The Forgetting

by Nicole Maggi

  I remembered that day. It was there, clear as a sunlit morning, bright in my mind where the memories of Nantucket and New Mexico, a strawberry allergy, a snowstorm in February fourteen years ago, and the last Christmas with my grandfather should’ve been. “You teased her for putting honey in her coffee.”

  Nate stumbled back until he hit the side of the refrigerator in the kitchen. “How the hell do you know that?”

  I blinked. “I told you. I have her heart. And her memories are imprinted on it.” I pulled my scarf higher up on my neck, trying to get my ears warm. “Everything about you that she knew, I remember.”

  Nate’s chest heaved up and down, up and down. “Then tell me about my sister,” he said, his voice hoarse. “What’s her name? Tell me the last time I saw her. Because no one knows that, not even my parents.”

  I reached inside for the memory that Annabel had given me on the night I’d first met Nate, the memory I’d tucked away until I needed to pull it out. Until now. “The last time you saw Sarah was two years ago in Philadelphia. You tracked her down and met her under the arrivals board at the train station. You tried to get her on a train home with you but she’d been followed there, and the two of you got separated on the way to the platform.”

  Nate closed his eyes.

  “That’s why you dropped out of school, isn’t it?” I said. “To devote all your time to trying to find her. That’s why your parents don’t have money for college. They’ve spent it all trying to find her. That’s what brought you to All Saints. That’s why you want to help those girls.” My voice broke. “Because they could all be Sarah.”

  Nate slid down the refrigerator until he hit the floor. He lowered his head to the tops of his knees. I came to kneel in front of him and reached out, but I didn’t dare touch him. “I’m so sorry, Nate. I should’ve told you from the beginning. But I didn’t think you’d believe me. Why should you? It’s insane. I barely believe it myself. But it’s happening.”

  Nate raised his head. His eyes peered into mine with a sharp clarity. “You say you remember everything about me that Annabel knew?” I nodded. “Then you know that I loved her.” The words had an edge to them, and they were like a million shallow cuts to my gut. He leaned forward, so close our foreheads were inches apart. “Do you know how fucked up that is? That I loved the heart inside you, that the heart inside you loves me, and that somehow we’re supposed to sort out our own feelings from this mess? How the hell are we supposed to do that?”

  I pulled back and sat down on my butt across from him. The Catch was so loud inside me that its whispers set me shivering from head to toe. I was cold everywhere and I couldn’t stop shaking.

  “I know,” I whispered. “I think it’s me that loves you. Georgie. But I–I can’t be sure.”

  Nate sank his hand into his hair and pulled. “God, Georgie. A day ago, I would’ve said I loved you, but now how can I know if it’s you or the heart that I’m drawn to? I can’t be in love with a dead girl. I can’t be with someone I couldn’t save.”

  “Then help me.” I crawled forward. “Help me find out who killed her. If we do that, I know she’ll let go, and we can figure out us on our own terms.”

  “But there’s always going to be this between us.” Nate tilted his head back against the fridge and stared up at the ceiling. “You’re always going to have her heart. How can you be with me knowing I loved the old owner of it?”

  “I don’t know.” I watched his face change, the shadows that clung to his eyes. “I only know that when I’m with you, everything is better. Everything makes more sense. I don’t know if that’s me or Annabel, and right now I don’t really care.”

  “Well, I do. I care.” He looked at me, the confusion in his eyes laid bare. “I don’t know where you and I go from here. I really don’t.” He hauled himself to his feet and held out his hand to help me up.

  Chills swept through me. I didn’t want to have to travel the rest of this path without him. I took his hand, clinging to it as I got to my feet. I swayed when I stood, clutching at him to keep from falling.

  “Are you okay?” Nate asked.

  “Just dizzy,” I murmured. “Stood up too fast, I guess.” I swallowed hard, trying to get my equilibrium back.

  “Sit down. I’ll get you some water.”

