Cold Hands, Warm Heart

by Jill Wolfson

  An important thing to know about hospitals: The staff doesn’t let you get away with being sick too long. As soon as possible after surgery, nurses get you up and walking, even if you make unladylike groans the entire time.

  Another thing: If you’re between ages five and eighteen, they insist that facing death is no excuse for remaining uneducated. At Children’s Hospital, there was a person whose entire job consisted of making lesson plans for kids who sleep twenty hours a day and can hardly remember their own name. The teacher’s name was Mrs Froid, which just so happens to mean “cold” in French.

  A week after the surgery, Mom was helping me back into bed after a walking tour of my hospital room when Mrs Froid appeared. I didn’t notice her at first because she was preceded by Joe the nurse (also not noticed), who was preceded by Milo in a wheelchair. I only had eyes for him.

  “Wow. You look great,” Milo said.

  Joe winked at me. “Slow down, Romeo. She’s got a new heart. Let’s not give it a full workout right off the bat.”

  Milo twisted around. “I meant she looks great in the medical sense.” Then to me: “You know, pink. You look pink.”

  “It’s okay, Romeo. She does look great.”

  “Pink!”

  “Really?” I asked. “You think I look great? Pink? You look…”

  “Still orange,” Milo filled in.

  “Pink or orange, we must keep our minds active,” Mrs Froid said. “The brain is a muscle. It atrophies if not exercised.”

  She then made a big deal about having Mom and Nurse Joe leave the room because they would be distractions from the educational process, which is what she called this visit. I considered it more or less a date. Mrs Froid was the unwanted chaperone.

  “Let’s get started.” She handed us each a copy of a novel. The cover showed Civil War soldiers at battle with a backdrop of the American flag. The Red Badge of Courage – 176 pages. At least it wasn’t too long. The bad news: The author had been dead a long time. The book wasn’t written in this century. It wasn’t even written in the last century.

  I read the back cover, and certain words jumped out at me: war, wounds, fear, pain, death.

  Ugh.

  Given my personal history with blood and suffering, I definitely would have preferred a romance. Did The Red Badge of Courage even have any girl characters? When I leafed through the pages, I noticed lots of underlining, hopefully some essay help from the previous critically ill person forced to read an American classic.

  Mrs Froid clapped her hands for attention, even though there were just two of us who were already perfectly attentive. Milo raised one eyebrow in my direction to make sure I noticed how ridiculous she was. We shared the moment, proving once again that the shortest distance between two people is a joke at someone else’s expense. After that, Mrs Froid went on for a while about the author’s life and what was happening in America at the time and the importance of the novel in the Western literary canon and the glory of the language.

  “Although the story is deceptively simple, it reveals the full horror of war, while delving deeply into the complexity and unpredictability of human behavior. That’s all I’ll say today. I don’t want to take away from your own reading.”

  It wouldn’t have been Mrs Froid if she left without giving us an assignment. “Read the first twenty pages. Think about the motivation of the major characters. Pay careful attention to motifs, symbols and so forth.”

  “SparkNotes?” I asked with hope.

  “No SparkNotes! But you may do your reading together today. Encourage each other.”

  Then Mrs Froid left me alone with Milo. This wasn’t going to be so intolerable after all. He tossed his Red Badge onto my bed. “It’s not a bad book.”

  “You read it before?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been around The Red Badge of Courage block two or three times. It’s on every reading list ever created. How did you manage to avoid it? Oh, right, you had the organ-shutting-down homework excuse.”

  “So, what’s the story about?”

  “This guy. His name is Henry something, but the author always calls him the youth. That’s so you don’t think the story is only about one person in one place at one particular time. It’s more universal.”

  “Like City Mouse or Catwoman.”

  “Sort of. Well, yeah, exactly, only this isn’t a comic book or folk tale. It’s realistic. The youth is a northerner who gets all caught up in the flag-waving and rah-rah of the times. To prove he’s a man and a real patriot, he goes against his mother’s wishes and enlists in the Union army.”

  “Very brave.”

  “That’s what he’s trying to prove. Only, it’s not so simple. He gets all twisted in his head wondering if he really is courageous.”

  “Of course he’s courageous! He volunteered.”

  “But how’s he going to act when the bullets start flying? Will he stand and fight, or will he sneak away? Will he be brave, or is he just a macho bullshitter? If you want to impress Froid, tell her that a major theme of the book is that courage takes different faces. People think they’re going to be brave, but when—”

  “Milo?”

  “What?”

  “Does the book … does it say anything about … let’s say someone goes through a really terrifying experience, something that most people in the world will never have to experience.”

  “Like the youth in the Civil War?”

  “Sort of. Only this isn’t something they volunteered for. They had no choice.”

  “People always have a choice.”

  “But the other choice was even worse. So does that count as being brave and courageous?”

  Milo thought awhile before answering. “I don’t see why not.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. That kind of bravery happens all the time.”

  “Like what?”

  “Remember the Egyptian death thing that I told you about? Each soul has to battle monsters and boiling lakes, no help from anyone, and whether you want to or not. No one asks for volunteers.”

