I pick up my copy of Dune and turn to page one, getting a head start. On my phone I watch the music video for “Nothing Else Matters.” I wonder if my heart sister has ever seen it. The camaraderie of the band looks like what Minnie and I once shared. It’s like a punch in the gut.
TEN
Before the sun is up, I hear the front door slam. My dad on his way to work. I roll over, fall back to sleep and don’t throw off my covers until past ten o’clock. I rub my bleary eyes. Last night I read two hundred pages of Dune before nodding off. Had my heart sister caught up? Had we been reading the exact same page, same paragraph—word, even—for a moment? Were we in sync?
I pull on a pair of pants.
A note on the kitchen counter from my dad says he’ll be late tonight. It’s the same note from a few days ago that he’s pulled from the recycling.
The sink brims with dishes. The couch is empty. I turn unthinkingly toward Minnie’s room, to the person I’ve always turned to, whether for help or to share a laugh. But she’s gone. I can only do my best to resuscitate her spirit.
I text Dennis and ask if he has time for his film shoot, to which I receive sixteen different emojis, all different forms of happiness. And then: How about my place?
I can’t blame him for wanting to change the location of the set after his interaction with my mom. He lives only a mile from where I’m going to meet with Insulin Junkie. I agree to shoot at his apartment in a half hour. I check to see if my mom needs anything. The dim light of her room drains the morning’s enthusiasm and sends me back to wash the dishes before leaving.
The streetcars run on time, but when I hop off, police-cruiser lights flash at a nearby intersection. I check my phone. The directions lead me back past the crowd of onlookers.
I swallow bile at the thought of someone else losing a sister, a mother, a friend. As I near, a break in the onlookers reveals a car straddling the pedestrian crosswalk. Heat burns through me, making it difficult to think. Each step toward the scene grows more difficult. An ambulance arrives. I look quickly at it and then away. A mistake. The scene is fresh. One car. One draped body. Head injuries make great donors. But I know it’s already too late for a donation—the donor must die in hospital to qualify. Does that make this easier or harder? I stride away, head turned, and knock into a bystander.
“Sorry,” I say and hurry down a side street to avoid the entire gawking nightmare of shattered bones and broken lives. I’m breathing hard, the detour taking me well off track. I’m late as I trudge the final steps to Dennis’s apartment, hefting my bag.
Dennis lives in a walk-up above a Starbucks. Paint peels from the white front door that opens without a key. Flyers are strewn across the tiny entranceway and beneath two mailboxes with signs that read NO KEY, please leave mail on floor. The mailboxes are stuffed anyway. Before my heart sister, I could count on one hand the number of interactions I’d had in the form of a letter.
I hammer on the door of apartment B.
Dennis throws it open. “Welcome to my place!”
The inside is a bit like Neo’s apartment in the movie The Matrix. A desk covered in computer gear. Hard drives everywhere. DVDs used like coasters for cans of Coke or dangling from window frames to catch the light and cast arcs of rainbows that remind me of raven feathers. A mattress strewn with clothes. A sink full of dishes. It stinks. But then I remember that this is a guy who, up until a couple of months ago, was dying of kidney failure. It’s impressive he was able to live alone at all. But finding a place to set up will be a challenge.
“I love it here!” says Dennis.
I grin.
“You’re amazing,” I say. I believe it. “Sorry I’m late. Car accident. Not me, but—”
He beams. “I cleared an area for the video.”
I can’t tell. “I’ll need a corner.”
Dennis retrieves a broom from the closet and starts sweeping dust balls. I relax in the mess. “Let’s do this,” I say.
EXT. CAMPFIRE - NIGHT
Around the campfire, MINNIE (16) sits with DENNIS (early 20s). She has her guitar across her knees and plucks absently at the strings without realizing she’s doing it. She grins at him, face aglow, sparks flying into the night.
MINNIE
What’s your name?
DENNIS
Dennis.
MINNIE
If you were an animal, what would you be?
DENNIS
I was just thinking about this!
“Right, because everyone has the answer on the tip of their tongue,” I say.
DENNIS
I do! An orangutan.
With long orange dreads.
(nodding)
My mom was Chinese Indonesian, from Sumatra. Fled here after the riots when her parents’ property was stolen. Orangutans were her favorite animals.
MINNIE
If I were to put you in a diorama, what would it look like?
DENNIS
Video games kept me sane while I was on the list, during all the dialysis. I really didn’t think I was going to make it off the transplant list. Maybe I’d be in a video game. No…wait…
Dennis shakes a hand at Minnie.
DENNIS (CONT’D)
I can do better. See, I was a barista too. An amazing one. I love coffee. Foam so smooth. My diorama would have a spotlight on me. Stars whipping past. As I make a cappuccino.
Dennis’s hand shakes again.
DENNIS (CONT’D)
Wait. I’m redefining, right? I don’t know. I’ve been sick for so long, that was what I had become. The best part about this is I can finally define myself without being defined by illness. Maybe there’s just this spotlight, and a director person just said, “Action!”
