by Nicole Maggi
Copyright © 2015 by Nicole Maggi
Cover and internal design © 2015 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Eileen Carey
Cover image © Wolfgang Lienbacher/Getty Images
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
To Chris and Emilia, for teaching me the art of love.
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.
—Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton
Prologue
The last thing I remember is a push. Two strong hands, fighting for their own life, pushing me out of mine. The world went white all around me and then I was gone, forced out of the darkness that had always surrounded me and into the light.
But part of me got left behind.
Chapter One
The first thing I remembered was a great big push. Air rushed up from my lungs and out of my mouth. My spine tingled from the imaginary touch where the two invisible hands had been, pushing me back into consciousness. Whose were they?
I pulled at my memory. Somewhere nearby, a machine beeped. My eyes would not open; it was like they were nailed shut. The thing nearby beeped again, echoing the drum of my heartbeat. Deep inside I felt a shift, a change within the fabric of my inner being. What had changed? What had gone wrong? My fingers grappled at something, anything, to hold on to… My oboe, where was my oboe? It was never more than an arm’s length away from me.
The thing beeped again. In its wake other sounds grew clearer. Voices. Footsteps. My fingers found nothing but air. I balled my hands into fists. Another beep, loud and insistent, right next to my ear, and my eyes flew open.
Spots pricked painfully at my vision. Everything around me was white. The gauze taped across my chest, the hospital gown I was dressed in, the sheets and pillows, even the wires running from my body to the machines next to my bed were white. Nearby, a voice said, “She’s awake.”
“Baby? Baby, can you hear me?” My mother’s face bloomed in front of my own, her mouth and nose covered by a white paper mask. I tried to answer and couldn’t. With a little squirm of panic, I realized there was a tube running out of my mouth to a ventilator just behind me. I put my hand on the tube, but my mother gently took my hand in hers. “It’s okay, baby. They’re going to take that out soon.” Her voice was thick behind the mask.
“Her vitals are good,” said the other voice. “I’ll let Dr. Harrison know she’s awake.” Footsteps echoed away.
Dr. Harrison. The name was a familiar piece among all the strange bits flying around my brain. I clicked it into place in my memory. The holidays…no, the holidays were over. I’d gone back to school after winter break, but then Mom kept me home because I had a fever. It didn’t go away. I furrowed my brow; wading through the memories was like cross-country skiing through deep, powdery snow. I’d gone to the doctor I’d seen since I was a baby. He’d admitted me to the hospital for pneumonia. Was that right? I looked at my mother for confirmation, as though she could understand what I was thinking.
She nodded. “What do you remember, baby?”
It felt like a fever dream. Tests, the prick of an IV going into my arm. Not being able to breathe. The tube down my throat. The machine next to my bed beeping erratically. Alarms going off. Footsteps running. Getting hooked up to even more machines. Something had gone wrong… A calm, kind voice explaining to my parents—not me—that my heart was failing and I needed a new one. “And luckily, there’s a match right down the hall…”
My hands scrabbled at the air again and came up empty. Mom grasped my shoulders, murmuring something that was supposed to be soothing. I shook my head. The motion made my whole body ache. I let Mom ease me backward and raised my hand to my chest, splaying my palm flat over the gauze.
That was the change. The rhythm—my rhythm—was different.
My heart was gone.
Someone else’s heart had taken its place.
• • •
I curled my fingers into claws, as though I could reach through my skin and touch that strange, foreign thing. Mom grabbed my hand, softening my fingers into hers. She was wearing thin surgical gloves. “You’re doing amazing. Better than even the doctors hoped.” She stroked the back of my hand the way she used to when I was a kid. “Dad’s just outside. They only let one of us in at a time. And Colt’s here too. He’s been dying…”—she swallowed—“waiting to see you, but they won’t let him until you get moved to a nonsterile room. I told him to go to school, but he refused.”
Mom babbled on but her voice grew dim. All I could hear was the beat of my new heart, a Frankenstein body part that didn’t belong. The rhythm of it sounded wrong, like a timpanist slightly off the beat. I dug my nails into my palms. Would my own rhythm be different now? What if this new heart changed the music that had always played inside me?
The door swished open and the nurse came back with a tall, dark-haired woman in tow. I recognized her as the doctor who’d done the surgery. “It’s good to
see you awake, Georgie,” Dr. Harrison said. “Let’s see about getting you off this ventilator.” She unwound the stethoscope from her neck and plugged it into her ears, then slid the metal disk under the gauze.
