A Heartbeat Away

by Harry Kraus

  Surgery. The loss of a breast.

  Her mother didn’t feel sexy anymore.

  And it mattered to Tori.

  There were other losses.

  Her mother’s auburn hair.

  A continuous dropping of weight. The fat fell from her hips. Yes, even from the butt she’d always complained was impossible to downsize, but in the end, she looked like a boy. Gangly. All knuckles and knobs. Bones sticking up under a thin tent of skin like moles poking up in a backyard.

  More surgery. Cutting away a chest recurrence.

  Dianne Taylor was sexless. No breast. No curves. No sexy auburn hair.

  Tori cursed her mother’s cancer every day.

  And every other day: the God who allowed it to steal her away. In the end, when she found out that the surgeon had erred, warm fuzzy emotions became suspect to Tori because she feared another false hope. She grew into a skeptical, closed adult, suspect of any real hope, knowing the hammer of truth may lurk just around the bend.

  By the time she finished telling her mother’s story, Tori was glad she hadn’t bothered with mascara. She blew her nose and looked up through watery eyes. “I’m a mess.”

  “Far from it,” Phin said.

  He stayed quiet throughout her story. Once, he reached his hand out and simply let it rest on hers for a moment.

  She didn’t mind the rough calluses.

  “You still blame God?”

  Tori stared off, above and beyond the social worker. “I don’t think about it much anymore. But I never went to church after that either.” She hesitated, then added, “I guess I’m mad because he didn’t answer my prayers to take away the pain.”

  “God had an interesting answer to human suffering.”

  Tori didn’t respond. When Phin stayed quiet, she shifted in her hospital bed. “Well, aren’t you going to continue?”

  “If you want,” he said, with the corners of his mouth hinting at a smile. “God doesn’t always deliver us from pain. God joined us in human suffering by coming as a man and experiencing pain and death for himself.”

  “You sound like Charlotte.”

  “She must be a good friend.”

  “She’s gullible. Believes in fairy tales.” Tori dabbed her eyes again. “I take a scientific approach. Pain is an important message, our body’s way of telling us something is wrong. It’s my job to figure out what is wrong and offer a solution.” She smiled. “Fortunately, it’s something I’m good at.”

  “Would you have become a surgeon if it wasn’t for your mother’s story?”

  “Probably not. Until she got sick, I was planning on an Air Force career like my father. I wanted to be a helicopter pilot.”

  “Ever thought that God may have allowed some of this because he wanted you to do the good work that you do?”

  “Okay, that’s too Pollyanna for me. He could have just had me read an article in a magazine about cancer research or something. Why’d he have to take my mother away?”

  “I doubt you’d have listened. As it was, he had your attention.” He reached for her hand. “You’ll probably never have an answer to the why questions until you get to heaven. For now, we have to comfort ourselves that while God doesn’t always deliver us from pain, he joined us in it by taking on human flesh.”

  She let his words settle. Water filtering slowly into the sand of her mind. For some reason, she didn’t fight. For the first time in a long time, she allowed herself to consider that Phin might be right. And if not right, at least his sincerity was touching.

  After a minute, she turned her hand over in his so that they could rest palm to palm. “Can I change the subject?”

  “Sure.” He smiled. “I think we’re making progress.”

  “Oh, great. Here it seemed like we were just two friends talking about life and I almost forgot that I’m in counseling.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. We can be friends.”

  She nodded. “Okay. I think I know where my heart came from.”

  11

  Two days later, after Tori’s discharge, Phin came to see her at Charlotte’s place. On an old oak kitchen table, he spread out copies of the news clippings he’d photocopied and printed from online sources.

  Charlotte looked on with a long nose over a mug of Earl Grey tea. “Are you sure you want to do this? They protect the identity of donors for a reason.”

  Tori leaned forward, looking at an article from the Baltimore Sun. “No, I’m not really sure.” She picked up the article. “But I think I need to.”

  Phin shrugged. “We’ll have to be careful. Donor families can be pretty funny about this stuff.”

  Tori looked up. “Funny?”

  “We once had a white family upset that their daughter’s heart was given to a black girl.”

  Charlotte set down her mug. Too hard. She huffed and picked up a paper towel to catch the spill. “Intolerance like that needs to be exposed.”

  “I’m just saying …,” Phin said, his voice trailing off.

  “What?”

  “Let’s say we start digging and actually find out who owned that heart of yours before you did. Aren’t there some things you might not want to know?”

  “That’s a risk I’m willing to take to try to make some sense of all this.”

  “Maybe the memories just represent fears your donor had that weren’t real. You know, like a fear of fire or falling and you just dream about it because you’re afraid.”

  “So we just need to ask some questions,” Tori said. “But I think the memories mean more than that. I can’t get the number three one six out of my mind.” She shook her head and stared at the ceiling. “I have the distinct memory of my donor telling me to remember it. I think it’s the key to unlocking the mystery of her death.”

  Tori carefully wrote in block numbers: “316.” She took the paper and stuck it to the refrigerator with a Papa John’s Pizza magnet. “There. What it means, I don’t know.”

