In a Heartbeat

by Loretta Ellsworth

My heart skipped a beat. “Mrs. Lindeman?”

  She walked to the other side of the bed. “You’re going home today?”

  I nodded. My throat felt dry.

  “That’s wonderful. We’ve been praying for you.”

  Was she here because she felt guilty? She seemed so restrained, like I imagined the Queen of England would be if I met her. It was then that I noticed her round belly.

  “You’re pregnant,” I blurted out.

  She put a hand on her stomach. “Yes. I’m due in April.”

  I shook my head. “Eagan didn’t know.”

  Mrs. Lindeman took a step back. “How did you know that?”

  “I don’t know,” I stammered. “I just knew.”

  She tilted her head to one side and softly rubbed her stomach. “I tried to tell Eagan the day she died.”

  That was something I didn’t know.

  “Scott told me about the chair. He said you knew about that too.”

  “Yes,” I said in a whisper.

  “I had a dream the other night,” she said. “Eagan was there. It was … strange. When I awoke, I wasn’t sure if I’d dreamed it or if it really happened.”

  I knew all about strange dreams.

  “She came to me in the dream. But she looked different.”

  I held my breath and closed my eyes as a cinnamon and rust–colored horse galloped through my mind. “What did she look like?”

  Mrs. Lindeman walked around the bed and stood in front of me, studying me. “She looked like a girl I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t until I got up close that I realized she was my daughter. I thought, ‘How silly.’ How could a mother not recognize her own daughter? Then she spoke to me. I heard her voice, but it was coming from this other girl.”

  “Who?” I whispered. Her eyes held so much grief that it was hard to look at her. Was that how my mom would have looked if I’d died?

  “You. She looked just like you.”

  I blew out a breath, letting her words sink in. “I’m so sorry,” I finally said, because there was nothing else I could say. I wished I could take away that pain. I held back the tears in my own eyes as hers flowed down her cheeks. Could she ever forgive me for taking her daughter’s heart?

  Mr. Lindeman was at the door. He watched his wife from behind her, his hands held out in a way that looked as if he was ready to run and catch her if she collapsed.

  She sighed. “We had a … difficult relationship. I’m not sure she always knew how much I loved her.

  “She was strong,” she said. “Not only physically. She had this focus when skating that was amazing. I don’t know how she made that mistake and hit her head. But Eagan always knew something the rest of us didn’t. I believe she knew she’d die young.”

  Mrs. Lindeman put her hand out and leaned forward, hesitant. “May I listen?”

  I nodded.

  She touched my heart for a few seconds, then put her ear on my chest and listened. The fragrance of her stiff hair spray and her soapy skin smell made my heart quicken. After a moment she pulled back, cocked her head, and nodded as though she recognized the beat.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s her heartbeat.”

  She looked up at me. “I’m sorry I couldn’t see you sooner after you drove all that way.” She kissed her palm and laid it on my heart again. “And I’m sorry for any pain I caused you, my darling.”

  Finally, she reached out to me. I hugged her, feeling the weight of her growing child press into me. The tears that I’d been holding back came anyway.

  When she let go, Mr. Lindeman pulled his wife into his arms. She sobbed silently. “Eagan knew that you loved her, Cheryl,” he assured her in a quiet voice. “She always knew.”

  I was released from the hospital later that afternoon, and we headed home to Minnesota shortly after that. I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes as the Milwaukee suburbs thinned out to farmland.

  I’d thought Eagan had sent me here to help her mom get through her grief. But maybe it was for me. I had to learn to accept her precious gift. I was learning to bear the guilt over the fact that someone else’s tragedy had become my good fortune. And there was a price to that good fortune. I’d always feel a responsibility to make my life worthwhile.

  Someday I’d come back for another visit. Mrs. Lindeman had invited me. She’d given me a picture of Eagan. But when I got better, the first thing I planned to do was to learn how to skate and ride horses.

  Mom and Dad talked softly in the front seat. Their voices felt like a warm blanket, reassuring and comforting. Soon I was asleep.

  I was galloping across a grassy pasture on the horse from my dream. Eagan was with me. This time she was right behind me, holding on to my waist as we rode together.

  I was leading us now, on this magnificent horse that I knew I’d spend years trying to capture on paper. I would draw us on the horse, riding through woods and prairies and over high mountains and into the future.

  My eyelids fluttered as I heard Mom’s voice carry to the backseat. “I can’t believe the nerve of that reporter at the press conference. He asked me if we’d known all the problems in store for Amelia, would we still have gone through with the transplant.”

