“I’m not sure there are always evil and good twins, but I’d agree for sure that one twin can be better than the other,” I reply.
We sit in silence for a moment.
“What are we listening to tonight? What music?” Dennis finally asks. “Please, no more heavy metal.”
“Your call,” I say.
“Blackpink.” When I don’t respond, he adds, “K-pop.”
“Okay then.”
“Nine o’clock,” he says.
On the streetcar home, the location of the accident flashes past, all clear, like it never happened. It bothers me how Eileen implied that without Minnie she’d still be alive, just with someone else’s kidney. That’s not true. People on the transplant list die every day. What are the chances that I will affect someone’s life as profoundly as Minnie has? The tattoo on my shoulder gives a twinge of pain, and I flash back to the twitch of Minnie’s hands before shaking my head of these thoughts.
As I approach the cracked concrete of our doorstep, I spot the corner of an envelope sticking out from the mailbox. My pace quickens. I vault up the steps. I grab the envelope and tear it open.
Dear Heart Brother,
I sink to the stair to read in the afternoon sun.
Hooray! Now we are connected. Thank you for writing, but how about giving a girl something to work with? And maybe ease into the questions, huh?
What’s it like to have someone’s heart in my chest? It’s a strange thing. Imagine holding a little red bird in your hands that wants to fly away and you have to keep your hands closed but loose enough that the bird can breathe. You’re right, though—it’s also like I’m Iron Man and someone has placed a great and powerful responsibility in me. But, my heart brother, be careful not to foist your own ideals on others, right? That’s not cool.
I make a mental note to be more gentle with Joey. But Eileen? My anger at her feels pretty justified.
Does the donor family have any rights? I dunno. I honestly think we should have more donors. That it shouldn’t be such a scarce resource. If I was a candidate, I’d be a donor (I’m on way too many drugs for anyone to want my organs, but I’ve signed up just in case). I know what it means to be alive because someone registered for organ donation and talked to their family about it. It’s strange because it’s the most powerful thing you can do, and it costs you absolutely nothing. Yet so many people don’t bother. What are families planning on doing with the organs? The dead person can’t use them anymore, and who doesn’t want to save a life doing something that costs nothing?
You’re a donor, right? You must be.
Hot guilt flushes through me, but I shelve it for later.
I saw your “spelling mistakes,” by the way. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to meet you.
“What?” I look to the sky. What? Why not? How can I finish without her? Anger and frustration press at the side of my head. “But you’re my heart sister,” I say to the page. “You have to.” I read on, hoping for understanding.
I have my reasons. But please DON’T STOP WRITING! It doesn’t mean I don’t want to know more about you and your sister. Here’s an easy question for you—this is how you ease into things, buddy—do you want to be famous?
But you asked me a tough question too. So here’s one for you. What’s it like to lose your sister? I’m sorry.
I love you,
Heart Sis
With a lump in my throat, I press the letter to my chest. She’s the star of my video. I imagine her. Blond—no, brown hair cascading in the moonlight, glowing almost. It’s her eyes that matter most to me. Pools of shimmering compassion. She’s the one who could help my mother. She sounds amazing. But why wouldn’t she want to meet us? Maybe she does.
Was her comment a misdirection for the benefit of the censors, telling me to look for a code? I search her note. I try the first letters of sentences, then words. I can’t find any spelling errors or other symbols that might point to a cipher. Nothing.
What’s the problem with meeting me? And if the code won’t do it, then what will?
I fold the note and slip it into my pocket.
After I shut the door to the house, it takes several long moments for my eyes to adjust to the dark hallway.
“Mom?” I ask. The TV is off. The curtains are drawn. “Mom?”
A chill washes over me. I switch on the hall light.
The couch is empty. No note from her in the kitchen, my note untouched. The dishes are dry but still out. I rush to my bedroom. The hall bathroom is empty. I slink to my parents’ bedroom door. It’s late afternoon. Outside, chimneys filter the final rays of sunlight. She should be up.