MINNIE
Cool. What would other people put in your diorama?
DENNIS
Whoa. You know what? I bet I’d be this sick gamer to them. They don’t know me, not physically. The ones who did, they’d see me as a kid in a hospital bed. But that’s over.
MINNIE
How can you make the diorama better?
Dennis’s chin tilts upward.
DENNIS
Orangutan me is gonna hang from the tree branches and swing and collect durian fruit or termites or whatever they eat and use my super-amazing fingers to code even faster. And when I’m done, I’m gonna donate my organs! And if I don’t die when they’re still useful, I’ll give money, because every moment from here on out I owe to the kind stranger who gave their organs to me. I owe you.
Dennis laughs.
His eyes sparkle with humor, and Minnie grins back.
FADE OUT.
“That was awesome,” I say when we’re done.
Dennis keeps nodding and nodding. “Orangutan me thinks everything is awesome.”
“Sorry you were sick for so long,” I say.
He shrugs. “Nothing I could do about it.”
“I worked in a coffee shop too,” I say. We grin at each other for a moment. “Thanks for this, but I gotta run. I’ve got a date with your kidney twin.”
“Really?” He launches from where he is kneeling on the floor. “I’m coming!”
“Sorry, but she doesn’t even really know I’m her kidney brother.”
Dennis grimaces and picks at a crust of something staining his shirt. “So how did you set it up?”
“She thinks I’m on the transplant list. That I’m nervous about the operation. I didn’t tell her that, but I did let her assume it. I only asked to meet.”
Dennis’s bouncy eagerness evaporates. Sticky silence takes its place. “You really need this video, huh?”
“My parents do,” I say.
He considers another moment and says, “Okay. Well, good luck, man. Let me know how it goes.”
I leave Dennis’s apartment feeling unsettled, the strap of the messenger bag biting hungrily into my shoulder. The emergency vehicles have left the accident scene now, and I reach the coffee shop in good time. The whole way th
ere I had the feeling that someone was watching me, but every time I turned around, there was no one to be found.
ELEVEN
I’d imagined someone with the profile name Insulin Junkie to look different than the older woman I see sipping a latte. She’s dressed like a grandmother but moves with the quick, sure movements of someone twenty years younger. I know her by the heavy jade earrings she said she’d be wearing, which drag down her earlobes.
“Soy, half decaf, one pump vanilla, extra hot,” I say, spotting the code on the side of her cup.
Her eyes light up. “Why, yes, it is!”
“Best job I ever had, but then they had a management change, and it became all about pushing drinks.”
“You must be my coffee date,” she says. “My name’s Eileen.”
“Emmitt.” I shake her hand before sitting down.
“You look well,” she says.
“Thanks, I feel…pretty good.”
“You’re lucky. I only made the transplant list after the doctors ran out of places to put my dialysis catheter,” she explains, her eyes drifting to my neck and my covered arms. Is she looking for my port? “With so long a list and so few kidneys available, they usually wait until you’re nine-tenths dead. I had weeks to live. Normally they don’t give someone my age an organ from someone so young. Most people aren’t so lucky.”
I can tell she’s suggesting I probably won’t be. Her watery blue eyes consider mine.
“Lucky you,” I say.
“So. What would you like to know?”
The longer I wait to explain why I’m really here, the more this is going to hurt. “Now that you have a new kidney, what will change?” I dig myself in deeper.
Eileen’s eyes widen and take on a faraway look that I’m beginning to recognize.
“Dialysis is like a tether. Every two days for me. Four hours I was plugged into a machine. What can you do when every two days you’re dragged back to the hospital for a blood scrubbing? What will I do now that I don’t have any more dialysis? Travel, golf, bridge…romance!” She shakes her head as if the thought of options is too much. “But then, you’d know all about this.”
I swallow and nod. “I’m doing a film project on organ recipients. Would you mind being in it?”
“No, oh no, I don’t think I should be in front of a camera.” When she cups the bottom of her hair in her palm and primps, I know I can persuade her.
“It would be for donors. A sort of thank-you,” I say.
“Donors don’t need thank-yous,” Eileen says with a sad smile. “Do they?”
She’s saying this because they’re dead, and I understand, even if I disagree. “For their families. Do you know anything else about your donor?”
She shrugs and quirks her lips in a way that suggests it really doesn’t matter. “I’m not sure I would want to know even if I could.”
“Why’s that?” I feel myself shift forward to the edge of my seat and try to relax.
“What if I don’t like who the person was? Now I have them inside of me.”
“But they could have been wonderful.”
“Or a serial killer. And who’s to say their other organs aren’t being implanted in serial killers?”
“What—” I begin, but she’s staring at the ceiling, chattering away.
“Hopefully they’ll soon be able to 3-D print them. And they can be tailor-made for us. So we don’t have to worry so much.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.” I place my hand on her arm, and she stares at it like it’s a knife. I draw away.
Eileen’s eyes are clear and firm as she faces me. “All I’m saying, dear, is that it’s easier not to know where it came from. You never know…” She looks around and then leans right over the table. “It’s inside of me. You’ll understand when it’s someone else inside of you.”
