by Leddy Harper
I didn’t want to say anything, knowing what would happen once the answer was out there. My eyes throbbed and burned, a sensation I hadn’t felt in a really long time. Panic, fear, resignation—they weren’t foreign emotions for me. But this tragic desperation over the very real possibility of her walking away was.
“Christmas.” I held my breath, waiting for realization to hit her.
She sat still, watching me with red-rimmed eyes and a tear-stained face. Then she shook her head, slow at first, then fast, her face scrunching and eyes squinting. “L–last Christmas? You got a new heart…last Christmas?”
I nodded, waiting for her to say the words all on her own.
“Here? At Regional?” She pushed off my lap and collapsed into a ball on the floor, covering her face with her hands. When I reached out to comfort her, she shot up, moving to stand in the middle of the room. Her gaze scanned the space around her, probably not focusing on anything as she put the pieces together. “Who’s heart did you get? Do you know?” Her chest rose and fell rapidly, frantically, as if she couldn’t breathe until she heard my answer. And knowing I had to give her one took away my ability to breathe.
I licked my lips and swallowed, my mouth suddenly becoming bone dry. I balled my hands into tight fists, hoping I could get them to stop shaking, but nothing worked. Anxiety filled every part of me. “They don’t ever tell you who the donor is, much like they never tell the families of the donors where their organs go. It creates this attachment to the other person that’s very unhealthy for all parties involved.”
“I know this already, Bentley. That’s not what I asked. I asked you if you know who the donor was.” She spun around and came to stand in front of me, her hands trembling violently at her sides. “Just answer the fucking question!”
I finally found enough strength to stand up and face her. My knees wobbled as I tried to stand tall, yet I felt so small staring into her eyes. “I only know because Luke was there that day, and he saw your family. He was there when the doctors discussed organ donation to you once she…once your mother was diagnosed brain dead.” I hated hearing those words out of my mouth, so clinical and sterile. And as soon as “brain dead” had been uttered, I wished I could’ve taken them back, knowing the devastation they’d cause her.
She took a small step back, her line of sight going straight to the center of my covered chest as if she had x-ray vision and could see through me. “So you’ve known… All along, you’ve known. My mother’s heart beats inside your chest, and yet you’ve never bothered to say anything to me about it.”
“I was going to. That night at the bar, I was there to find you.”
“I was the girl you were supposed to meet?” She backed away farther and shook her head, holding her hands out to keep me at a distance, keeping me from following her like I so desperately wanted to. “So everything I’ve thought was the truth has all been a lie. You stayed behind because you couldn’t deal with the fact that I was broken and devastated—my life was destroyed all so you could have a chance to live on. Am I getting this right?”
“That’s not true. I never asked for her to pass away. I never asked for her heart. That’s not fair to place the blame on me for things I can’t control.” I knew she’d be upset, hurt even, but I hadn’t thought of the possibility of this reaction. Of her faulting me for her mother’s death.
“No. You’re absolutely right, Bentley. You couldn’t control her dying or where her organs ended up. But you could’ve told me when you first met me. When I cried and cried about losing my mom for no reason. When I needed something to help explain why she had to leave me so soon. You could’ve said something then. That was an entire month ago. You’ve had so many opportunities to say something, but you never did.”
“You wouldn’t have been able to handle it.”
“Don’t tell me what I can and cannot handle!” She backed all the way up until her back hit the wall, her eyes going wide. “You’ve lied to me from the very beginning. How many times have I asked you about the night at the bar? Huh? How many times have I mentioned it being fate that you were there? And yet you went along with it. You led me to believe it was coincidence. Fate. But it never was. You knew all along. You planned it. And even after I found out about Luke, you still lied to me.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” I needed her to understand, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t see past her own devastation to see my reasons, and the helplessness of it all blinded me. My vision began to blur as my own tears began to fill my eyes. It’d been so long since I’d cried, but I couldn’t seem to hold it in at the thought of losing her.