  “What’d you say?” Dad asked.

  But it was me who answered him. “In a heartbeat.”

  37

  EAGAN

  Miki takes my hand. “We’re ready for you now.”

  “Ready?” I glance at my life. The fog is a mere shadow in the distance. There’s a small cloud hanging over my head, a leftover remnant. I look up at it.

  Miki motions toward the hill. “I have a surprise.” She looks as if she wants to blow at the cloud, as though she could break it up with a single breath.

  She leads me over the hill to, of all things, a skating rink. The rink is as smooth as glass, like after a Zamboni slide. I bend down to touch it. Not too hard, like so many of the hockey rinks I’d skated on. This one has some give to it.

  Best of all, there are no boards around the rink, just a flat edging that stretches out to stands full of people. So many people!

  I look down. I’m still wearing my competition dress, the same plum-colored one with the sparkling rhinestones, and it’s no longer gray. I’m also wearing my skates. My hair feels tight against my head. I know what I’m supposed to do. I mean, I may be dead, but I’m not dense.

  A woman in the front row of the audience waves at me. “Eagan. Over here.”

  It’s Grandma, but she hardly resembles the grandma I remember, the one I visited in the hospital, who was thin and worn-out and so wrinkly. Her silver hair curls around her shoulders, and her cheeks are pink and vibrant. She’s wearing that same purple dress that she was buried in. I skate over to her.

  She embraces me and tears fill her eyes. “I’ve missed you. You’re so grown-up and beautiful!”

  Grandma still smells like her favorite perfume, Chanel No. 5.

  “Is it really you, Grandma?”

  “Do you remember when I brought you to skating practice when you were nine? How I kept screaming because I thought the other skaters were going to run into you?”

  “Yeah. You said we looked like go-carts going in a million different directions.”

  She hugs me again. “It’s me, darling. And I can’t wait to see you skate again.”

  “Grandma, there’s something you should know. The last time I skated I actually did run into something: the wall.”

  She pats my outfit. “No matter. I’m sure you’ll do just fine today.”

  Okay. No pressure. I skate to the middle and take my pose. I close my eyes as I wait for the music to start, gathering my focus toward the execution of a program I’ve practiced so much it’s ingrained into every cell of my body. This is a gift, a chance to do it right, and there is no way I want to mess up again.

  It’s dark except for a spotlight circling me. The music starts and I turn and skate. I don’t have to think now. I skate a pass around the rink and throw my double comb
ination. A burst of applause fills the rink. I put out my arms and position my fingers. Every move aligns with the music, as though it’s connected.

  My double axel is next. I push off, and I know in that instant of pushing off that I will land it. And I do. More cheers and applause.

  The corner is approaching, the one where I launch my triple lutz, the jump where you’re turned backward and you can’t see the boards. Even though I know there aren’t any boards in this rink, I’m nervous. This was the jump that killed me.

  So I think about how I landed that jump in warm-ups the night I died. I remember landing it hundreds of times in practice. And I let go of all the fear and doubt. I let my body do what it knows how to do. I throw the most graceful triple lutz in the history of skating. I know because I feel it when I’m rotating, when I’m in the air, and when I land and bring my arms up.

  The crowd erupts.

  I make the rest of my jumps and my spins. And before I know it, my program is over. I curtsy to the cheering audience. They give me a standing ovation.

  “Thank you,” I say, and wave at them all.

  Grandma is clapping hard. “That’s my granddaughter!” she yells.

  “You were wonderful.” Miki has a huge smile that radiates from her shining face.

  “Thanks.” Grandma comes over and hugs me, and behind her is Mr. Swanson, who used to live across the street from us. I see other people who look familiar. They’re all dead, of course. But they’re not ashen gray, and now, neither am I.

  The gray fog is behind me now, like a storm that’s passed. As we exit the stadium, the people head down the grassy hill toward a bright light, talking excitedly. I put my hand up to block the brightness penetrating my eyes, but it doesn’t seem to bother anyone else. A man picks a flower along the way. Another flower pops up in the same space.

  Grandma is beside me. “Are you ready?” she asks.

  That perfect voice calls out to us in song. The bright light is now a yellow haze. The people ahead of me fade into its golden rays.

  I look back to where my life had been.

  It’s always risky to think of letting go. That’s why this is the perfect ending. Nothing left to reconcile. I skated my best program yet. I just wish my friends and family could have seen me. At least Grandma was here.

  “I’m ready,” I say, and the three of us hold hands: me, Grandma, and Miki.