  “I’m fine.” I dropped onto the futon. Another wave of dizziness washed over me. I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them, Nate was in front of me with a glass of water. He watched me take a sip, his eyes narrowed, then pressed the back of his hand against my forehead.

  “What the—” I jerked away but he kept his hand there.

  “You know, you’re really hot.”

  “Gee, thank you—”

  “No, I mean you’re burning up.”

  “I still feel like I’m freezing from being outside so long.” As if to prove my words, a chill ripped through me. I shuddered from head to toe.

  “Well, you feel like you have a fever.” Nate disappeared into the bathroom. I heard him rummaging through the cabinet in there. I touched my own hand to my temple. Nate was right; my skin was on fire.

  My mind swam through another wave of dizziness. I tightened my coat around myself. Dizziness. Chills. Fever. Nate appeared in the doorway of the bathroom with a thermometer in his hands, but I didn’t need it to know what was going on.

  Rejection.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I called Dr. Harrison first, who told me to go directly to the hospital, do not pass Go. Then I called Mom.

  “What?” she screeched into the phone.

  I repeated what I’d told her in a voice that I tried so hard to keep from shaking. Meet me at the hospital. I’m having rejection symptoms. No, I’m not alone. I’m with Nate.

  “I’m going with you so shut up,” he’d told me when I said I could get myself to the hospital. He kept his arm gingerly around my shoulders as the cab slid through the streets of Boston, but not even his presence could calm the fear that gripped me. Wet snow slapped against the windows. I closed my eyes and listened to the whoosh of tires on slush. It had been a month since my surgery; I’d thought I was safe. But I’d opened my heart to Nate and this was what wormed its way in.

  The cab skidded to a stop in front of Mass General. Nate paid the driver and helped me inside. The woman at Admissions had already been alerted to my arrival and slapped a bracelet on me. As we turned away from her desk, Mom charged in through the sliding doors. Her coat was buttoned wrong.

  “Georgie? Baby?” She snatched me away from Nate and pressed her hands to my face. “You’re going to be okay. Where’s Dr. Harrison?”

  “Cardiology,” the Admissions clerk piped up.

  “I’ve already been admitted,” I said, holding up my braceleted wrist.

  “Let’s go.” She sent a tight little smile in Nate’s direction. “Thank you for bringing her.”

  “Oh. You’re welcome.” He turned to go.

  “Wait,” I said. “Can you stay? Please?”

  Nate looked from me to my mother. “I don’t think…”

  “Georgie, come on.” Mom tried to propel me toward the elevator but I stood firm.

  “I want him to stay. Please.”

  Mom exhaled a hard breath. “Fine. If he wants to.”

  I met Nate’s eyes. His gaze softened on my face. “Lead the way.”

  The elevator ride up to Cardiology was silent and tense. I clutched the rail against the wall as one wave of dizziness after another crashed over me. It doesn’t mean the transplant failed, I told myself. An acute rejection episode was common. I’d read that in the post-op orders the hospital had given me after my surgery. But still…a rejection episode could also mean that the transplant had failed…

  I squeezed my eyes shut for an instant. Don’t fail, I begged Annabel. Don’t die twice.

  The elevator doors opened to
reveal Dr. Harrison. “Well, we hoped we wouldn’t see you back here,” she said. She took my elbow gently and guided me down the hall. Mom stuck right by my side while Nate hung back. I knew he was uncomfortable, that everything was still so weird with us, but I needed him there. He was the only thing tethering my heart to my body, the only of-this-world link between Annabel’s life and mine.

  Dr. Harrison brought us into a room similar to the one where I’d spent all those days after my surgery. Fear vice-gripped my insides and I froze in the doorway. What if this was the last room I saw? What if my last vision in this world was of these pale beige walls?

  “It’s okay, baby.” Mom brushed a lock of my hair behind my ear. “I’m right here.”

  “Don’t leave,” I whispered, but I was looking past her, over her shoulder to Nate. He gave me a small, gentle smile and slid into the chair beside the door.