“Do I seem okay to you now, Bentley? Do I?”
I took a hesitant step in her direction, but she moved to the side, closer to the door, like a caged animal. Dread filled me at the thought of her leaving like this, my insides quaking and trembling the same as the day I’d been given the devastating news about my heart—the day the doctors told me I more than likely wouldn’t live to see my next birthday. I never wanted it to happen this way. But there’d always been this nagging fear that when she finally did find out, she’d leave. She’d push me away and close herself off again.
I’d only hoped she’d be strong enough to handle the truth.
I was so wrong.
“The only truth you’ve ever spoken was when you talked about breaking my heart. Congratulations, Bentley…it’s officially broken. Irreparably broken into a million pieces. ” She practically ran out of the bedroom before I could stop her.
“Sarah! Wait!”
“No!” She stopped and spun around, causing me to freeze in place at the bedroom door. I watched her trembling form in the dark hallway. “I won’t give you another chance to lie to me. Don’t follow me this time. I mean it. Don’t call me. Don’t come over. Pretend like you don’t know me. I’m just the daughter of an anonymous heart donor. You don’t know me. And I sure as hell don’t know you.”
I wanted to go after her as she stormed out of the house, but I couldn’t seem to get my feet to move. My lungs weren’t working enough to properly give me the oxygen I needed, and I became dizzy, lightheaded. And for the first time in six months, I felt my heart skip a beat and tighten in my chest.
I knew all along that Sarah would break my heart.
I just wasn’t aware how literal my assumption would be.
Sarah
It hadn’t taken me long to fall for Bentley, and it took even less time to fall apart because of him. Confusion seemed to follow me when he was around, but now with him out of my life…I was simply lost. I wished for the confusion back, for the uncertainty of things, because I couldn’t find it in me to function anymore. My heart literally ached, feeling bruised and battered. My head became filled with questions instead of the heavy static that silenced everything around me. I used to be detached from life, now I was immersed in agony, feeling every single emotion I once shoved down and hid from the world—including myself.
Coming home that night, I stared into my room from the doorway, unable to fully walk in without becoming overwhelmed by the memories it held. My bed used to be a place I could let go and cry, get my pain out of my body and leave it on my pillowcase. It was my own personal prison where I could hide from the world and allow myself to grieve in private without lectures or sympathetic glances. Without whispers or judgment. But then Bentley had come along, and he invaded that space. He broke down the prison walls and allowed the sunshine in. Instead of my pillow, I had his chest. Instead of my tears, I released growing smiles and genuine laughter. Where I once laid my head and allowed the pain to take over, I had learned to replace the pain with hope and promise. I was no longer alone. I had Bentley.
Until I didn’t.
And staring into my room at that bed left me even more lost than ever before. Because now, I realized I was capable of hoping and dreaming and being happy. I did possess the ability to move forward and learn a new normal. But I didn’t know how many more “new normals
” I had in me to discover.
How many more times could I move forward?
How many times could I find myself alone and make it through to the other side?
I eventually gave up and went to the couch, spending the rest of the night staring up at the ceiling, questioning everything. My thoughts were jumbled and incomplete as they bounced around between Bentley and my mom. One minute, I’d be focused on the idea of fate, and the next, questioning the reasons for everything. Wondering how any of it made sense. But before I could form answers or connect any dots, another thought would flash through my mind, interrupting any progress I could’ve made with the last.
At some point throughout the night, I eventually fell asleep. But the moment I woke the following morning, before I could even open my eyes, the reality of it all hit me hard.
I’d lost everything. In gaining myself back, my ability to live and love again, I lost the person I discovered it with.
But then I somehow convinced myself that I must’ve misunderstood him. It had to have been a mistake and I’d heard him wrong. There was no way in hell the cousin of my sister’s ex-boyfriend would wind up with my dead mother’s heart beating inside his chest. That kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life. Maybe in a lame Hallmark movie or some sci-fi fiction, but not in reality. So there’s no way it really happened, and it had to have been a dream.