  Phin scratched his head. “An address? A box number of some sort?”

  Charlotte sat down. “What if your donor was a criminal? Is that something you really want to know?”

  Tori nodded. “I’m alive because of her.” She looked up and traded glances with her friends. “I’m not sure you can get this, but I feel I’m not really going to understand who I am until I know whose heart this was.”

  Phin shook his head. “You aren’t defined by a muscle. Your identity is so much more. Think of the people you’ve helped. That’s who you are.”

  “That’s who I was. I feel different now.”

  Phin picked up an article to review. “You weren’t responsible for what happened to your donor. You just happened to be the right tissue type.”

  “Look at this,” Tori said, writing down a name from a clipping. “A twenty-year-old female by the name of Charlene McDonald was in an accident on the night before my transplant. She was taken to Baltimore City Hospital.”

  “The same hospital where the donor team flew to get your heart.”

  “One and the same,” Tori said. “The article doesn’t say if she lived or died.” She read aloud from the article. “After a forty-minute extraction, McDonald was flown from the scene to Baltimore City Hospital with head and abdominal injuries.” She paused, holding the clipping in her hand.

  “There were four others.” Phin pushed a second article forward. “A stabbing victim downtown. Taken to Johns Hopkins. Says she died shortly after arrival in their ER.”

  Tori studied the paper. “Doesn’t mention transplant.”

  “Normally they wouldn’t. Privacy is a priority.”

  “Exactly,” Charlotte said. “These laws are in place to protect the families. They may not want to meet you.”

  “So maybe I won’t contact the
family. I could still go to the police and tell them what I know.”

  Charlotte sighed. “I bet that would go well. This whole thing is a stretch.”

  “So what am I supposed to do, just ignore the nightmares?” Tori pushed back from the table. “I think they mean something.”

  “Maybe they do mean something, child. What about your own past? Have you ever thought the dreams might be a distortion of something in your own childhood? Or maybe the fire is just a symbol.”

  “That’s crazy. No one ever tried to hurt me.”

  “Here’s one more,” Phin said. “Two jumpers from the fifth floor of an old apartment building in northeast Baltimore. Apparently the couple jumped to escape a fire.”

  “Does it say they died?”

  “Nope. Condition unknown. But the EMS took them to Baltimore City.”

  “Five stories. Not too many people survive that.” Tori tapped her pen against the tabletop. “So that makes four possibilities. One car accident, one stabbing, and two jumpers.” She scanned the article about the jumpers and studied the picture above the article. “Fire victim, Dakota Jones. The fact that they call her a victim sounds like she died.” Tori touched the picture of Dakota Jones and thought about her nightmares of fire and falling. “Dakota, did you give me your heart?”

  “There may be more,” Phin added. “At least three outlying counties fly their trauma into Baltimore City and the shock trauma unit. They may not have made the papers.”

  “So how do we find out?”

  “Do you know any of the docs at Baltimore City?”

  Tori shook her head.

  “What about other VCU docs? Someone is bound to know someone up there who can tell us something.”

  “Look, Phin, I’m not comfortable asking other VCU doctors to get involved. If it gets around that I’m snooping into this, it can’t be good. I’m already against the ropes on my career. I can’t risk another black mark.”

  “Okay, I’ll enter their names and do some Internet searches, and I know an ex-cop who had a transplant who may be able to help us out.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “Give me the names of the possible donors,” he said, snatching a pen from his shirt pocket.

  “Charlene McDonald was the accident victim.” Tori lifted another article. “The stabbing victim was Nancy Chan.” She slid the article toward Phin and lifted the third. “And the jumpers were Dakota Jones and …” Tori scanned the article. “Here it is. Christian Mitchell.”

  12

  Emily stepped slowly toward her farmhouse beneath a condemning night sky. The planned rendezvous had been a disaster. What was supposed to be a night of exploration and ecstasy had turned bitter. A separation. Hurt feelings and disgust.

  Her plan had failed. A rescue, once visible on the horizon, had vanished. She was stranded on the same island of tension.

  She entered through the back door, wincing at the squeaking sound of the screen door. She froze, standing barefoot in the kitchen.

  Above her, the floor creaked. She heard water running through the pipes. Her father must be in the bathroom. She tried to slow her breathing. It would not be pretty if he found her up.

  She waited, listening to the night sounds. A toilet flushed. The groan of weight on hardwood floors and the muffled creaking of her parents’ king-sized bed.

  She waited another five minutes, a century in the darkness, before climbing the stairs. She only needed to get to the top and across the hall to her room.

  At the top of the stairs, a lone figure stepped from the shadows. Her father, Billy Greene, stepped out of the darkness with a baseball bat.

  Emily gasped. “Oh, Daddy, you scared me.”

  “Emily?” He lowered the bat but continued forward. “Where have you been?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I was just getting a snack.”

  He shook his head and frowned. “Since when do you sleep like that?” He was inspecting her clothes. “You’ve been outside.”

  “I just wanted some air.”

  “You were meeting that boy, weren’t you?” He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her forward, stretching open the neck of her flannel shirt. “What’s this?” he said, reaching for her chest. “No bra!”