I knock.
No answer.
I ease open the door.
There she is, buried in blankets. “Mom?” I ask gently.
Nothing.
“Mom!”
When her head lifts, I tremble with relief.
“Mom, it’s so late. What’s happening? Did you even get out of bed today?”
Her head sags back on the pillow.
I reach her bed, and as I slide onto the side of the mattress, she turns her face away. “Mom, you have to get up. You have to keep moving.”
She doesn’t move.
“No, Mom, come on.”
A moan escapes her lips. “Minnie wasn’t the only one who died, Emmitt. I did too. All the hopes and dreams I had imagined for her. All that she knew of me. The memories that we had shared. I held on to those things because they were ours. Things she remembered for me, like when the next episode of our favorite show would drop, how to make Grandma’s ginger cookies—I don’t even know your grandfather’s birthday. These things she knew for me. I don’t know how to live without that part of me.”
Anger stirs in my belly. What can I say to her? That my loss is greater? That she has no idea what it’s like to lose your twin—can’t ever know? Because Minnie might have remembered things for my mom, but she was my secret keeper, my dream bearer. I know Minnie only watched those shows because they were our mother’s favorite—not Minnie’s— and she had everyone’s birthday scheduled in her phone. What do I tell my mom? It’s an odd notion that we need other people to remember stuff for us. That somehow their death is our death or the death of a piece of us. It frustrates me. Like the laundry does. The cooking. The fact that everyone else is up and moving forward except her.
“I understand,” I say. Even though I don’t. Not really.
“I have to let those things go too. My memories of her,” she adds. “Let them go or drown in them. But I can’t. I want to be drowned in them.”
I can’t keep the words in anymore. “You don’t think we all do, Mom?” I demand. “You don’t think I want to hide in a corner?”
Her head rocks from side to side, not wanting to hear, but she needs to hear it.
“You’re being selfish,” I say.
She buries her head in her comforter.
“Get up!” I stand over her, quaking.
The comforter heaves with her sobs. I crumble to my knees.
“Mom, I’m sorry,” I say. “I know. I’m only trying.”
She cries harder.
I ease back the cover. Her face is scrunched tight tight.
I run my hand over my mother’s forehead, like she used to do for me years ago. How I’ve wished over these last weeks that she would do it for me again. I have nothing more to say. All I can think is, How do I find my heart sister? She’s all we have left of Minnie.
How do I hack a hospital?
THIRTEEN
I wake up and realize Dennis texted me several times last night when I was supposed to be rocking out to K-pop. It’s a good thing I set my alarm for calling Joey to ask him the three questions, or I would have missed that too.
Sorry, Dennis. I had a rough night, I text, holding up a hand to block the sunlight streaming through my blinds.
He replies with a poop emoji, then: Anything I can help with?
You know how you talked about hacking the hospital
to access medical records?
There’s a long pause.
Finally: If she’s your heart sister, does that make her my heart cousin?
I’m not sure.
That would be cool. Or maybe second cousin once removed. When I don’t reply, he adds, Get it? ’Cause the organ is removed? Too early? Probably too early.
Hospital. Hack. How? I don’t have time for this.
This time it’s a full minute before Dennis answers.
Hospitals sometime still have ancient X-ray and CAT-scan equipment and software that hasn’t been updated for years. So we could try to get in that way. Or we could do some spear phishing to get someone’s user ID and password. Like, ‘Hi, Dr. Jean, this is Hans in IT. We’ve had a breach using your ID 6254. To reset your password,’ yada yada. But probably the easiest way is how I tracked you down.
Easiest, please, I text. Unlike Dennis, I keep my texts short. More waiting. I kick off my covers and pull on yesterday’s jeans and T-shirt while I watch the three little dots.
Except a hospital will be tougher. It’ll take research. Go to the hospital, figure out how it operates, find a flaw in their security processes, and use it against them.