I ran around the house searching for my phone with my head in a heavy fog that wouldn’t lift. It almost felt as though I’d been out drinking all night and couldn’t quite remember the events, leading me once again to assume everything had been nothing more than a life-like dream. My cell phone was gone, so I used the house phone to call it, hoping it’d ring somewhere in a cushion or a pocket, but the line went straight to voicemail. I dug through the laundry hoping to find it dead in a pocket somewhere, but nothing.
Somehow, I’d ended up in my bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror. I had no idea how I’d gotten there or how long I’d been staring at my own reflection—it could’ve been seconds, minutes…but it felt more like days, weeks, months. Years, even. I stood there in Bentley’s clothes, his T-shirt and boxers. The makeup on my face was smeared and streaked in ugly black smudges down my cheeks. My eyes were red and puffy, dull and void of life. It reminded me of the night I’d finally seen what everyone else saw when they looked at me, the night Bentley had come to my rescue at the bar over by Luke’s house. But this time, I looked far worse. At least then I had somewhat of a mask on. Not now. Now, the pain and self-deprecation were worn in place of the fake smiles and made-up eyes. I could no longer hide behind the shield I’d set in place right after my mother’s death, because Bentley had destroyed that protection. He’d taken it away, and in its place, I’d used him. He’d been my shield, my crutch, my dependency for weeks. But now he was gone, and I had nothing.
I was a crippled person without assistance.
I was handicapped without insurance.
I was broken without a warranty.
Since I was already late to work due to my insistence to find my phone, I decided not to go in. I called Marlo, knowing she’d be pissed because it was short notice and someone would have to take my clients, but I didn’t have any other choice. Had I gone into work, there was a very good chance someone would leave sporting a shaved head or black hair. I told her I was up sick all night and had overslept. The disappointment was heard in her retort, but she said she understood and told me to get some rest. I agreed, even though I knew rest would never come.
Somehow, in my jumbled mind, I thought locking myself away in my house, wearing Bentley’s clothes, surrounded by the memories of his existence would be okay. But that rationalization quickly proved to be false. I wanted my phone, needing to call him, but I couldn’t. After searching for it, I remembered I’d left it over at his house the night before, forgetting all about it and my clothes as I flew out of there. I couldn’t call him on the home phone because I hadn’t memorized his phone number. I wanted to drive over there to see him, to let him tell me that it was all a big misunderstanding, but I couldn’t find my keys. It was as if the universe stood in my way.
Fate decided to cock-block me in the worst way imaginable.
By the evening, after spending all day staring at blank walls, coming up with a thousand different excuses as to why this had happened in the hopes of finding one reason for it all to make sense, I finally snapped. I couldn’t sit around any longer replaying the same things in my head. So I wandered into the kitchen where the soft hum of the refrigerator caught my attention.
It all happened so fast.
One minute, I found myself staring at the appliance, the humming sound growing louder and louder in the small room until it became an angry buzzing noise in my ears, filling my head with a high-pitch ring that reverberated throughout my entire body and left me with a metallic taste in my mouth. I must’ve thought about getting a Coke to rid the taste of metal from my tongue, because the next thing I knew, I stood in front of the fridge with the door open, the cold air seeping out onto the floor and covering my bare feet. It was then that I realized how overheated my flesh was, how hot my insides were, as if I were standing in font of a blazing inferno instead of a cold refrigerator. My eyes burned, my top lip felt like I had flames coming out of my nose like a fire-breathing dragon, and a stabbing sensation attacked my palms, like tens of thousands of needles punctured the skin. I glanced down at my hands, studying them in the light from the inside of the fridge, trying to find where the pain was coming from, but seeing nothing.
