Ty blinks in surprise at this unexpected reply. He huffs. “You know that’s not what I mean.”
I shrug yet again, wiping my forehead with my forearm. I don’t know what he wants from me. What have I ever done to him?
He cocks his head. “Why do you think you’re better than everyone else?”
My spine stiffens. What’s he talking about? I think I’m worse than everyone else, if anything. How could he possibly think that? I swallow. “I . . . I don’t.” I focus really hard on the Chromebook. We need to write this thing. It’s due in two weeks, but we have to show an outline, then a rough draft, and then do edits, and we’re going to have to do a presentation. Which we have to practice first. So we’re definitely heading to an F right now. I want to say all this to him, but my stupid words are gumming up.
I start sweating even more. What is his problem with me, exactly?
“Well, you act like you do.” Ty’s stomach growls loudly. I have a bag of Cheez-Its in my backpack, and I take it out and hold it across the grass to him. He looks at it as if I’ve offered him a plateful of ants.
I force myself to take several deep breaths, fighting the urge to get up and run away. Or to put my head down and cover my face with my hair. Instead I sink down a little deeper into myself. I want to answer him, if only so we can finish this stupid project.
I look at the very green grass, the trees. My mind flashes to Miss Gwen. Being in this moment. Reading your partner’s emotions. Let yourself feel the energy your partner’s giving off.
I look at Ty, try to figure out what he’s thinking. Does it matter? He’s practically vibrating hostility as he gnaws on his pencil and squints at me. Disdain is another, like he thinks I’m just about the lowliest person he’s ever met. “You never talk. You’re the only one who gets to leave class and let the teacher read your stuff. Why do you get special treatment?” Ty pulls out some clumps of grass. “It’s not fair.”
So I was right about the emotions, at least. I swallow, my throat scratchy. He doesn’t know me. I want to tell him so, calmly, but the words still won’t come out, all jumbled together where the scratchiness is.
“Answer me.” Ty raises his voice so loud that someone walking by looks over. I sink lower into myself. “Sheesh, you’re such a snob.”
I am not, I want to yell.
And suddenly my body does something new. It unfreezes.
Blood rushes into my neck and my heart thumps harder. My ears are filled with nothing but the sound of my heart beating like the taiko drum Jīchan plays. BAM BAM BAM BAM. It thrums in my jaw, on the roof of my mouth.
Mom says adrenaline is what makes you have the flight-or-fight thing. I can’t fight Ty and I’m not going to just run away from him. So instead it feels as if someone’s just mixed baking soda and vinegar together in my veins. A volcano erupting.
Ty stares at me hard, his face reddening. “Or maybe you’re a robot?”
I don’t say anything.
He squints. “Though you look kind of mad now,” he says triumphantly. “Finally, the robot reacts.”
I ignore him. I need to calm myself down. Maybe that’s why I always freeze, so this doesn’t happen. I try to take a deep breath. Notice your surroundings. I stare at the white flowers growing out of the grass, picking one up and holding it to my nose. It smells like cut grass. My nose itches.
Still my blood crashes through my body. I close my eyes. These are five things you find in the park. Dogs, one. People, two. Ty, three. I try to swallow, but something sticks in my throat.
“See, you’re not even answering me.” Ty sags back. “That’s just rude.”
I don’t owe you an answer. I don’t owe you anything, I want to shout, the kind of thing Mom would say. But I’m too hot. I lose track of my thoughts. I close the Chromebook and hug it to my chest, which makes the ICD press into my muscles in a strange, comforting way. I’m sweating now, and my stomach rears up like an angry horse.
“Ava?” Ty sounds like he’s moved away from me. “Hey—are you okay?”
Sick, I try to say, but I don’t, and I put my hand on the ground and lean over, getting ready to barf.
But then something strange happens.
My heart—pauses. Then it flutters, as if there’s a hummingbird in my chest, its wings beating very softly and fast. Now the blood-rushing feeling is done, but it’s too—too light. I put two fingers on my neck, checking my pulse.
Dum. Dum. Pause. Du—m. Dumdumdum. Pause. Dum.
