Seven

I don’t want to be awake, but I am. I don’t want to hear that I’ve had a heart transplant, but that’s what they tell me. I don’t know why they waited to tell me. Actually, that’s a lie. They waited to tell me because they were waiting until they thought I could handle it.

And then they must have given up and told me anyhow.

How the hell can you handle the idea of waking up with someone else’s heart inside you? It’s like being Frankenstein. There are a lot of things in this world you can run away from. Your body isn’t one of them.

According to the doctors, my heart self-destructed in a rare and normally fatal series of events. They throw around terms like “traumatic partial aortic rupture,” which means that part of my aorta, the largest vein in my body, was almost ripped from my heart in the collision. They talk about the fact that most people die pretty quickly from this. My usual love of stats fails when they start talking about how eighty percent of people who have this happen in a car accident die before reaching the hospital. When they move on to “coronary artery dissection” and “massive myocardial infarction” I tune out and don’t even ask them to explain what those mean. All I catch is that I’m “lucky that I’m young” and “lucky that I’m in good shape.”

I don’t know how they can use that word. “Lucky” is the very last thing I feel.

My parents have been pretty much living at the hospital. We’ve met with doctors and social workers, nutritionists and physical therapists. It’s the most I’ve seen Mom and Dad since I was in elementary school. And to think, all I had to do was almost die.

The hospital team drills me over and over about what my life will be like. Everything will revolve around exercise, healthy food, routines. It sounds a lot like my in-season regime, until they review the anti-rejection medications I’ll need to take for the rest of my life so that my body doesn’t think of the heart like the foreign object that it is.

They tell me I’ll be on steroids for a year. That on its own means the death of my baseball career in the short term, but I also find out that contact sports could kill me. As a varsity shortstop, there is no guarantee that someone isn’t going to slide into me. That I’m not going to have a mid-field collision.

Finding out there’s no chance of playing real ball should depress the hell out of me, but I don’t feel much of anything. Compared to Lizzie being dead, nothing seems important.

There are visitors in and out of my room: some guys from the team, a few teachers, Spencer, his parents, my parents. I have nothing to say to any of them. I don’t know why they’re bothering. It’s like they won’t admit what I’ve done. I don’t deserve their friendship, or their concern, or their love. But still, they parade through my room like spectators at the zoo.

All the time I try to keep a fake smile pasted on my face. I wait for the door to open and for a police officer to walk in and drag me off to jail for killing one of my best friends. It never happens and I don’t understand why.

And then there’s the voice.

It doesn’t tell me to hurt anyone else or myself. It’s more like a sarcastic running commentary to what’s going on. Sometimes I catch myself laughing in response, which gets me the kind of looks you’d imagine.

It doesn’t matter what I do, I can’t get it to stop. I even tried not taking my pain meds one day to see if that helped, but all it made me do was cry like a little girl. I can’t tell anyone. They’ll think I’ve gone nuts on top of everything.

Maybe I have.

On my last day in the hospital, Dr. Collins says he has a surprise for me. I’m expecting him to say that maybe my medical record has been mixed up with someone else’s and I can go back to living my life. Or that Lizzie was found alive somewhere and has been playing a really sick joke on all of us.

Instead, he opens the door to my room and waves a girl in. She’s a few years older than me, with pale red rings around her eyes and the look of someone who’s been through hell. She’s pretty in the same way that Lizzie was. The way that makes you sit up and take notice not because she’s so overly beautiful, but because it’s clear that she isn’t taking any shit from anybody.

I try to cover myself up because I’m lying here in only a stupid hospital gown. Meeting a girl is the last thing on my mind, but still I’d rather not look like some invalid kid.

You’d have thought that Dr. Collins might have given me some warning, but instead he ushers her in and makes the requisite introductions. He tells me that her name is Jessica and that she had a transplant four years ago when she was my age and that she’s part of some new program at the hospital for teen transplant patients. Then he leaves us like some misguided matchmaker.

Jessica pulls up one of the plastic seats. “So what happened to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Were you sick or … ”

“Car accident,” I sputter out. I look around, wondering how to get Dr. Collins to come back in here. I haven’t wanted to talk about the accident with the people I’m closest to. I certainly don’t want to talk about it with someone I don’t even know.

“That sucks,” she says, but I get the feeling that she only means it to a point. “I was sick. I was on the registry for three years before my transplant.”

“The registry?” It sounds like what people get on when they’re getting married and want to make sure that they get the plates with the red flowers on them instead of the blue, and that all of their silverware matches.

Her eyes narrow. Suddenly she looks pissed off. “Yeah, the heart registry. I guess you skipped to the front of that line since you were in an accident.”

The way she says this makes me feel like I should apologize to her, but I’m not really sure for what. So I whisper out a “sorry.” I’m still not really sure why she’s here. I mean, her story is sad and all, but what am I really meant to do about it? I don’t have anything left to give to anyone else.