  “Daddy, I don’t sleep in—”

  “Emily, tell me the truth!”

  Emily pulled back, but her foot slipped onto the stairs. Her arms flailed in an attempt at balance, a fight that was hopeless against gravity. Her head struck the banister on the way down. Was I pushed?

  Bumping and rolling, she bounced down the wooden steps. Pain assaulted her, stabbing her foot. She gripped her ankle.

  “Billy?” It was her mother’s voice.

  Her father towered over her. “She snuck out to meet the neighbor boy.” He snapped on the lights. “Look how she’s dressed.”

  “Emily?” Her mother’s voice was soothing. Quickly, she came to her side.

  Emily stared at her right foot that pointed in an unnatural direction different from her knee.

  “Your foot!”

  Billy backed away. “She slipped. That’s all there was to it.”

  Emily seethed. “I was getting away from you!”

  “Oh, my baby,” Carolyn Greene cried. “We need to get you to a hospital.”

  Thirty minutes later, Dr. Dan Mitchell watched every suture over the shoulder of the ER physician on duty as he carefully reapproximated the edges of the wound on Christian’s right knee.

  The doctor cleared his throat. “Why didn’t you just stitch him up yourself?”

  “I don’t keep the instruments I need at home,” he said. “The supplies I had on hand I’ve already packed and sent back to Africa.”

  The doctor nodded and used his forearm to blot the perspiration from his forehead without contaminating his sterile gloves.

  “I hope I’m not making you nervous by watching.”

  Christian watched as the doctor rolled his eyes. “Of course not, sir.”

  The automatic doors to the entrance of Nassawadox General Hospital ER slid open. Christian looked up from his stretcher to see an orderly pushing Emily Greene in a wheelchair, flanked by her parents, Billy and Carolyn. He flailed to grab at the curtain beside him, desperately wanting to fling it closed.

  The doctor cut the last suture. “Just what were you doing outside at this hour anyway?”

  Christian ducked and propped a pillow in front of his face. “Long story,” he grunted.

  “Christian?” The voice was Emily’s.

  Busted.

  Mr. Greene’s face was the color of salmon. He pointed at Christian. “You?”

  Christian felt a tightness in his chest. “Hello, Mr. Greene.”

  Mr. Greene took a step toward Christian’s stretcher. Dan Mitchell stepped between the large man and his son. Mr. Greene looked at Dan. “Do you know what your boy was trying to do?” Mr. Greene’s right eye was twitching. “You want to know what happens to a boy who violates my daughter?”

  Christian held up his hands. “Nothing happened, sir. We just talked.”

  “That’s not the story my daughter gives. She said she had to fight you off, and you cut your leg when she pushed you away.”

  “Emily!” Christian shouted, his eyes wide with shock.

  Dan moved closer to his son. “He cut his leg jumping over a fence.”

  “Tell him, Emily,” Christian pleaded.

  “My daughter was assaulted by this young man. She hurt her ankle jumping from a hayloft, trying to get away from him.”

  Dan Mitchell stood his ground. “I’m going to ask you to leave us alone, Mr. Greene. We can sort this out later.”

  The doctor looked at the orderly. “Why don’t you put this wheelchair patient into the ortho room?”

/>   “No!” Emily’s voice was shrill. “I want to stay out here in the open.”

  Mr. Greene raised his voice. “Emily!”

  She began to cry. “I made it all up, Daddy. He didn’t assault me. Meeting in the barn was my idea.”

  Tori opened her eyes and fought for focus. More often than not since her transplant, she awoke with the premonition of fear. Someone wants me dead.

  Pain in her ankle brought with it the memory of falling down stairs. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. In spite of the early hour—5:30—there was noise in the kitchen below. She worked the stiffness out of her ankle and mused that her nightmares were encroaching on her reality. Must be the weather.

  She tested her feet on the floor, grabbed her robe, and walked to the kitchen. Charlotte was stirring a kettle of soup. The air was thick with the aroma of fried hamburger, onions, and green peppers.

  Friday was chili day at the soup kitchen.

  “Morning,” Tori mumbled as she lifted the coffee pot.

  “You’re up early.”

  She didn’t answer. Not that Charlotte had asked a question, but it had been inflected in her voice. Instead, Tori paused, touching the photocopies from the articles that Phin had brought over the evening before and still lay scattered on the kitchen table. She lifted the picture of Dakota Jones to her face. “I wonder if she has green eyes.”

  Charlotte opened the refrigerator and retrieved a block of cheddar cheese. “I’ve been thinking about your number here,” she said. “What it means.”

  “A clue in a mystery, I think.”

  “Or maybe it’s a message to you.”

  Tori sat at the table.

  Charlotte busied herself grating the cheddar.

  “Do I have to pry it out of you?”

  “You’ll think I’m preaching.”

  “It’s never stopped you before.”

  “For God so loved the world,” Charlotte began.

  Something quickened within Tori. She picked up the refrain. “That he gave his only begotten Son.”

  They continued together in unison. “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”