home,” he says, leaning back against the wall. “Your heart rhythms haven’t been stable on the monitor and your blood pressure has been barely in the normal range. You’re going to need to be under constant care until—”

He breaks off so abruptly that I feel a spike of fear. “Until what? I die?”

“No, honey.” Mom’s hand shoots out, fingers on my wrist as if the simple act of feeling my pulse will keep those words at bay. “Until we’re able to find you a transplant.”

She says it as if search and rescue is out looking for a heart that may have been misplaced, not that we’re waiting for someone else to die so that I can live.

“How did I go from fine to needing a new heart?”

“You weren’t fine,” Dad says. “This . . . this . . .”

“Dilated cardiomyopathy,” Mom supplies.