“Don’t you have machines to do that?” Mom asked.
Dr. Harrison smiled, still focused on my chest as she listened. “Nothing can replace a good old-fashioned stethoscope.” She nodded once and slung the stethoscope back around her neck. “Sounds good. Let’s look at the printout.”
“Right here.” The nurse handed her a sheet of paper, leaning over me slightly. She smelled like vanilla and spices. I saw now that the little name tag on her shirt read Maureen. A bracelet of yoga beads bulged beneath her surgical gloves. As she pulled back, she caught me looking at her and winked. “Glad you’re back with us,” she said and tucked a stray hair behind my ear. The gesture made my throat grow hot.
Dr. Harrison flipped through the papers. “Her other organs are responding beautifully to the new heart.” She glanced at Mom. “She’s definitely at the top end of recipients’ recovery. It helps to be young,” she added with a little laugh.
“That’s wonderful.” Tears gathered at the corners of Mom’s eyes. “That’s—you have no idea—” She leaned her elbows on the side of my bed and buried her face in her hands.
Dr. Harrison looked back at me, as if my mother’s display of emotion was happening in another room. “Well, Georgie, I think we can get you off that ventilator. We’ll keep you in this room for another day or so and then move you to a regular room where you can have more visitors. Not too many, though. You need to build your strength. You’ll be here for at least another ten days—”
Ten days? I might as well have shouted it. Dr. Harrison could see the alarm on my face. “We need be sure that your body doesn’t reject your new heart. And give you time to rest too, of course. You’ll have a whole new regimen you’ll need to get acclimated to.” She stopped, maybe sensing that my eyes were about to pop out of my skull. Mom had gathered herself together too. “But first things first. Maureen?”
Having the tube pulled out of my mouth felt like having the Alien creature pulled out of my throat instead of bursting out of my stomach. I gulped in air, letting the sweetness of it fill my mouth and lungs. “Long, slow breaths,” Maureen told me. I counted in and out, in and out, until I could breathe normally again.
“Good girl,” Dr. Harrison said. “I’ll check back on you a little later.” She turned to go.
“Wait.” It came out raspy and hoarse. I took a deep breath. Pain seared across my chest. I pressed my hand there. “Are you sure—everything’s alright?”
Beside me, Mom tensed. Dr. Harrison stepped over to the machine that I was still hooked up to by the white wires. Maureen picked up my wrist and placed two fingers over my pulse. For several minutes, the beeping and whirring of the machine were the only sounds in the room. But I could hear my heartbeat as loud as though it was outside my body. It sounded out of tune with the rest of my body.
Finally, Dr. Harrison looked up, and Maureen laid my arm on the bed. “Her pulse is fine,” she said. “Strong.”
“And I see nothing unusual on the machine.”
Mom relaxed with a sigh. Dr. Harrison gave me a tight smile. “It’s normal for transplant recipients to feel a little off for a while after the surgery,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll feel like your old self in no time.” She looked at my mom. “Would you like me to update your husband on Georgie’s condition?”
“Yes, of course.” Mom got up. She patted my leg. “I’ll be right back, baby.”
The two of them left the room. “Let me arrange those pillows so you’re more comfortable,” Maureen said.
As she moved around the back of the bed, I looked up at her. “Do you know—who it was? Whose heart, I mean?”
She paused for a moment in her work. “I’m sorry, Georgie. All organ donors are kept anonymous.”
“Oh. Of course.” I knew that. But as I watched her tuck one pillow behind another, I knew that she knew. It was completely unfair that she knew and I didn’t. This person’s heart was now living inside me. Didn’t I deserve to know their name, at the very least?
Maureen told me to get some rest and dimmed the lights as she left. I lay back on the pillows and stared at the ceiling. What did Anonymous die of? Was it a kid like me? Was there another set of parents in another room grieving over their child? Bile rose in my throat. I took a deep, sharp breath in through my nose.
Don’t think about it, I told myself. Think about Juilliard. I forced myself to hear the Poulenc Oboe Sonata in my head, tapping out the fingerings on my thigh. But the sound of my new heart interfered, knocking me off the beat. A deep distrust stole through me. Nothing was safe anymore, not even my own heart.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Dr. Harrison said that I would feel like my old self in no time. I curled my fingers into a fist. Was that even possible now that I had someone else’s heart? Was I still the same old Georgie?