It speeds up, but still with that pause, as if the hummingbird’s trying its best to break out. Now it feels like there’s bread stuck in my throat, too. I cough, then cough again. Sweat breaks out on my forehead, under my armpits, on my chest. My fingers grab through the sharp pricks of the grass, dirt wedging under my nails, but I barely feel it and I don’t care.
What’s going on?
There’s a sharp burning sensation in my chest. Tears come into my eyes. Am I going to get shocked, the big kind? The worry makes me anxious, and the anxiety makes the heart worse. A lose-lose situation.
I try to take a big breath but I can’t. I need to calm down right now. I lie down on the grass, so if I do get shocked and pass out, I won’t get hurt by falling. I’m proud of myself for remembering that.
“There’s something wrong with her!” I hear Ty say. He sounds like he’s on the other side of the world. “Somebody help!”
That flapping feeling continues and then my chest burns again, all hot inside, as if I ate a bunch of spicy food an hour ago. Only for a couple seconds. Then the feeling goes away. I recognize the feeling from the doctor’s office when they test the pacemaker by making it give me a tiny shock. I’m getting paced.
It will give me three different small shocks to pace me. If that doesn’t work, if my heart still beats wrong, the ICD will take over and give me a big shock. “You probably won’t feel it,” the doctor told me, “because people usually pass out before that. But if you do, it feels like a punch in the chest.”
Which didn’t make me feel better then, and doesn’t now, either, when the memory flashes in front of me like the doctor’s here right now, telling me that.
Fear crowds out every other antianxiety exercise I’ve ever learned. I try to concentrate on anything else but all I can think about is the fact that I’m going to pass out. I’m about to get kicked in the chest. I’m breathing too shallowly, my stomach moving in and out faster and faster. I can’t get air into my lungs.
I curl into a ball on the ground, still breathing wrong, almost as if I’m hiccupping without hiccups. Something scratches my face, my arm. For a second, I think I’m in bed. Like I’m about to fall asleep, and I struggle not to.
“Ava!” It’s not Ty’s voice, but Luke’s. My brother leans over me, his face silhouetted against the waving leaves. “Ava, take deep breaths.” His voice is lower than usual, commanding as Dad’s. But I can’t. He takes my hand and squeezes it. “Purse your lips and pretend you’re blowing out birthday candles.”
I do what he says. I try to imagine a cake with candles, but what I see instead is a hummingbird. Sitting on the branch of the orchid tree, oddly, unnaturally frozen in sleep.
And then everything goes black.
Chapter 28
I open my eyes to my brother’s creased and red face. “Ava, Ava, are you all right? You got shocked, I think. You passed out. You were flailing around.”
I put my hand on my ICD pacemaker. It’s the same as always. Hard, but not doing anything. “I didn’t feel it,” I murmur, glad for this. Because it’s supposed to feel like a donkey kick. But I’m sore, as though I knocked into something with my chest, and I feel like I’ve been asleep for a long time and am having trouble waking up. “I’m all right.”
“I need someone to call 911,” Luke says to the gathering crowd of grown-ups. Just like we learned in that CPR class my parents made us take. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” he murmurs over and over, and I realize he’s cradling me in his lap. He’s warm
and solid and I’m safe. Finally I start to relax.
Sirens blare and firefighter paramedics in dark blue uniforms are suddenly hovering over me, lifting me onto a stretcher, wheeling me into the ambulance. Lucky for me, the fire station is just a few blocks away. All around kids and grown-ups watch. Some are actually crying, though I’m the one in trouble, and I don’t want them to be scared. “I’m okay,” I try to tell them, but my voice comes out really quiet.
It might have been cool to sit by the ambulance driver because they turn on the sirens and we go through several red lights, but I’m on a bed in the back. Luke’s up front. The paramedics stick a funny-smelling oxygen tube into my nose, which is actually okay with me because the ambulance smells like antiseptic, like a hospital. “I think she’s just dehydrated,” the paramedic says. She looks barely older than Hudson. “Her heart’s beating completely normally.”
“It’s not normal.” Luke turns to say this. “She’s got something called noncompaction cardiomyopathy. Look it up.”
