Heart Sister

by Michael F Stewart

  “Let’s work on that.”

  “Truth is…” Joey hesitates. “The truth is, I’d probably be dead.” His voice gets quieter. “Okay, man. Thanks for today. Now I gotta run.” He hangs up before I have a chance to say good night.

  Limp balloons strew the desk. Balloons that, with the right skills, could become swords, lions, dragons and pirate ships. Creation is a form of giving birth. I run a finger around the hard plastic of my VR headset. My dad has his world. I have mine. The patients have theirs, but they need distractions from the tough parts.

  I grin, an idea taking shape. I think I should stick to film, Dad.

  “Positive distraction,” I whisper. I gather several of my tripods, unscrew the VR system’s mounted location-tracking detectors from the wall and pack everything into my bag, along with the leftover balloons and pump. When the bag is packed, I sit down and write to my heart sister.

  Dear Heart Sister,

  I’m facing some big challenges. It’s not about my sister. I’m just sucking. What do you suck at? My sister was great at art and crafts and helping people. I can’t think of much she wasn’t good at. Maybe that’s just how I want to remember her though. It’s disturbing. Sometimes it’s hard to remember her. I know everything about my sister, but don’t have anything specific to tell unless you ask.

  Say you ask me where she got all her creatures to taxidermize. I’d tell you about the urgency in her voice when she spotted a furry lump on the road. Really, you’d think it was a live cat—she’d go rigid with fear. “Emmitt! There!” I’ve had to stop her from throwing herself into traffic before. She’s the only person I know who eagerly opened commercial rat traps, the sort you see at the rear doors of restaurants. Our freezer is out of a horror movie—for rodents anyway. Maybe it’s time I empty it.

  Write back.

  Your Heart Brother

  The next morning I go to stuff the note into an envelope and stop. This whole letter-writing thing is ridiculous. This is the twenty-first century! I don’t want to wait weeks or days for a reply.

  I search my call history for the National Transplant Organization and punch in the number. I’m in luck. Martha answers the phone.

  “Hi, Martha. You called me a week or so ago about sending mail to my heart sister. I was wondering, could my heart sister and I correspond with each other anonymously through texting or email?”

  “Of course. But it’s email only.”

  “Okay, great. So how would that work?”

  “You send me the email, and I’ll review it before forwarding it. If the recipient chooses to respond, I’ll forward on the content of their email only, without the original email address. Everything will pass through me, and I reserve the right to edit out personal information. Give me twenty-four hours, except on weekends, when I’ll need seventy-two hours.”

  Martha gives me her email address. This process should be faster, but somehow it feels even more censored now that I know the name of the person doing the censoring. I key in the letter to my heart sister and send it to our chaperone. She responds with a smile emoji. And a note: Your sister was very special! It’s a good thing she can’t see my eyes rolling.

  TWENTY–ONE

  Dressed in my full clown regalia, messenger bag over my shoulder, I approach Jeannie.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she asks.

  “Dappy reporting for duty, ma’am.” I grin. “No one’s leaving here negatively distracted.”

  She smiles, evidently catching my joke, and then her disappointed face returns. “This isn’t baseball.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You don’t get three strikes.”

  “Oh,” I say. “How about two strikes?”

  Her gaze travels to my bag. “I’ll have to approve anything you plan.”

  “Of course,” I say, because I need a chaperone for everything.

  “Last chance, Dappy.”

  The doors swing wide. I wave at the penguin and stride as confidently as one can in giant red shoes. The slaps of the soles echo down the hall.

  “Who wants to go to a different world?” I ask the common room. I know how I can positively distract kids in a hospital. I can take them on a field trip. A virtual one.

  Isaac, wearing a blue hospital gown, is drawing a dragon with crayons at a table. A teenage boy I haven’t met is in a wheelchair close to the table. One of his legs is in a cast, and his torso is in a metal frame. A black halo brace encircles his head.

  “Where’s Grumpy Girl?” I ask the nurse. She shoots me a look. “The girl with the…” I pat my head.

  The girl sits up from the couch. “Grumpy Girl is right here.” She pulls the blue kerchief off her head to reveal the scalp beneath. “The bald girl with the cancer.”