  Dr. Harrison cleared her throat. I backed into the room. The door swung shut but I could still see Nate through the little glass window cut into the heavy wood. He was still here. He was going to stay. Dr. Harrison stepped in front of me and drew the curtain. I tore my eyes away from the door.

  “Change into the gown and get settled in,” she told me. “We’re going to start you on what’s called triple therapy where we blast a combination of immunosuppressive drugs into your system. We’ll keep you overnight and see where we are in the morning. If the rejection symptoms have reversed, we’ll just adjust your daily meds and that should be that.”

  “A–and if the symptoms haven’t reversed?” I asked. My throat was dry, my tongue like paper.

  “We’ll deal with that if we have to. It’s a big if.”

  But it’s still an if, I wanted to say. I bit my lip instead and slipped into the shapeless piece of fabric they called a gown. Maybe I didn’t want Nate to stay. He might change his mind about me if he saw me in this thing.

  Mom sat beside me while we waited for Dr. Harrison to come back with the IV. She brushed a lock of hair away from my eyes. “Where were you? I thought you were going out with Ella and Toni.”

  “I did. I went over to Nate’s after.” I leaned my head back on the stack of pillows.

  “I’m not mad,” Mom said quickly. I raised an eyebrow at her. What would she have to be mad about? Did I have to get permission for every step I took? “I was just…surprised to see him. That’s all.” She picked up my hand and held it against her cheek. “Everything’s going to be okay, Georgie,” she said, and for a moment, I was seven again and had just scraped my knee climbing a tree in Linden Park. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  I swallowed the hard, hot lump in my throat. “I love him, Mom,” I whispered. It felt good to tell my mother something true after all these weeks of lying.

  She gave something between a laugh and a sob and half stood to kiss my forehead. The door opened and Dr. Harrison came in with Maureen, the nurse who’d looked after me before. “I remember you,” Maureen said with a smile. “Hopefully you won’t be staying too long this time around.”

  I smiled back at her, genuinely glad that she was the one putting in my IV. I’d been worried that Dr. Harrison had found out that Maureen told me about Jane Doe and that the nurse had gotten in trouble, but clearly that hadn’t happened. I looked away as she eased the needle into my arm and adjusted the knob under the liquid bag. “This’ll set you right in no time,” she said.

  Dr. Harrison left with the promise to be back in a couple of hours. Mom sat for another moment, stroking my hand, and then suddenly jumped to her feet. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t even called your father yet!” She grabbed her purse from the table by the bed. “I’ll be just outside.”

  I pressed the button to raise the bed a little and looked at Maureen. “Can you arrange the pillows like you did when I was here before?” I asked. “I tried to re-create that at home, but apparently it’s some magic skill you have.”

  She laughed. “Sure.” I leaned forward and she slid the pillows around. “Does that lovely young man outside belong to you?”

  “Oh.” Heat came to my cheeks that had nothing to do with rejection. “Um, I’m not really sure yet.”

  “Well, he’s not sitting out there for his health.” She plumped one of the pillows. “Lucky girl.”

  I stared up at her. Lucky girl? I’d gotten a heart transplant from a dead prostitute who was stealing my memories in order to lead me to her killer. Oh yeah, I had awesome luck.

  And yet…

  If it hadn’t been for Annabel, I would never have met Nate. If it hadn’t been for Annabel, I would be dead.

  I blinked. “Yes,” I said slowly, “I guess I am.”

  She gave the pillows one final pat. “There you go.”

  “Thanks.” She turned to go. “Can you—”

  “Send him in? Sure, honey.”

  I eased back onto the pillows and closed my eyes for a moment before Nate came in. I tried to imagine the meds winding their way into my veins, healing me. Let me live. Let me live. If you let me live, I’ll solve your mystery.

  “Hey.”

  I opened my eyes. “Hey.” I indicated the hospital gown. “Nice look, huh?”

  Nate laughed. He waved a hand over the chair my mom had vacated. “Can I sit?”

  “Sure.”