“Simmer down, kiddo,” the other, older paramedic says.
“I’ve never heard of it,” the younger one mumbles. “I don’t see anything wrong here.”
“Why do you think she’s got an ICD? Because she likes it?” Luke explodes. “Call Dr. White at Children’s.”
“Is she taking any medications?” the older one says, and Luke tells him. Now the younger one’s looking the disease up on her phone and murmuring, “Ohhhhh—that’s not good. Poor thing.” And pats my leg. Which makes me feel zero percent better.
But I’m glad that Luke’s here, making sure I’m okay. Even though my brother and I don’t always get along, I guess this proves that he’ll show up when it counts. And that he has my back.
They take us to Children’s, and the ER doctor has also never heard of what I have because nobody’s heard of it unless they’re a cardiologist, and everyone’s freaking out thinking I’m an eleven-year-old having a heart attack. It’s not until my grandparents arrive that things start calming down. “Dr. White’s in surgery but he’ll be here as soon as he can,” Nana Linda tells me. I’m in a room now, dressed in one of those cotton robes with cartoon tigers printed on it, and they’ve stuck an IV in my arm, which pinches and pulls. And I’m covered in stickers and wires for the heart monitor, plus a blood pressure cuff. Very Frankenstein—and not very comfortable.
Jīchan’s face looks like it went from being a Shiba Inu puppy to a Shar-Pei because of me. I know he’s having flashbacks to my grandmother’s illness. Seeing him worried is the thing that hurts me the most. He wipes tears out of his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Jīchan. I’m okay.” I try to sit up, but the wires hold me down. I push the button on the bed to raise the back. “See? I’m fine.”
“You’re so brave, Ava.” Now his face is completely wet, and this makes my tears start, too.
What he doesn’t know is I’m not brave at all. I was afraid the whole time.
I think back to Luke complaining that I don’t deal with the real world. Well, I guess I can if I have to. But I didn’t exactly have a choice in whether or not I dealt with this. I sniffle, shake my head. Nana Linda hands both me and my grandfather tissues and we blow our noses.
“That sounds like a snot duet,” Luke says from his corner.
It does. I laugh a little. “Gross.” My brother looks like he’s just been in a fight and he’s waiting in the principal’s office. His hair’s sticking up and the neck of his T-shirt is all stretched out—I wonder if I pulled on it. Luke’s face is pale and streaked with dirt as he holds it in his hands. I want to hug him, but that’s so not his style.
Jīchan pats my hand. “Your parents are on their way. How are you feeling?”
I take in a deep breath. Nothing hurts. I didn’t feel the actual shock, so that’s good. But I wouldn’t mind going home and getting into my own bed and sleeping for a couple days. “I’m better.”
Luke leans forward, his forehead creased. “That kid you were with was bawling. He kept saying, ‘I’m so sorry.’ Who was that?”
“Ty. From my English class. That thing Hudson was helping me with.” I turn my head. I’m tired, but otherwise feeling okay.
“Well, if he’s mean, you don’t need to be working with him.” Luke points at me as if I’d chosen a mean partner on purpose. “You don’t need that kind of stress.”
I blink slowly at him, remembering all the times he hasn’t really understood my anxiety. “I thought I would just be tough. Like you told me.”
Luke opens and closes his mouth. He looks at the floor before meeting my eyes. “I’m sorry, Ava. I didn’t really understand.”
Maybe Ty doesn’t, either. I smile a little at my brother, forgiving him. “Just don’t tell me to get over it again and we’ll be good.” I hold up my hand and he pops over to high-five it.
“Ava Andrews. Why, I wasn’t expecting you to visit for another year!” Dr. White sticks his head in. He’s got silver hair and a twinkly grandpa manner. He picks up my chart. “Let’s just see what in doodly-doo we have here.”
Luke and I roll our eyes. That kind of thing used to be funny when we were little, but we grew out of it. My brothers used to see Dr. White, too, until we had genetic testing and found my brothers didn’t have the gene. My mom has it, but her heart’s healthy. This thing is weird like that—you can have spongy tissue and a normal-beating heart, or it can be sick. Some people have to take medication; some don’t. You can live to be ninety years old or die suddenly when you’re young.