I am starting to understand. But I have to be sure. “So are you saying you don’t want to know if your kidney came from someone with, say, a different race or religion?”
Her face says it all. My butt slides to the back of my chair.
She shifts back too. “I didn’t say that. Listen, I offered to meet with you. To tell you about the drawbacks, the immunosuppressants, the fact that the organ won’t last forever, to be careful what you wish for. You can live on dialysis for a long time.”
I don’t want to film her.
“I know who your donor was,” I say.
Eileen squints at me.
“Yeah, the film is about everyone who received his organs. I’m researching.”
Her jaw sets, bracing. “It’s supposed to be anonymous.”
“I found you, didn’t I?”
“Well, I don’t want to know. I also have a right to privacy.”
“He’s a black Muslim named Mohammed.”
She pales and clenches her hands.
“But don’t worry. His family were professionals before they had to flee Ethiopia. Good genes. It’s a first-class kidney you’ve got. It had been accepted to medical school.”
I am enjoying the horror on her face far too much. I know this is wrong, but I can’t help myself.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Dennis. He’s sitting at a table in the corner. He must have followed me. When I catch his eye, he grins and waves so hard that his chair rocks back and forth. He must take my surprise as an open invitation, because he rushes over, hand outstretched. Eileen’s mouth is hanging open. Before she can speak, Dennis is at our table.
“Are you my kidney twin?” Dennis says. “We’re family!”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. But I’m pretty sure we’re all about to get what we deserve.
TWELVE
“What is going on?” Eileen demands.
Dennis pumps her limp hand as he explains, “If you have Emmitt’s sister’s kidney and I have the other one, you’re my organ twin! Listen, can we assume I received the one on the right? Please?”
Eileen yanks her hand away and wipes it on her blouse. “His sister.” She turns to me. “You lied.”
“A white lie,” I say with a smirk.
She looks like I struck her. Her shaking hands cause some of her latte to spill across the table.
“She’s not my kidney twin?” Dennis asks.
“No, she is, but I think she’d rather not be.”
Eileen reddens and grabs her purse.
“I thought I was being helpful,” she says as she stands. “And then you attacked me.”
I don’t reply. Everyone in the coffee shop is listening now.
“Is she going to be in our movie?” Dennis asks in a hushed tone, obviously still confused.
“No,” she replies through gritted teeth.
“Why not?” Dennis cries. “All of us are in it, and Emmitt asks these tough questions about, well, I guess they’re really about who we were and who we are now, now that the transplant is changing us. It’s important.”
“Nothing in me is changing.” Eileen laughs without humor.
“Except my sister’s kidney,” I say. “It’s not like switching batteries.”
Her face twists, becoming ugly and gnarled.
“Your sister died, and I was lucky enough that she’d registered to allow the doctors to do with her body as they pleased after she was dead. After you’re dead, you’re owed nothing.”
Dennis shakes his head. “She didn’t have to register for organ donation.”
“No one should need to register,” she says.
“But they do,” I reply.
“I don’t think your sister was thinking about me when she signed up.”
“I have to agree there,” Dennis replies.
Eileen turns her back to us and strides for the door.
I clench my hands into fists. I’m enraged that my sister saved this woman’s life. And she doesn’t seem to care. What would Minnie want me to say?
“You’re wrong, Eileen,” I call. She pauses with her hand against the glass door. The other pa
trons swing their gazes from me to Eileen and then back to me. “My sister was a taxidermist. She took dead things and stuffed life into them. You’re like a dead thing, and now you’ve had life stuffed into you. I bet you can do better. That’s all my sister would have asked. You just haven’t realized how truly lucky you are. Not yet.”
Eileen pushes through the door. It slams behind her.
Dennis looks at me. “I don’t think she wants to be in your movie.”
“Nope.”
“Sorry I crashed your party.”
“It had already crashed.”
“People like her make organ donation the ultimate gift.”
“You can’t be serious,” I say. “That woman is horrible.”
“No, I am serious! You’re giving to strangers. No strings attached. It’s something that bonds everyone. Anyone can give. Anyone can receive. Shows we’re all in this together. Universal love.”
“I guess.”
“What are you going to do now?”
I slump back in my chair at the sloppy table. So far my sister’s organs have gone to a killer, a drunk, a racist and—Dennis leans down and sucks up some of the latte pooling on the table surface—Dennis. I have to find my heart sister. She’s the only way I can redeem the video project.
“I need to find the person who received Minnie’s heart,” I say.
“Hospital would have the record,” Dennis says, wiping his mouth.
“But the hospital won’t give the record to me.”
“Then hack them. Hey, did you know that vanilla flavoring used to come from beaver butts?”
“I’m not hacking a hospital.” I snort. “Sorry about your kidney twin being such a jerk.”
“I guess we know who the evil kidney twin is, huh?”
A staff member sweeps in with a cloth to mop up the table.
Heart Sister Page 6