  “Oh, didn’t see you there,” I say, practicing my goofy laugh again.

  “Clearly.”

  “Sorry.”

  The new boy’s eyes flicker in my direction, his body twitching. Grumpy Girl slumps back down to watch cartoons. Isaac keeps drawing.

  I drag my bag over the seamless floor to the television, pull out my laptop, plug it into an electrical socket and then into the back of the television. The television screen goes black.

  “You’re kidding me,” Grumpy Girl says from the couch.

  “Just wait,” I say. “Jeannie, can I have access to the Wi-Fi?”

  She shrugs and hands me a card with the network name and password.

  Music blares through the headphones as the system boots. Grumpy Girl’s eyes narrow. “What’s your name?” I ask the boy with the spinal injury.

  “Luke,” he says.

  “Do you want to drive a race car, Luke?”

  “Oh yeah,” he says.

  “Or you could shoot some aliens or lay siege to a castle.” I point at the laptop screen. My account has dozens of game options. “Cook, dance, raid a tomb, go scuba diving, paint, visit the International Space Station—”

  “Serve me up some aliens!” Luke says.

  “Video games?” Jeannie looks uncertain.

  “Better than video games,” I reply.

  “Virtual reality,” Luke explains, leaning forward enough that I worry he’ll fall out of the chair. “I’ve tried it a few times. You know what? I want to drive the race car instead.”

  “Indy 500, coming up.”

  Grumpy Girl is giving me her best I-don’t-care glare, but she watches as I pry apart the VR headset to jury-rig it for Luke’s halo. “Guess we can’t take this off, huh?”

  “Not if he wants to heal,” Jeannie says.

  I manage to fit Luke on the headset’s loosest setting.

  I press the hand controllers into his palm, and his fingers close loosely over them.

  “Got it?” I ask.

  He nods. Even so, I’m not sure this will work. Jeannie has been watching my every move, eyes unblinking, lips pursed. I probably shouldn’t have started with the guy with mobility issues. But here goes nothing. I help Luke with a couple of menu selections and then back off.

  On the screen the game starts. Luke’s mouth forms an O and then stretches into a grin. Knowing what he’s seeing and having played the game before, I give simple directions like “Lift your arm to move the cursor to choose the car” and “Squeeze the trigger to select your option.” We are seeing a two-dimensional image on the television screen, but Luke is seeing the world in 3-D. He chooses a sleek-looking Ferrari with a massive engine. I would have upgraded the tires. He then selects the hardest race course—the Devil’s Pitchfork.

  “A bit confident there, Luke,” I say. “Maybe try something easier?”

  His jaw clenches. “I got this.”

  A light does the count—red, yellow, green. Luke’s race begins. The competing cars rip past him off the start. Engines roar and tires screech, but Luke’s car is left rumbling slowly over the start line.

  “Squeeze the right trigger for gas. Go, go!” I call.

  Isaac cries, “Go!”

 
Even Grumpy Girl’s hands clench.

  The car stutters forward down the course, lurching until finally the throttle sticks, opening wide.

  “You’ll want to use the brakes going into the turns,” I warn.

  Luke’s having none of it. The engine runs hot.

  “Okay, steer, steer,” I say as calmly as I can.

  The rear spoiler of a competitor rushes toward us as Luke catches the stragglers. His car flies over the rumble strip and off course, kicking up grass, and then fishtails back onto the track. Tires smoke as they bite into pavement again. Luke’s arms quake as he lifts the controllers a few inches off the wheelchair arm and jerks them left and right to steer. He’s managed to use his pinky to pinch the trigger.

  “The next is a tight right turn,” I say. “The course is shaped like a pitchfork, and it’s the tip on the first tine.”

  Sweat flows freely down Luke’s cheeks. I gasp as he manages the hairpin, sliding past two cars in the process.

  “Turn, turn!” I yell. But it’s too late.

  On the screen the car slams into the wall, flips into the air, smashes back onto the track and rolls before bursting into flames.

  “Very realistic,” says Jeannie.

  “Hey, that wasn’t bad for your first time,” I tell Luke as I help him remove the headset. I can’t tell if he enjoyed himself or not. It’s disappointing.