Suddenly I’m really, really glad I have the defibrillator.
Dr. White notices him. “Hey, there, Luka-reeno. You’ve grown a foot or two since I last laid eyes on you.”
Luke crosses his arms. Grunts.
Dr. White turns to me. “Good news. Your device worked. Your heart’s nice and steady now.” He asks what I was doing before that.
I tell him the story.
He sits. “I think you might have had a panic attack first. Panic attacks might lead to arrhythmias, this heart stuff, in a condition like yours.”
No joke, I think. I exchange a glance with Luke. He rolls his eyes in our shared These adults! language.
“Are you still going to therapy?” Dr. White asks. “It’s not good to bottle up your feelings.”
“It’s not?” Luke asks. “Doesn’t it make stuff . . . easier?”
“You’re the bottler, Luke. And no, it’s not good to push all your feelings down.” I roll my eyes again, this time alone. Mom and Dad have been trying to get Luke to express himself forever, but ever since he became a teenager he’s pretty much closed up like an oyster. “I think about my emotions all the time. Like, twenty-four/seven.”
“Maybe that’s part of the problem.” Dr. White writes something down.
I know that’s part of the problem. Lots of things are part of my problem. Mr. Matt’s always talking to my parents about “building up Ava’s tolerance for emotional discomfort.”
My body’s acting as though I just ran a marathon. I gulp down the juice box someone brought me earlier. Then I burp loud, like Luke. It’s impressive, echoing off the hard surfaces in the room, and it lasts and lasts and lasts.
I don’t even say excuse me.
The room goes quiet, all of them eyeing me. “What?” I say.
Luke holds out his fist. “Good one, Ava.” I bump it.
“I see you’re getting over your shyness.” Dr. White ruffles my hair, messing it up, then holds up his stethoscope. “Mind if I take a listen?”
After some other tests, during which the rest of my family shows up, Dr. White clears me to go, telling me to stay hydrated, manage my anxiety, rest, and all that. “I may try a beta-blocker next time,” he tells my parents, “but last time we did that, it dropped her blood pressure too low.”
A beta-blocker is a kind of medicine that basically would kill off any anxiety I have and keep adrenaline out of my system. But I tried one before and I got so tired I couldn’t get out of
bed. It was awful.
“She was doing so well,” Mom says, her voice icicled with sadness. I grab her hand and squeeze it, but there’s nothing I can say to make her feel better. She strokes my hair with her other hand.
At home Mom and Dad tuck me in. Even though it’s warm, Mom’s changed into her plushy Chewbacca pajama onesie with the hood on because she knows it makes me smile. “Aowo-rrrrrrr,” she says in Chewbacca voice, from the back of her throat. She gives me a kiss on the forehead, then both cheeks, like she did when I was very small.
“Good night to you, too, Wookiee.” I hug her close for a moment. She feels like a warm stuffed animal.
Speaking of which, there are about thirty toys on my feet, and Dad grunts as he moves them aside to sit. “Which one do you want?”
I point to the unicorn with dirty white fur. Diamond the unicorn. I’ve had it since I was four. He pretends like it’s racing up to me and I grab it.
“I want you to relax for a day,” Mom says. “We’ll Netflix-binge.” She kisses my forehead again. “I’ll take tomorrow off.”
“You don’t have to.” Mom never takes a day off.
“I want to.” She smiles, and pain flashes through her eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
I grab her hand. The worst part of everything is having people worry about me. “Nobody can be with me all the time, Mom.”
“I know. But if I could, I’d follow you around like Chewbacca followed Han Solo.” She squishes her face in an exaggerated smile and I imitate her.
Dad squeezes my shoulder in his Dad way. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I would hope so.” I turn onto my side. “I’m your only daughter.”
Mom and Dad snort. “I’ll leave the door cracked.” She turns off the light.
“Dr. White said I’m fine,” I call after them.
I lie awake, clutching my stuffed animal. Dr. White said my anxiety had a not-small role to play in this thing. Apparently I still don’t have that under control. Though I’m trying. I’m doing therapy. Am I not trying hard enough?
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