  “I guess that does count as courage.”

  “Or how about this. Let’s say you’ve been out sick from school for weeks and you have to take a test anyway and you just suck it in and do the best you can. Bravery’s a state of mind.”

  I never thought about it like that. Bravery isn’t just what you’re doing. It’s the attitude when you’re doing it. I came up with my own example then, something I wanted to talk about, even though Milo might not. I was worried about my timing. I might ruin a perfectly good date by bringing up the wrong topic, which this probably was. Still, my mouth got the better of my romantic good sense.

  “Let’s say you’ve already been through one terrifying ordeal, and after you survived it, you make a really dumb mistake. Which, in my opinion, any human being could make, it’s nothing to be ashamed about. Only, because of the mistake, you have to go through the same ordeal all over again. Most people don’t have to do this even once. You have to do it twice! You don’t want to, but you’re doing it anyway.”

  When the space between Milo’s brows crinkled, I quickly added, “Wait! I don’t mean you you. I mean, the universal you. So what do you think?”

  He dropped his eyes; his lashes were so long. “This you person is still a total idiot. But I guess it counts as bravery, especially if you learned something from your mistakes and don’t bitch and moan about how unfair life is.”

  “Like you said, bravery is a state of mind.” I could have stopped there, remaining in the universal. That would have been the safe thing to do. But it didn’t feel right. “Milo, I think that you, you in the personal sense, you are very—”

  That was when Milo proved to me just how courageous he actually was. He finished my sentence and added something of his own: “brave. You, too, Dani. I think you are the most brave scared person I ever met.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Dear Big Girl,

  Do you like your new heart?

 
Check one

  A poem about my new kidney

  Roses are red

  Violets are blue

  What color are kidneys?

  Purple and pink, too

  Knock knock who’s there?

  Kid

  Kid who?

  Kid knee.

  Get it?

  lOVE WENDY Write back

  Dear Big Girl,

  You should write back!!!!!!! Now!!!!!! My mom’s helping me write a letter to the family of the person who gave me my new kidneys. She says I have to do it! It was really nice of them to give me the kidneys. Here’s my letter so far

  Every time I pee, I think of you. Kidneys=Pee. THANKS FOR THE KIDNEYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Love, Wendy

  Things shaped like kidneys

  Beans

  Swimming Pool (no diving board)

  Oil Leak Under Daddy’s Car

  Cowboys with Hats

  Do you think I’m a good drawer & letter writer for 8? Check one

  Dear Big Girl,

  Are you drawing hearts in your letter to your heart family? If you need help, I’m good at it. Here’s a bunch of bee-u-ti-ful hearts you can use if you want.

  Dear Big Girl,

  When you finish your letter and I finish mine, we can put them in the same envelope because — GUESS WHAT?????????? — they are going to the same place!!!!!! Did you know that? It means we are sisters. I ASKED BUT my mom says you still can’t come live with us. I’ll nag her really, really hard. Write back, that’s an order!!!!!!!!!!!!! love, wendy

  NINETEEN

  IN BOOKS AND MOVIES, love stories always have two sides. The Before (the loneliness, the unnoticed sunsets) and the After (the hand-in-hand walks, the happily ever after). However, even though I personally have not yet experienced the full brunt of romance, I have seen things from Mom’s perspective, starting with the wannabe rock star who was my father for about ten minutes and continuing through a whole flowchart of boyfriends. I can talk from that. Love is definitely more complicated.

  The same holds true for organ transplants. Unlike the simple, rosy version handed out to the general public, After is not all perfect blood pressure and pink cheeks and going wild at school dances. Cutting a person open and inserting someone else’s heart into her chest cavity is not the end of the story. In many ways, it’s just the beginning.

  Nurse Brianna stood before me with a line of pills of many shapes, sizes and colors on a shiny silver tray, like a gourmet meal for astronauts. “Okay, Dani, what’s the name of this white pill, and how often do you need to take it?”

  Nurse Joe chimed in. “And what are the side effects? And what do you do if you notice a side effect?”

  Welcome to my post-op medication quiz. I was already a star pupil. For example, I knew that the little amber capsule in the silver foil packet would suppress my immune system. On the surface, that might not seem like a very good idea, given the amount of disgusting germs waiting for the travel opportunity of a sneeze or a French kiss. Most health-conscious people stuff themselves with echinacea to bolster their immune system. I, however, needed to take pills to shut mine down. Left to itself, my body would attack the new heart for the stranger that it was.

  Unfortunately, though, a suppressed immune system doesn’t discriminate very well. Along with not rejecting the heart, my body now didn’t reject all sorts of bacteria and viruses. They could blossom into mouth sores and yeast that grows like white, hairy fuzz on my tongue. Lovely and tasty. Therefore, I also needed to take antibiotics (yellow pill, three times a day).

  (One bit of good news about a suppressed immune system: I was forever excused from cleaning the toxic waste in a kitty litter box. Doctor’s orders. That might come in handy one day, if Mom ever lets me get a cat.)