  “My two girls,” Grandma says with a catch in her voice.

  It occurs to me then that I might have known Miki before. “Did I know you when I was alive?” I ask her.

  She flashes a knowing grin. “In a way. We have a lot in common.” Then she lets go of my hand and dances toward the light just ahead of us. She has a natural gracefulness about her. She’d make a good skater.

  “I don’t feel dead,” I tell Grandma.

  “You’re not. You’re alive in a different way than before.”

  The meadow blends into the radiant softness. “This better be good.”

  Grandma squeezes my hand. “Trust me. It is.”

  I think of Mom and Dad, Grandpa, Kelly, Jasmine, Scott, and all my friends. I remember Amelia, the girl my heart saved, the same heart that led her back to Mom for me. She doesn’t know it, but we saved each other.

  “Don’t worry. You’re not leaving them,” Grandma says. “We always watch over those we love.”

  “Do you think they know that?”

  Grandma smiles and raises one eyebrow. “Not if we’re careful.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  If you think a book is a solitary effort, take a look at the following list. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to them all:

  To Gary Gustafson and Seth Jacobson, who shared their transplant stories with me, and to Sara Anderson and Erin Ellsworth for referring them to me; to Ann Eidson and the St. Paul Figure Skating Club; to Maria Sperduto, Katie Berry, Roxanne and Rachel Rice, Lynn Christie, and Alana and Jillian, for imparting their skating experiences, teaching me the lingo, and helping me with all things skating related; to Monica Barnes for being my constant pillar. To my wonderful agent, Mary Cummings, for believing in this story as much as I did (maybe more), and to her associate, Betsy Amster. To my editor extraordinaire, Emily Easton, and her associate editor, Stacy Cantor, for shining the light, and to the wonderful staff at Walker for everything.

  To Jane Resh Thomas and my Hamline University advisors—Carolyn Coman, Ron Koertge, Marsha Wilson Chall, and Marsha Qualey—their handprints are all over my manuscript. To the faculty and students in the MFA in the Writing for Children Program at Hamline University for their encouragement. And a special thank-you to Ann Schulman for her help and to the Pheasant writing group for their willingness to listen to crummy first drafts.

  I hope I didn’t forget anyone. Any mistakes in this manuscript are completely my own.

  AUTHOR NOTE

  I began this book shortly after my mother died of congestive heart failure and my nephew Jason was killed in a motorcycle accident. It started out as therapy—it kept me writing through my grief. Jason was an organ donor. I liked the idea that part of him still lived on in the world, not only in our memories, but in some unique way in those lives he touched as an organ donor.

  The theory of cellular memory suggests that memories are stored not only in the brain, but also in our cells. Although most scientists reject the notion of cellular memory, Dr. Paul Pearsall, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Hawaii and a member of the heart transplant study team at the University of Arizona, interviewed 150 individuals who had received a heart transplant. He found that many of the transplant recipients had acquired characteristics of their heart donors following surgery.

  Dr. Pearsall reported that one of the recipients was an eight-year-old girl who received the heart of another girl who’d been murdered. After the transplant, the recipient had nightmares of a man murdering her. The psychiatrist she saw reported that the images were so specific that they notified the police. She described the man, the place of the murder, and the weapon. They found the murderer based on her evidence.

  In her book Change of Heart, Claire Sylvia, a dancer, wrote about her heart and lung transplant and how she acquired the characteristics and cravings of her eighteen-year-old donor, including his favorites, beer and chicken nuggets, which she’d never had a taste for before.

  So much is still not understood about the connection between the heart and brain. Although none of the recipients I questioned had experienced this phenomenon, it raises interesting questions. And as a writer, I find there’s no better place to explore these questions than in fiction. I hope you’ve enjoyed my story.

  Copyright © 2010 by Loretta Ellsworth

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  First published in the United States of America in February 2010 by

  Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.

  E-book edition published in August 2010

  Visit Walker & Company’s Web site at www.bloomsburyteens.com

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to

  Permissions, Walker & Company, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Ellsworth, Loretta.

  In a heartbeat / Loretta Ellsworth.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Told in their separate voices, Eagan, who has died in a figure-skating accident, becomes a heart donor for Amelia, who then begins taking on some aspects of Eagan’s personality.

  ISBN: 978-0-8027-2068-9

  [1. Heart—Transplantation—Fiction. 2. Donation of organs, tissues, etc.—Fiction.

  3. Death—Fiction. 4. Personality—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.E4783Imt
2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009019196

  ISBN 978-0-8027-2245-4 (e-book)