  He scooted the chair right up to the bed. “You’re going to be okay.”

  “You don’t know that.” I wished my voice didn’t quaver so much.

  “Rejection episodes are really common. Most transplant recipients experience at least one in the first six weeks after their transplant.” He held his phone up. “I did a little research while I was out there.”

  I looked into his eyes. The words of my real fear formed in my mouth, and I voiced them to the only person who would understand. “What if it’s not medical? What if…it’s Annabel? What if she’s mad because…because she loved you, and she doesn’t want us to be together?”

  Nate leaned his elbow on the edge of the bed and rested his chin in his hand. “There was so much about Annabel that I never knew. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I loved her, because she was a mystery. But the one thing I know for sure about her, without a doubt, is that she was not cruel. She wants you to live, Georgie.”

  Tears hung heavy on my eyelashes. I blinked fast and they fell to my cheeks. “Do you…believe me?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know what I believe.” His blue eyes seemed to darken as they beamed into mine. “But I think you have to stop thinking of your body and heart as separate things. They’re one now. No matter whose heart it is, or whatever’s going on with your memories. It’s all one. You’re not made up of pieces. You’re a whole being.”

  My mouth fell open. God, he was right. Ever since the surgery, even before I knew I was losing my memories, I’d thought of my heart as apart, as foreign, as not mine. And once I’d learned about Annabel, that seemed like proof that it wasn’t mine.

  But Nate was right. No matter what Annabel wanted or where she led me, her heart was mine. It was not my body that was rejecting it. It was my mind.

  • • •

  When I opened my eyes the next morning, Nate sat in the chair next to the bed, drinking from an enormous Dunkin’ Donuts cup. “Isn’t that like consorting with the enemy or something?” I said, sitting up.

  He leaned forward, a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell Howard Schultz, but I like Dunkin’s coffee better.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.” I ran my hand through my hair, trying to smooth down what I could only imagine was a rat’s nest. “You haven’t been here all night, have you?”

  “They kicked me off the floor at ten. I spent the night in the lounge.” He set his coffee on the floor and looked at me. “I had a lot of thinking to do.”

  “Nate…”

  “Wait.” He held up his hand. “Let me talk.” He s
cooted to the edge of the chair and rested his elbows on his knees. “I realized that when you first told me you had Annabel’s heart, part of me wasn’t surprised. Because I see her spirit in you. Her goodness.”

  I closed my eyes. He was still in love with her. She was all he would ever see in me.

  “But then,” he said, and my eyes flew open, “I remembered that I had thought that about you long before I ever knew you had her heart. And you can’t tell me you didn’t have those qualities before the transplant. After all, she’s not possessing you, is she?”

  I shook my head.

  “I think what I’m trying to say is this.” Nate laid his hands, palms up, on the bed. “I know this is complicated. I know this is the most messed-up meet-cute ever. But I think that maybe now, with all our cards out on the table, we can make something good out of this. Something…beautiful.”

  My throat was hot. “Does that mean…you believe me?”

  Nate nodded. His eyes were overbright, whether from lack of sleep or emotion, I didn’t know. “I believe you, Georgie. And I want to help you solve this.” His fingers twitched. “Because no matter whose heart is in there, I want to be with you.”

  A sob escaped me. I turned on my side, careful of the IV tube, and laid my hands on his, palm to palm. Nate’s fingers curled around mine. He lowered his head and kissed my hands, his lips like rose petals on my skin. The Catch sighed inside me, and I suddenly knew that Annabel had led me to Nate for a reason. Her heart wasn’t whole without him. He was another gift, just like the life she’d given me.

  “I just want to be sure about one more thing,” Nate murmured, his mouth warm on my knuckles. He looked up at me. “You remember everything that happened with me and Annabel, right?”

  “Yes.” I squeezed his hands. “I know nothing—physical—ever happened between you. That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

  The side of his mouth curled up. “I loved her, but I couldn’t cross that line. Not as long as she…belonged to Jules.”