  All told, there were twenty-two pills in my buffet. Some I took every day, some on a schedule that made a school timetable seem simple to follow. The white pill was for … was for…

  Like the hosts of a TV game show, the nurses waited for my answer with round, enthusiastic eyes. I looked for help in Mom’s direction. She pretended to knit while trying to slip me the answer. She mouthed something that looked like star … what? Star oink?

  “No cheating!” Brianna insisted. “You both have to know the drug regimen. It’s important.” She handed the white pill to me, along with a glass of water. I swallowed.

  I got it. Star oink. Steroid.

  “Possible medical side effects from steroids,” I recited from memory. “Puffy, round face, bone weakening, obesity, stretch marks, increased cholesterol, muscle weakness and mood swings.”

  “Possible side effects. And they’re only temporary,” Brianna assured me. “After a while, the doctor will taper down on the pills.”

  “Before you know it,” Mom insisted.

  “And let’s not forget increased hair growth and acne from the cyclosporine,” I added.

  I was already starting to see all the dreaded side effects when I looked in the mirror. I had chipmunk cheeks. Tufts of hair sprouted on my upper lip and chin. Dark, coarse hair was filling in the space between my eyebrows faster than tweezers could eliminate them. Long, masculine hair snaked around my arms and legs. I had hair growing long and thick and black in all the exact places a girl my age doesn’t want hair. I could hardly wait for the stretch marks.

  Dear Donor Family,

  How are you?

  Dear Donor Family,

  Just a note to tell you how much I’m enjoying the heart DUMB, DUMB, DUMB

  Dear Donor Family,

  I don’t know why you’d want a letter from me since I’m alive and someone you love is dead and you don’t know me and can’t possibly care about me, so what could I say that would mean anything to you? You probably want to take this letter and rip it into a million pieces and then burn the pieces. Go ahead! Be my guest! I totally understand.

  “Mom, should I really write a letter to the family?”

  “Only if you want to.”

  “What should I say?”

  “What do you want to say?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing seems right. What if things were the opposite?”

  “Meaning?”

  “If I was the one who died? If you gave away my heart?”

  Mom’s hands tightened around her knitting needles. “Dani, I don’t want to go to that scenario right now.”

  “Come on, Beth! Would you want to get a letter from the person with my heart?”

  “Maybe. No. Yes. I guess I would.”

  “What would you want it to say?”

  “Not ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ Definitely not that. I would have had my fill of that. So many well-meaning people not knowing what to say, so they all say the same thing.”

  “Then what, Mom?”

  “Nothing clichéd, that’s for sure.” She finished her row. “I guess I’d just want to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “About you. Who you are. From the beginning.”

  Dear Donor Family,

  To begin at the beginning of me, I was born with a messed-up heart.

  My name is Danielle, only everyone calls me Dani. I just turned fifteen and a half, and I have no body piercings.

  I’m in tenth grade.

  On my last report card, I got one A, three Bs and no Cs, Ds or Fs.

  I live in an apartment with my mom.

  The color scheme of my bedroom is pink and orange, which isn’t as clashy as it sounds.

  I wear a size six and a half shoe.

  My hair is usually long, only now it’s short and unflattering because it’s easier to take care of in the hospital.

  I’m currently reading THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, an American classic. It’s better than I thought, but you can get along just fine in life if you never read it.

  I enjoy talking to interesting people who know about things that I don’t, and soon, I hope to travel and have lots of adventures.

  I phoned Milo and read the letter to him. “It’s only a first d
raft. What do you think? Honestly.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “It’s kind of obitty.”

  “Huh?”

  “Like an obit, obituary. You were born and go to school and live here, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Really? An obit? I was trying for a MySpace feel. An obit probably isn’t in the best taste.”

  “Nothing wrong with an obit, as long as it’s interesting. No offense or anything, but yours is a snore. I’ve written plenty of obits.”

  “For friends who died? I’m sorry.”

  “No, obits for myself. It’s kind of a hobby. Hold on.”

  Papers rustled. Milo whistling, then back on the line. “Here’s the first one I ever wrote. I must have been around eight.”

  “You still have it?”

  “I saved them all. Given my liver situation, I never knew when an obit would come in handy. Ready? Milo Nutley, billionaire inventor of the Tasty Milo Nut, surfing and spelling champion, mourned by millions.”

  “What’s a Milo Nut?”

  “No such thing. It’s the nickname from hell that started in first grade. I couldn’t get rid of it. Plus, I never surfed in my life and my spelling sucks. God, I was a weird little kid.”

  “All little kids are weird.”

  “Here’s another. Fifth grade: Milo Nutley, person of mystery, dead before his time. What does that even mean? If you’re dead, that’s your time to be dead, right? How can it be before your time? What was I thinking? Oh, man, listen to this. I forgot about this one: Milo Nutley, a seventh-grader at Bayside Middle School, died today using his tenth-degree black-belt skills to save the entire school from certain annihilation by a deranged karate expert from Planet Xendo. See what I mean about obits? They have to be interesting.”

  “But, Milo, those aren’t true.”