  As the nurse leans down to sanitize the headset, she whispers, “Luke’s physiotherapist hasn’t been able to get him to do that much exercise in a day.” And then she winks. “You have my permission to continue.”

  “Can I go next?” It’s Isaac.

  I freeze for a moment, stunned. It is one thing to believe the unreal can change reality. It is another to see it.

  Encouraged and remembering my getup, I honk my nose. “Sure, Isaac. What’ll it be? Race car? Aliens from space?”

  “Where else are aliens from?” Grumpy Girl asks.

  “Can I draw?” Isaac holds up a crayon.

  “You’re already doing some pretty awesome drawing right there. You sure you don’t want to try something else with this thing?” I mimic firing a laser gun.

  He shakes his head. “Nope, drawing.”

  I haven’t actually used the painting application. It seems a bit boring to me. Nothing explodes and there are no quests, but I set Isaac up in front of the screen. “Okay, so you have some space on either side of you and a bit in the front and back. But be careful, or you might end up in Grumpy’s lap.”

  “Okay,” says Isaac.

  “It’s Joy,” says the grumpy girl.

  “What?”

  “My name’s not Grumpy. It’s Joy.”

  I laugh. “Of course it is.” I turn. “Careful, Isaac, or you might fall on Joy,” I say.

  Isaac giggles. He takes a practice swing with his paint brush, but the canvas isn’t loaded yet.

  But then a brush pops up on the screen, along with a series of palette options—paint with smoke, light, fire, rainbow, stars and so on.

  “Whoa,” he says.

  I glance back to see what Isaac had been drawing earlier—a red dragon that’s more teeth than anything else. Isaac starts slowly, figuring out the palette system and types of brush options. He’s smart and calculating. Most kids his age would have just started scribbling, if only to see what happens. But Isaac is very deliberate. Finally he takes a stroke. The line that appears on the screen is lit like a Jedi’s lightsaber.

  “Oh yeah,” he says.

  “Cool,” Jeannie says, taking a step forward. Joy sits up.

  Another slash, and it’s a burning X.

  He steps forward and through the painting. “I’m in it! I’m in the painting!” Isaac’s passion is infectious as he turns and tangles himself in the cords dangling from the headset.

  Isaac clears the canvas, chooses a thinner brush and starts again in earnest. He rushes back and forth. A dozen or so wild creatures soon prowl around the canvas. They all have their mouths open, like they’re chasing him.

  Is this what’s playing inside Isaac’s head? Seems more like a nightmare. “You need a knight or something, Isaac, something to fight back with. Give him a giant sword.”

  Then the kid does something I don’t expect. He picks a flaming silver paint, and in the center he draws a tiny stick boy. Into the boy’s hand he places not a sword but a series of golden leashes. Like strings holding a bouquet of balloons, the dozen magic cords he grips are all attached to the necks of the creatures. They aren’t attacking after all—they’re chained to him, enraged by their capture. When he’s done, Isaac pulls off the headset and grins. “See, it’s me against cancer,” he says. “Isaac wins.”

  Jeannie gasps as he hands the headset to her. She gives him a hug. Then I notice a dragon in the far corner of the scene. Unshackled.

  “You forgot a leash,” I say.

  “No,” says Isaac, his smile fading. “That’s Edith’s dragon. The one that got her while she was sleeping.”

  I’m speechless. Jeannie shakes her head sadly. I’d forgotten about Edith.

  When I glance back to see if Joy’s interested in taking a turn, she’s gone. Slippered feet pad down the hall. Maybe it all got a little too real.

  “Can I try again tomorrow?” I ask the nurse.

  “That’d make me so dappy,” she says. Ha. So Jeannie can be funny!

  “Anything you think Joy would like?”

  Jeannie hesitates for a second. “Puzzles.”

  Which somehow makes perfect sense.

  TWENTY–TWO

  I shuffle from foot to foot in the hall next to the entrance of the PICU waiting area. With my phone camera, I check my makeup—it’s fine. I can’t believe I just checked my makeup. I draw a deep breath and enter.

