“Cassandra McMurtrey to the front office, please. Cassandra McMurtrey to the front office.”
I’m in choir this time. I look over at Nyla in the alto section. She shrugs.
“You can go, Cass,” the teacher says.
So I go. But then I come around a corner and there’s Dad standing in front of the office door with his brave face on.
My legs fail me. I sink down onto the floor like I’m made of cooked spaghetti.
Dad runs over to me. “It’s okay. It’s okay, honey.”
No, it’s not, I think. No, it’s not. It’s not ever going to be okay again. I should be crying. Why aren’t I crying? I wonder. I always thought I would cry when it happened.
Dad’s talking. I can’t understand what he’s really saying. Something like, “Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I screwed this up royally. I just thought you’d want to be told in person.”
And then I’m crying. Hooray, I’m not broken. My mother has died, and I’m crying. I start to sob. It’s the scene where Cass loses her mother. The one that has everyone in the audience bawling.
Dad has me by the shoulders. He even gives me a little shake. “Cass. Look at me. Look at me.”
I meet his eyes.
“She’s not gone. She’s alive.”
I’m dazed. I’m confused. My tongue feels thick in my mouth for some reason. My heart is thumping strangely in my chest. “What? She’s not dead?”
“No.” He smiles. It’s the happiest smile I’ve ever seen on him. It’s like their wedding photos smile. “It’s happened, Boo.”
“What?” I say again.
“Is she all right?” This is the front office lady, leaning over us both, looking worried.
“She’s fine.” Dad looks at my face. “Well, she’s going to be fine.”
“Dad?” I don’t know what’s happening. My mom was dead, but now she’s not. “I don’t understand.”
“Your mother got a heart.”
We make it to the hospital right before she goes into surgery. She’s glowing when we see her, luminous in a way that’s hard to look at, her hope is so bright.
She squeezes my hand three times. “No matter what happens. Remember.”
I squeeze three times back.
Then they’re wheeling her away to some brightly lit room where they’re going to cut open her chest, take out her faulty, messed-up heart, and give her a better one.
Grandma starts sobbing in the waiting room. I’ve never seen her cry like that before, even on the worst days. Then she wipes her eyes and laughs.
“I can’t believe it,” she says. “I didn’t really think he’d come through.”
She’s talking about God now, I think, which is not a normal topic of conversation in our family.
“She’s going to be all right now,” Dad says.
I sling my arm around Grandma. “Amen to that.”
The old heart goes out. The new comes in. There’s a chance Mom’s body will reject it, so they have to put her on a bunch of meds to try to keep that from happening. But even in her room after the surgery, even before she wakes up, there’s a pinkness to her cheeks that I haven’t seen in a long time.
After she wakes up, she’s full of dreams again. They’ve told her that she can go home in ten days. Of course she’s going to have to keep coming back for months. The new heart has to be constantly checked. She has to do rehab, rebuild all the muscle mass she lost while she was in the hospital, get strong again, but she can come home in ten days.
Ten freaking days.
I’m with Grandma. I can’t believe it.
Mom keeps talking, too. Laughing. I worry that she’s laughing too much. “I can’t buy back the shop,” she says. “But maybe Jodi would give me a job there. That’d be funny, wouldn’t it? Or I could get another job at a different bakery.”
“Whoa there, champ,” Dad says. “You won’t be ready to go back to work for months. Maybe even a year.”
“Yes, yes, I know.” She waves her hand at him. “But after that. When I can, I’ll work. I’ve been lying in a bed way too long.”
“Okay, dear,” Grandma says. “You can work.”
We’re all quiet for a minute, soaking in the idea of Mom getting to have her life back. Mom squeezes my hand again. I compose a text to Nyla. It’s picture night for the play—when Mama Jo invites all the parents to come see the final rehearsal and come up onto the stage with their cameras. It’s kind of fun—at any time during the performance a parent can shout, “Freeze!” and all of the actors have to freeze in place and have their picture taken. Mama Jo says if we can stay in character and keep moving through the play smoothly with all of these interruptions, it means we’re truly ready for the performance. It’s always been one of my favorite rehearsals for any show.
I’m not even a little bit sorry to miss it.
Mama Cat has a new heart, I write. It’s working fine.