by Cassia Leo
Chris looks me in the eye and flashes me a weak smile. “Your parents will talk to you about Caleb.”
“Why? Where is he?”
Claire turns around and leaves the room without another word and Chris looks stumped.
“Please tell me what’s going on here. I wake up with tubes coming out of every hole in my body and the nurse just said something to me about anti-rejection meds. Did I get a heart transplant? What happened? Please… I’m scared.”
Chris hangs his head for a moment and when he lifts it again, there are tears in his eyes. “I don’t want to be the one to break your heart. Please don’t make me do this.”
The heart-rate monitor starts beeping loudly as my pulse races. The nurse is at my side a second later, injecting something into my IV line. Within seconds, drowsiness overtakes me and I drift off with Caleb’s name on my lips.
THE FIFTH TIME I wake, my parents are there. My dad is standing like a soldier at my bedside, his hands behind his back, his chin dimpled with the effort of holding back his emotions. My mom stands right next to him, her gloved hand wrapped tightly around my fingers.
“Don’t lie to me,” I whisper through the tears.
“I won’t lie to you, sweetheart,” my dad says, his voice thick with emotion. “But I think Caleb would rather tell you everything himself.”
I open my mouth to curse him for lying to me by pretending that Caleb is alive, but before I can speak another word, he pulls a white envelope from behind his back. The sight of my name on the outside of the envelope in Caleb’s messy scrawl sends a bolt of pain through my chest.
“I wanted to wait to give you this later, but I don’t think Caleb would have wanted that.”
“Stop talking about him like… that.”
I want to tell my dad to stop talking about Caleb like he’s gone, but I can’t bring myself to say the words. I draw in a long breath as I take the envelope from my dad’s large hand.
“We haven’t read it. We just opened it to make it easier for you,” he assures me as he takes a step back.
“We’ll be right outside, honey.” My mom squeezes the words out through her tears.
I hold the envelope up in front of my face and stare at the letters A-B-B-Y and I imagine Caleb sitting at the table in the apartment he shared with Greg. I imagine his beautiful fingers curled around the pen as it slid across the paper. When did he write me this letter? What was he thinking?
I guess I’m about to find out.
I lay the envelope on my belly, then I struggle a bit to slip the folded piece of white paper out with just one hand. But a few seconds later, I have the paper out of the envelope and unfolded. I lay it facedown on my belly for a moment.
Caleb, wherever you are, please give me the strength to make it through this.
I sniff loudly and let out a long sigh. Then I lift the paper off my stomach and read.
Abby,
How do you thank someone for giving you a reason to live? I’ve thought about this a lot over the last few years since you came into my life. And for three years, I came up with nothing.
Then my dad died and there you were again. My friend. My girl. My sunshine, bringing light to my darkest days.
When the estate lawyer called me to his office to pick up the inheritance check in January after my eighteenth birthday, it got me thinking about what I wanted to leave behind after my death. Like my dad, I don’t have much to give, but I do have one thing I hope will still be useful when I go. Something you fixed up and made all shiny and new for me.
My heart.
Abby, the first time I spoke to you in the hospital, my heart danced. And I don’t think it ever stopped. You gave my heart quite a workout, sunshine. So I know that the moment they took my heart out of my chest and put it in yours, my heart danced its final dance as if nobody was watching.
You can be anything you want to be now. Chase your dreams, Abby.
Always yours,
Caleb
I throw the letter over the edge of the bed and try to breathe, but I’m in so much pain, breathing seems secondary. The nurse rushes in and injects something into my IV line again.
I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out except for a soft squeak.
“What did you say, sweetie?”
The drowsiness is taking hold again, and my throat relaxes enough for me to get out four words. “You were my dream.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I SPEND SEVENTEEN excruciating days in the hospital, unable to speak or eat. It’s only my desire to see the endless biopsies and X-rays end that makes me take up solid food again. I need it all to be over. I need to go home, curl up in my bed, and sleep for a very long time. My dreams are the only place where I’m safe. My dreams are the only place where none of this ever happened.