  The old lady’s seat is vacant, which is both a relief and depressing. In their corners, families read and chatter. A man chuckles. Trauma brings some families together, but not mine. Maybe when it’s time. When you’ve had your sixty-seven years of marriage, the kids and grandkids gather and have a party. A “celebration of life.” It’s a morbid holiday, where the gift is release from pain and a rekindling of family. But tears soaked our kindling, or maybe we’re all tending our own fires.

  Mine had raged until the end. Hours after they rolled Minnie out to the elevator—Mom trailing with I love you! We miss you! I’m so proud of you!—they rolled her back in. Clean. Silent. Unmoving. And long gone. Only then, faced with her corpse and holding a clammy hand, did I turn and leave for home.

  The charge nurse waves me in. I hesitate, trying to interpret the curious expression on his face. No one boxes in my exit, though, so I slowly approach. I force my clenched hands to relax.

  “Okay, Dappy,” the nurse says. “Let’s give this a shot.”

  I’m in? A cold flush rolls over me. “Really?”

  “You’re here to cheer up the patients, right?” he asks.

  “Yeah, yeah, I just—” I’m terrified of meeting my heart sister. I can’t have another Joey or, worse, an Eileen. With the letters my heart sister has written, my imagination has turned her into this minor celebrity who can never measure up now. What if she’s a racist, homophobic alcoholic? It would send my mother spiraling.

  “Well? We heard what you did in pediatrics,” he says. “So let’s give it a try here.”

  I give him a white-gloved thumbs-up, and he gestures to the double doors.

  I swallow and start to ease forward, hoping to enter quietly and keep a low profile despite the clown costume. But the nurse hits the automatic door opener, which grinds loudly as both doors swing wide open, presenting me to everyone in the hall.

  No penguin waves. No gentle music plays. Staff hustle from room to room. Bathed in cool, throbbing light, I suck in the dry, sterile air. To my left a door opens into a patient room. It’s room 212—the code blue. The patient, a super-scrawny boy, is either sleeping or comatose. Nose prongs protrude from his nostrils. I wave just in case he’s not unconscious and t
hen continue down the hall.

  On this ward, it is all noises—whirring, beeps and the whoosh of ventilators. A tube juts from the mouth of another patient. It reminds me of my sister, but then her eyes blink. The girl’s eyes. My sister’s eyes never blinked. I shuffle closer.

  “Hold on.” A tall, gangly nurse runs toward me with hand sanitizer. “No gloves. Certain rooms are masks only, and don’t go into room 216 at all. We had a recent C. difficile outbreak so are taking extra precautions.”

  I pull off my gloves and coat my hands in sanitizer. A lemony scent wafts into the air. “Okay, sure.” Now I’m second-guessing this whole plan. Why not wait until Rebecca’s out of the hospital, when I won’t be risking anyone’s life?

  The nurse considers me for a moment and shakes her head. “Rooms 214, 218, 223 and 226 only. Do you need a television screen for that to work?” She points at my gear.

  “No. It’s a nice add-on, but a screen is only so more people can watch,” I say. “Makes it more social.”

  “Two fourteen,” she repeats. I start in, but she stops me. “That’s 213. He’s…well, he’s not a candidate for clowning. That one.” She points.

  It’s a room down. I can only hope that one of the four rooms I’m allowed in is Rebecca’s. This is a start, at least. A chance to scout.

  I knock on the door frame. A young dude with prongs in his nostrils and over-ear headphones pulled over white hair nods rhythmically to a really slow beat. All those tubes are not great for VR headsets, but I suppose if I can manage a spinal halo, I can handle a few tubes. His eyes are heavily lidded, skin ashen, and his head moves like an oil rig pumping oil despite him looking about my age or a year older.

  “Hiya,” I say.

  On the blanket, wrist harpooned by an IV line, his hand lifts a fraction. “I can hear.” And I realize his head nods aren’t in sync with music but rather his breathing.

  I continue. “I’m asking around, seeing if anyone wants to try a VR game.”

  “Yeah, yeah sure.” His voice rasps, the well running dry. He pushes down on the bed with his palms as if to sit up but doesn’t really go anywhere.