And as if in answer, I heard the thing that was knocking my new heart off my old rhythm. A pause. A hiccup. A catch. Like my heart was thinking about something other than its next beat in that infinitesimal span of time.
Like my heart wasn’t beating for me.
It was still beating for its old owner.
Chapter Two
That night I slept badly. In my dreams, I stood on a lonely street corner, waiting for someone to come pick me up. But when a car finally pulled up to the curb, I turned and ran, shadows at my back as I fled across rooftops and fire escapes.
When I woke up, I couldn’t shake that feeling of being chased. Maybe it was my new heart, trying to keep up with the rest of my body. That little catch echoed in between my heartbeats. I tried to ignore it as I lay in bed, counting the ceiling tiles. The more I pretended it wasn’t there, the louder it became.
Dr. Harrison had glossed over it, but I knew enough about organ transplants to know that rejection was very possible. Was that what the catch meant? Was my body rejecting my new heart? I couldn’t go back to sleep. Every breath felt fragile as blown glass. My hands ached for my oboe. It was the one thing that would tether me to my old self.
Another nurse came in the morning to take my vitals and announced that I could move to a regular room. I sunk low onto my pillows while they wheeled my bed down the hall, onto the elevator, and up one floor. My new room was beige instead of white, and no one wore masks.
Mom showed up less than an hour later. She looked a lot better; the circles under her eyes weren’t quite so dark. “Dad and Colt are coming later this morning,” she said after she’d kissed my cheek and settled herself into the chair next to the bed. She reached for a canvas bag at her feet. “I thought you’d like to see all the cards you got.”
I raised the bed so that I sat upright. Mom set the bag gently in my lap. Cards in every shape and color spilled out onto the blanket. “Who sent all these?”
“Everyone.” Mom tucked an imaginary stray hair behind my ear. “Everyone was so worried.”
I thumbed through the cards from all my friends and teachers, my aunt and uncle and cousins, my grandparents, even the secretaries at school. “People wanted to send flowers, but they’re not allowed in the ICU,” Mom told me. “So everyone sent flowers and gifts to the house. You’ll get them when you come home.”
“Did Dr. Harrison tell you when that will be?”
“I haven’t seen her this morning, but I’m sure she’ll be by soon.”
As if on cue, the door opened. It wasn’t Dr. Harrison, though. It was the orderly with my breakfast. “Liquids and soft foods for the next twenty-four hours,” he told me. “Got to get your system back on track.”
I made a face at the mushy food on the tray. “Is any of this actually healthy?”
The orderly laughed. “Sadly, ‘healthy’ doesn’t always mean appetizing.” He leaned in co
nspiratorially. “Tell you what—if you eat one thing on this tray, I’ll get you a milk shake.”
Mom looked up from the card she was reading. “I really don’t think—”
“Oh come on, Mom.” I pointed at the orderly. “He says it’s okay and he works here.” I picked up the least disgusting-looking dish and dug in while the orderly watched. When I was done, I looked up at him, eyebrows raised.
He nodded his approval. “One milk shake coming up. What flavor?”
“Ooh, do you have strawberry? That’s my favorite.”
“Georgie.” Mom shook her head. “She’s kidding, of course.”
“No, I’m not,” I said. “It’s always been my favorite flavor.”
Mom narrowed her eyes at me. “What kind of meds is she on?”
The orderly reached for my chart at the end of the bed. I looked from him back to Mom. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Because you can’t eat strawberries and you know it,” Mom said. Her gaze was hard on me, like she was trying to see into my brain. “You’ve been allergic to them your whole life.” She spoke to the orderly but didn’t take her eyes off me. “I fed her strawberry-banana yogurt when she was nine months old, and she went into anaphylactic shock. It was the scariest day of my life…until…”
The orderly held up my chart. “It says right here. Strawberry allergy.” He peered down at me. “You have a weird sense of humor.”
I forced a laugh. “Yeah. So I’ve been told.” The relief was palpable as he and Mom laughed, and I changed my order to vanilla. As he turned to go, I asked in as casual a tone as I could muster, “So, um, the meds I’m on—are they, like, really strong?”
He peeked at my chart again. “Pretty strong. Why? Are you in pain?”
“No, but I—” I made myself shrug. “I feel a little fuzzy. That’s all.”
“You should talk to your nurse about lowering the meds. That might help.”
“Okay.”
He smiled at me. “One vanilla milk shake coming up.”