The ride home from the hospital is the longest three hours of my life. The ride should have taken two and a half hours, but my dad insists on driving below the speed limit. Afraid my new heart might fall out or something. My mom is sitting in the backseat with me, wringing her hands with frustration because I won’t allow her to touch me.
I don’t want my mother to hold me while I sob on her shoulder and ask, “Why me?” I want Caleb to hold me and tell me I’m going to get through this. That losing him isn’t the end of every good thing in my life.
I just want to hear his voice one more time. Is that too much to ask? I think it would be easier if I could just hear him call me “sunshine” once more.
We enter our house in Raleigh and the first thing I’m struck by is the smell. The beach house always had a slightly salty, sunbaked aroma mixed with the scent of fresh laundry. With seven people in the house, there was always a load going. Our house in Raleigh smells like my mom’s favorite lemon-scented disinfectant. She must have disinfected every surface with that stuff when she and my dad came home a few days ago to prepare the house for my arrival.
I want to take a shower, but I’m not allowed to for another twelve days. And my mom is supposed to help me when I take a bath, so that rules out that option. I head for the kitchen to get myself a glass of water and my mom follows close behind me.
“Are you hungry, honey? I got a bunch of healthy snacks that are on the list Dr. Rosenthal gave me. We have tons of fruits and veggies, low-fat cheese sticks, gluten-free rice crackers.”
“I’m not hungry. I just want a glass of water.” I reach for the cupboard above the kitchen counter, but a sharp pain in my breastbone stops me.
“I’ll get you some water. You just go lie down.”
She grabs my arms and gently turns me away from the counter. I take a couple of steps forward, then I stop in the middle of the kitchen and look around. The beige stone tiles and cherry cabinets look the same as they did when I was last here, but something about this room is different.
“What did you change in here?”
My mom glances toward the kitchen window above the sink. “We removed all the blinds and curtains in the house.”
“In my room, too?”
“No.” She swiftly grabs a glass from the cupboard and fills it with water, then she places her hand on the small of my back to lead me to my bedroom. “Chris and Claire helped us install some remote-controlled window coverings in your room. The remote is in the top drawer of your nightstand. I know you probably don’t feel like it, but please consider leaving the blinds open as often as possible. It’s better for you. You know the saying. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Turns out that’s also true in the literal sense.”
I stand on the threshold of my bedroom and marvel at how clean and organized everything is. The dozens of pictures of me, Caleb, and Amy that were pinned haphazardly on the walls are now arranged in a beautiful collage in a single picture frame that hangs above my headboard. The messy collection of office supplies and makeup on my desk is gone and a handy purple makeup case sits next to my laptop. Both my guitars hang from hooks on the wall. The room smells like lemon instead of the usual combined s
cent of shampoo and dirty socks. Everything has been organized and sanitized, except for the full-length mirror propped up against the wall in the corner. Where Caleb wrote with a tube of cherry lip balm, “Good morning, sunshine!”
I step inside the room and grab the handle of the door. “I’m going to sleep.”
“Don’t forget your water.”
I take the glass from her and quickly close the door before she can give me any sage advice about how to get over Caleb. I set the glass of water on the nightstand, then I open the top drawer and easily find the small white remote for the window coverings. I scoop it up and press the down arrow button until the blinds and the new ivory curtains are completely closed.
I switch on my bedside lamp and stare at the mirror in the corner for a while before I gather the courage to sit down at my desk. Opening the laptop, my heart jumps when I see the desktop background. It’s a picture of Caleb and me in the quad at school. His friend Ewan took this picture of us on Caleb’s eighteenth birthday in January. I stare at him for a few minutes, searching his face for some sign of what he was planning to do. But I see nothing.
Caleb was always terrible at keeping secrets. Maybe he didn’t consider his living will a secret. Maybe he thought of it more as a gift, like the guitar he gave me for my birthday almost five months ago. And since he knew he wouldn’t be around to give it to me, he just put it out of his mind.