I can’t believe I once thought we might not get along. My challenge is keeping up with the guy. Still, as smart as he is, I really don’t want to return to the hospital. I’m also positive they don’t want me back. I’m surprised they didn’t ban me.
Minnie’s PICU doctor was Dr. Lebow. Middle-aged, all business and the bedside manner of a turnip. The day after the accident, without so much as a hey, how is everyone doing? she had invited in the organ coordinator from the transplant team. This guy had immediately launched into his spiel. “We see Minnie is registered as an organ donor and would like to reaffirm the family’s desire to donate her organs. Do I have your—”
But I was already moving. I threw myself on top of Minnie and then craned my neck to give Lebow a death stare. “You. Will. Never. Touch. Her.” The back of my throat burned. But Lebow didn’t even blink.
The organ coordinator turned to my parents. “Consent. Do I have your consent?”
“How can she have registered? She’s only sixteen,” I said.
“Sixteen is the age of consent for organ donation. I know this isn’t easy—”
“Can we have a moment?” my mom asked.
I learned later that my parents had already met with the coordinator and a social worker. But at the time, I turned my stare on my mother, who flinched. I wondered then if she had known.
Dr. Lebow hesitated, and I caught the longing look she cast at Minnie. Maybe in retrospect it was only her desire to help others, but at the time it seemed like the gaze of a greedy god. I wouldn’t leave Minnie’s side, already imagining going for a snack only to return and find the room empty.
“Touch her, and I’ll kill you,” I said as Dr. Lebow left the room with her sidekick.
I’m guessing people remember things like that, so I really want to avoid any run-ins with Dr. Lebow.
That’s the easiest? I ask Dennis.
Yep, it’s called social engineering. Can I come? I can help.
I hesitate. I think this is something I have to do on my own, Dennis.
Maybe I can run interference? Start a flash mob? I know! If I start a fire in a—
I’ll ask if I need help. I promise.
I take his lack of a response as acceptance.
I pack a couple of peanut-butter sandwiches. The baggie of food seems insufficient, considering my mission. Where’s my hacking kit? What the hell am I thinking? Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy. Maybe I should bring Dennis. But what I don’t want is attention, and Dennis is an attention magnet.
I head for the subway. The line runs right past the hospital where my sister died. I’m outside of its glass-enclosed entry inside twenty minutes. My sister was only here for three days, two on life support and then another as one of the living dead while they prepared to recover her organs. I struggled with that part.
I wasn’t there when the doctor finally declared Minnie dead, but I was there before they went in to conduct the final test, and I was there after the testing. The only difference between those times was the doctor’s declaration. Before they went in there was hope, and after there was none. Intellectually I know it meant Minnie was dead long before the doctor knuckled her sternum or administered the apnea test, but at the time I was listening to my heart. My heart knew Minnie was still alive. Hope remained. Afterward my dad took my mom home to get some sleep and a shower. I stayed.
“This is your last chance,” I told Minnie. My eyes roved over her, searching for signs. “Are you pretending?”
I leaned my forehead to hers and opened myself to her thoughts, promising that if she pushed some animal, vegetable, number, letter—anything—to me, I’d fight for another day. But there was nothing. I couldn’t even think of one myself.
“What are we going to do now?” I asked. “What am I going to do?”
I must have crashed, because I awoke when my parents returned. My head was groggy, my cheek holding the creases of Minnie’s bedsheets. Dr. Lebow and two nurses stood solemnly by.
“It’s time, son,” my dad said.
My head snapped from my dad to my mother’s tears, to the doctors and then to Minnie. Minnie. What had I dreamed? I tried to recall. Had she pushed anything to me? Had she spoken to me?
The nurses began fiddling with machines and wires, collecting the elements of Minnie’s body’s support. My heart raced.
“Just a little longer?” I asked.
“The others are here,” my dad said.
The others. He meant the other surgeons, maybe some organ recipients.
“We love you, Minnie,” my mother croaked.
Cords were bundled. Alarms switched off.
“I love you,” my dad said and kissed her forehead.