“I was at Hilly then,” she says, mentioning a high school a few towns over. “I had this … condition. I would have died without the operation.” While she talks, she examines her lavender-painted fingernails. She reminds me of Lizzie talking about her mom, the way that she sounded like it didn’t matter, which always meant that it mattered more than anything.

It makes me miss Lizzie with an ache deep inside me in a place I didn’t even know existed. I haven’t cried since that first night with Spencer, but now I can feel the sting of tears behind my eyes. Jessica must think that my sudden sadness is for her because her voice softens a little bit.

“After the transplant, I was doing okay. You know, it was hard. But I wasn’t tired all the time and I could do things I couldn’t before. But there are a lot of changes to make. Anyhow, I went off to Central State and that’s where my problems started.”

I try to push through my thoughts of Lizzie to feel some sympathy for this girl. Normally, I’d want to hear her whole ordeal. I’d want to do something to help. But now I just feel like telling her that I have enough problems of my own, that there isn’t enough room in my head for hers too. Miraculously I manage to keep my mouth shut. She must be able to read the confusion on my face, though.

“Look. Do you know why I’m here?” she finally gets around to asking.

I shake my head, relieved to be getting somewhere. “No. Not really.”

She looks at me like I’m five and just told her I wet the bed. “I’m your version of ‘Scared Straight.’”

I still have no idea what she’s talking about, which must be clear from the expression on my face.

“You know … that movie they used to show kids about how bad life in prison was so that they’d behave?”

That doesn’t make it any clearer, but this time I decide to play along and fake it. “Right. So you’re … ”

She’s really pretty. But not as pretty as Ally. Still, I bet you could pull her onto this bed and really make those machines go crazy.

I reach up to block my ears from the voice and close my eyes. I’m sure I look like a nutcase sitting here like this, but I don’t know what to do to get it to stop.

It isn’t even like I even find Jessica that attractive. Or that girls are anywhere on my mind at the moment.

“Sorry,” she says. “Am I boring you?”

“No.” I force my hands down. “It isn’t you. No.” I can feel my face getting red. It isn’t like I can tell her that some voice in my head just said she was pretty and that I should drag her into my bed.

She turns away and starts looking through the cards that are taped up on the wall. Cards from everyone at school. She’s looking at one from Spencer that has a bunch of clouds on it and when you open it, it sings about gray clouds clearing up and putting on a happy face. It makes me feel odd to be watching this girl I don’t know going through my stuff. I’m relieved when she comes back over to sit in the chair near the bed.

“Look, last year, I went to Florida for spring break with a bunch of friends. I spent a lot of time convincing my parents that I was healthy enough. And I was. But … ” Her hands ball into fists.

I can’t help myself from being curious now. “But?”

“But one thing led to another. I had a few beers and that was probably bad. But do you know what the worst thing was, Cal?”

It’s strange to hear her say my name like she knows me. She’s angry. I don’t know if it’s with me, or herself, or with something else entirely.

I shake my head. “No? What?”

She’s pacing now. “We stayed up late every night. And I slept in every morning. I figured what the hell? An hour here or there, I’d be fine. I was sticking to the stupid diet for the most part. I was working out. I deserved a few leisurely mornings, right?”

I nod because it seems reasonable the way she puts it.

This makes her slam her fist on the tray table. The cups of green Jell-O I’ve been collecting for Spencer, who actually likes them, almost go flying.

“No. Haven’t you listened to anything they’ve told you?”

I feel like I’m taking some pop quiz in a language I’ve never studied. “I … ”

Her face stiffens. “Listen to me, and listen well because if you don’t pay attention to anything else, you need to get this. I slept in. I missed taking my meds on schedule. By the time I got back to Michigan, my body was starting to reject my heart. Do you understand what that means?”

I only have an inkling. The doctors talked to me about the chances of my body rejecting my new heart. My mom said the word “rejection” the way that my grandma used to say the word “cancer,” in a whisper like if you didn’t say it out loud there was no chance of it happening.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Jessica asks completely out of the blue. It isn’t any of her business, but I shake my head.

She looks at me kind of funny and says, “That’s a shame, you’re kind of cute,” which makes me blush and have to look away. From somewhere far away I hear laughter. I have to sit on my hands to resist the urge to press on my temples again to try to get it to stop.

“Anyhow, seriously, maybe you used to worry about being rejected by girls. Or boys. Whatever you’re into. But now your life is going to be about trying to prevent being rejected by this heart. Don’t fuck it up.”

Jessica stands up and walks to the door, looking way more tired than she did when she came in. Before she steps out, she turns back. “They hate doing transplants on teens, you know. Kids they can train. Adults just resign themselves to following all the rules. But we always think we’re smarter than the doctors, smarter than our bodies. And you know what? We aren’t. Just remember that.”