Well, he had it in his mind long enough to sign the papers and write me a letter. And, according to his estate lawyer, Caleb had one final gift for me. An email he wanted me to read once I was strong enough.
I log into my computer and, for a split second, consider changing the desktop background so I don’t have to stare at his smiling face. Or the way his eyebrow got crooked when he smiled hugely. Or the way his hand is pretending to squeeze my breast and I’m laughing so hard you can see my tonsils. If I change this background image, that will be the beginning of forgetting Caleb and, as painful as it is to remember, I think I’d rather die than forget him.
I open up my email program and it takes about five minutes for thousands of emails to load. There are emails from almost every single person in my senior high school class, expressing their condolences for Caleb’s death. There are more emails from people I don’t know than there are from people whose names I vaguely recognize.
I search my inbox for “Gill Burrows” and quickly find the email I’m looking for. The subject line reads: Caleb’s final request. My cursor hovers over the message, just waiting for me to double-click to open it. But I can’t. If I open that email, that will be it. I will never hear from him again. I’m not ready to let him go yet.
I minimize the program and close the lid on my laptop. Caleb wanted me to open that message when I was strong enough. And today I’m not. Today, I wonder if I’ll ever open that email.
CALEB WAS CREMATED three days after he gave me his heart and his ashes were held in an antique blue and white vase, which had previously graced the shelves in Claire’s library. The vase was kept in the library, on the shelf nearest the ’68 Stratocaster, until three weeks after his death, three days after I returned home. Then, according to Caleb’s instructions, his ashes were to be buried in the ground next to the plot where his father’s ashes are buried.
It’s a muggy, overcast Labor Day weekend and I’ve never seen so many people dressed in black gathered in one place. The clouds refuse to part, as if God has shrouded our corner of the earth in a shadow of darkness to pay His respects. I don’t want to speak at the memorial. I don’t want to bare my heart and soul in front of a crowd of hundreds of mourners. But I can’t not speak. This isn’t just anyone. This is Caleb. This is my heart.
I tread softly over the neatly trimmed grass until I reach the well-worn patch behind the wooden podium where four others have spoken before me. I glance at the crowd and quickly turn back to the speech I have displayed on my phone. The crowd is silent, as this is the moment I’m sure they’ve all been waiting for.
I draw in a slow breath and let it out, then I begin. “I’m sure Caleb didn’t expect such a large turnout or he might have planned something a bit more grandiose.” I pause as a few people chuckle and I try to catch my breath. “But that’s the way Caleb was, always doing amazingly huge things when no one was looking. He once planned a scavenger hunt for me. It was my sixteenth birthday, so he took me on a tour of our firsts. The first time he saw me in Mr. Wentz’s biology classroom. The first time he realized he had a crush on me in Mr. Warner’s algebra class. The first time we spoke to each other in my hospital room. And the scavenger hunt ended on my front doorstep, the location of our first kiss. At each location, there was a gift for me and I later found out he had borrowed money from his boss to buy some of those gifts. I should have known then that Caleb would stop at nothing to give me everything.”
A surge of raw emotion overcomes me and I stop for a couple of minutes to collect myself. “Caleb wasn’t just my boyfriend, he was my caregiver, my study partner, my number-one distraction, my reality check, and my belly laugh when I needed it most. He was the one person who always knew exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. So it doesn’t surprise me at all that Caleb knew I would need his heart just as much in his death as I needed it when he was alive.”
The sobbing in the crowd is almost unbearable. I take a few deep breaths and wipe my face before I continue.
“But if there is anything I think Caleb would most want to be remembered for, I don’t think it would be the priceless gift of life he gave to me. I think Caleb would want to be remembered as part of a family, part of your family and mine… So Caleb, wherever you are, thank you for letting me be a part of your family.”