Everyone looked to me, and my mind was blank. “I’ll see you, Minnie. I’ll see you again soon.”
My parents gripped the edge of her bed as she was wheeled out, repeating “I love you” as they followed her to the elevator.
“I’ll see you,” I said. “I will.”
They hollowed her out that night.
Now, as I stand before the impressive hospital entranceway built after someone donated a vast sum of money, someone who’d had a long, long life and time to think about how they could do some good in the world, I want nothing more than to retreat to my VR world and sit across from Minnie and listen to her play the ukulele.
A man shoulders past me, and I follow him inside.
The door thumps as it revolves, dumping me into the main lobby. Artificial light shines. A hospital is neither night nor day. It’s an alien, self-contained world where someone is always awake. Where people share the worst or best days of their lives.
My sneakers know the way as I head to the PICU—the heart of the hospital’s pain. Fluorescent lights stud the ceiling. People hustle in a steady stream up and down the hallways. I catch crying and laughter. A groan.
That’s from the waiting room. At the entrance tension rides back up my spine as I recall what I’m here for. I am a would-be thief.
Several dozen people stand or sit in the chairs bordering the walls. One man shifts back and forth on his feet, as if rocking a baby. Another family clusters in a corner, a team trying to decide their next play. A team with a desperately small playbook. Do we let the doctor operate? Or do we wait and see? What are the statistics? How many people survive the surgery? If they do, what’s the quality of life? Impossibilities.
These aren’t choices. They are forks in a road full of switchbacks and sinkholes.
My blue plastic chair is occupied by a man staring dully at a TV silently delivering the news in black- and-white captions. Beside him a woman clutches his hand and leans against his shoulder. I’m unreasonably annoyed that they have my old spot. It should be labeled with a brass plaque: Here Emmitt Highland heard news of his sister Minnie’s d
eath. But then the room would be sheathed in brass, wouldn’t it?
The waiting room relegates us all to childhood. In this room we are powerless. But we’re also together. But today I feel like a voyeur. Maybe even a bit powerful.
I recognize a couple of people at the nursing station. They’re talking to some friend or relative of a patient, and no one gives me a second glance. Muscles in my neck unravel. I’ve been here before. I can watch. My sandwich will be enough. I shuffle to sit with my back against the far wall.
I wait.
In the waiting room.
I could have selected another room, anywhere else in the hospital, but this place I understand. I’m a part of its walls and always will be. What am I watching for? I need access to my sister’s medical records. To the donor files. I’m here to see if I can find some kind of gap in their security. I don’t really know how. I’ll figure it out as I go.
A half door separates the waiting room from the nursing station and its bank of three computer screens. Behind the nursing station are double doors that swing out into the ward hallway. But the nursing station is busy. The computers with their access to medical records are all in use.
Suddenly the concept of trying to charm or dupe the nursing staff into handing over the info I need seems way more difficult than getting a doctor’s password. Dennis had said an ID tag would be a big first step. Maybe I can grab one and then get the hell out of here.
Someone comes through the double doors. I go cold. It’s Dr. Lebow. The same doctor who treated Minnie. Her facial expression is neutral as she scans the room for something or someone. I slide a National Geographic off a coffee table and open the magazine to hide my face. When she starts moving again, I track her and the swing of her ID tag that hangs from the pocket of her white lab coat. She looms over a huddled family.
There’s a satisfying irony to choosing Dr. Lebow as my way into the hospital network. But how do I get the tag? Do I knock into her and grab it? Is it as simple and as difficult as that?
The family huddle opens for her. Hunched figures straighten. Eyes widen with fear. The ears of a nearby onlooker perk as he listens to the prognosis. I know what he’s thinking. If this family has bad luck, there’s a better chance his family won’t. They can’t all have bad luck, he is thinking. I know because that is what I thought. But everyone here has bad luck, everyone here in the purgatory of the PICU. It’s not a zero-sum game, but if it were, this would be the unit that balances out the maternity ward.
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