That’s when the edges of my vision turned dark and fuzzy. I had so much pain on the inside where no one could see it. I could tell everyone how I felt, use analogies and draw pictures of the black hole that had consumed me. But no one would ever understand. The internal ache had become a monster, feasting on anything left inside. It devoured my happiness, my hopes, my dreams; it demolished my ambitions, my ability to connect with others…my capability to feel. And once the monster had engulfed everything I had on the inside, leaving me with nothing left, it mocked me in the form of my outer appearance. It stared into my empty eyes and pointed to my hollow chest, and then laughed, manically. I screamed back, yelled and shouted without thought as to what came out. My arms flailed around me, my hands grabbing at anything in reach, latching on to anything I could find.
Noises filled my head. First it was crazy laughter, the kind you’d hear from someone losing their mind. Then angry screams, frustrated groans, glass breaking. So many sounds filled the dark space around me—some louder than others, some coming from further away. And then suddenly, they were all muted. For a moment, everything vanished, the sounds, the screams, the laughter were all gone. Nothing but ringing silence remained until the soft hum returned. With it came muffled cries, disheartened whimpers, and gut-wrenching sobs.
I opened my eyes, realizing for the first time that I’d shut them, trapping me in my own darkness. And I wished I’d kept them closed. Nothing remained on the shelves in the fridge, everything having been thrown to the floor around where I sat in a crumpled mess. Deep sobs tore through me, leaving my chest feeling like a wrecking ball had slammed into it. My ribcage didn’t just feel bruised and beaten, but as if every single one of my bones had been snapped in half, stabbing me in my heart and puncturing my lungs. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t stop crying, and the involuntary need to break something wouldn’t go away.
The house phone started to ring, but all I could do was stare at it, focusing on the shrill sound instead of the mess I sat in the middle of. It stopped and then started again. Eventually, after what must’ve been the fifth call, I managed to pull myself off the floor and make it to the sink where I washed my face with cold water. When I turned around and observed the destruction in the kitchen, I realized what I’d done. Everything on the floor had been Bentley’s, the things he’d bought and kept at the house for those weeks he’d stayed with me.
The phone rang again, but this time, I answered
it. Dazed and in a fog, I picked up the receiver. It felt like everything was happening around me, and I was nothing more than a witness to it all. So disconnected and numb.
“What’s going on, Sarah?” Bree’s panicked voice came through the line.
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me. I know when something is wrong. I can hear it in your voice. I’ve heard it for six months now.”
“If you know what is wrong, why are you asking?”
A shaky sigh came from her end of the line before she said, “I’m on my way over. You can push me away all you want, but I won’t allow this to happen again. I won’t sit back and watch you die.”
Without another word, I ended the call. I leaned my back against the counter and stared mindlessly at the remnants Bentley’s food, knowing I needed to clean it up before Bree arrived, but not having enough momentum to do so. My gaze moved from the broken carton of eggs that had seeped into the grout to the spilt container of cashew milk. Grilled chicken and broccoli lay between shards of the glass bowl it’d been stored in. I wanted to pick up the zucchini and use it to smash something. I didn’t care what I broke, I just felt the intense need to demolish more. It was strange because I didn’t feel rage—I wasn’t consumed with adrenaline like you’d expect to feel when wanting to destroy things. Instead, everything was serene. Silent rage. The calm before the storm. That’s what this was.
Before I made any move to destroy anything else, the front door opened. I knew it was Bree, but I didn’t care if it’d been a serial killer on the run who’d found his way into my home. Nothing mattered anymore.
“Try telling me now that nothing is wrong,” Bree said from the entryway to the kitchen. It sounded like she’d tried to be stern, adamant in her purpose and justified in her worry over me, but her voice trembled beneath the strong exterior she tried to exude.
“Next time I see a mess in your house, I’ll make sure to accuse you of going through something.” I turned my head and locked eyes with my sister, losing my breath at the complete terror in her wide, light-colored eyes. “It’s only a mess. It can be cleaned up.”