I can’t escape the podium any faster. The humidity is suffocating and the chest-racking sobs aren’t making it any easier to breathe. My dad wraps his arm around my waist and my feet float over the grass as he carries me toward the car. As I collapse into the backseat, I’m surprised to find Ryder sitting back there. He’s wearing a handsome dark-gray suit and his eyes are rimmed pink from crying.
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
“I asked your mom and she said it was okay to ride with you. Is that okay?”
“Of course it is.”
I stretch my arms out to give him a hug and his nostrils flare as tears spill over his cheeks. He carefully wraps his arms around my waist and we hold each other the whole ride home. By the time my dad pulls the car into the driveway, Chris’s Jaguar is already parked on the curb waiting for us.
I kiss Ryder’s forehead and slowly let him go. “We’re home.”
He looks up at me with those brown eyes that stunned me when I first saw them almost three months ago. “Are you coming back? I asked my dad and he said he doesn’t know.”
“I don’t know, Ryder. I’m really behind on my classes right now because of all that time in the hospital. I don’t think I can take any more time off. But I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”
“Maybe you should take the semester off,” my mom says, twisting around in the front seat to face me. “All the doctors said these first three to four months are the most critical time. You’re going to need a lot of rest. Maybe… Maybe you can spend some of that time with your siblings.”
Ryder’s eyes light up. I don’t want to tell him that I don’t know if I’ll ever be strong enough to visit him at their house in Cary or the beach house. The place where the best and worst summer of my life began and ended. The place where I got lost in the ocean and found myself in someone else’s eyes.
“Come on. Let’s go inside.”
Ryder looks a little bummed that I didn’t provide any input on my mom’s suggestion, but he quickly forgets once we’re inside the house. My mom serves lemonade and iced tea and we all gather in the living room to reminisce about Caleb. Claire sits in the armchair while Chris and Jimi sit on each arm. My parents and I sit on the sofa while Ryder and Junior sit on the floor next to the coffee table.
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��Remember when he let me drive his car?” Junior says, then he takes a sip of his lemonade.
“He did not,” Jimi says, shaking her head.
“Yes, he did. He told me not to tell you all ’cause you’d be mad. But he let me drive it down Sandpiper and back to the house. He said he’d never seen a fourteen-year-old drive with such panache. What’s panache?”
Chris shakes his head. “Something you definitely do not lack.”
Junior’s face splits into a wide smile. “Caleb knew me so well.”
“How about you, Ryder?” I ask. “What’s your favorite memory of Caleb?”
He shrugs. “The first time we sang in the library?”
“The first time?” Chris asks. “How about the time he taught you to play ‘Wild Horses’ on your guitar?”
“He never finished teaching me.”
For some reason, these words knock the breath out of me. I rise from the sofa and head for my bedroom, where I can grieve in private. I close the door behind me and curl up on my bed, trying to temper the anger building up inside me. The irrational voice in my head telling me I should be angry at Caleb for leaving me.
The knock at the door just annoys me. “I’m fine!”
The door opens a crack. “Abby?”
Claire’s voice is unexpected and only makes the tears come faster. “I’m fine, really.”
She pushes the door open a little wider so she can stick her head in. “Can I come in?”
I nod, then I sit up and grab a tissue out of the box on my nightstand. She enters and softly closes the door behind her. She has a fat manila envelope in one hand and I imagine it’s probably one more thing Caleb left behind that I won’t be able to look at.
She sits next to me on the bed and lays the envelope in her lap. “I can’t imagine what you must be going through.” She reaches across and grabs my hand and the softness of her hand is comforting. “But I was hoping that I could maybe share something with you that might make you feel less alone. You see, when I was very young, my mother homeschooled me. When she was feeling well, which was usually a few hours a day, she would teach me everything she could about reading, math, and science. In our tiny home in the woods, she was my teacher and my classmate, my mother and my friend. We were each other’s worlds, so when I lost her at the age of seven, I lost everything. And it took me a very, very long time to recover from that loss. It wasn’t until I met your father when I was fifteen that my life began to show any hope of a happy ending.”