THIRTY–FOUR
I stumble, hit the IV stand and then grip it for balance. “What did you say?” I ask, heat rushing through me.
“My heart is rejecting.”
The first sound from my throat isn’t quite human.
“No, it can’t be. Not for sure, right?” She gives me this odd look, as if to say, It’s my heart that’s rejecting, not yours.
But she’s wrong.
“The biopsy results came back. The numbers are bad.” Her hands are tight balls in her lap. I glance at the heart monitor, which shows Minnie’s heart still beating ninety-seven times per minute.
“But that’s not possible,” I say. “Are the doctors doing everything they can?”
“They’re pumping me full of immunosuppressants and steroids—everything they’ve got.”
Just then a doctor walks in. It’s the tired one from the staff room. The one with the pot of coffee. His gaze travels from Becca’s face, wet with tears, to my outfit and my anger. “What’s up, Becca?” he asks carefully.
This is like my experience with Minnie all over again. There’s nothing we can do. She’s already gone.
No!
“Are you her doctor?” I ask, struggling to hold back the fear and rage welling in me.
Again he glances to Becca. “Her surgeon. What’s the concern?”
“Nothing,” Becca says. “Dappy here was just leaving.”
My pulse races. This isn’t the end. “Becca says she’s rejecting, but that’s not possible. It’s too early to know, right? There’s other stuff you can do, right? Just need to get the right balance of drugs.” I hear Becca’s fears come through my mouth and understand. There are no more solutions. Her drawings. Her diorama of herself protecting a magical stone from encroaching demons. It all makes sense.
The doctor cocks his head, moving slowly to grip me by the elbow. “It’s okay for Rebecca to share the details of her care with you, but I can’t.” He’s guiding me out, but I resist. When I glance over my shoulder, Becca has turned her head back to the wall. She asked to kiss me just moments ago. What is happening? My heart is rejecting.
The doctor manages to deposit me in the doorway.
“But—”
His hand moves to grip my shoulder. “We’re doing the best we can.”
They don’t understand who Becca is to me. The heart of my sister. It’s all I have left of Minnie. “Then try harder!” The shout rings out. Footsteps stop. Doors open. My voice drops. “You have to save her.”
From the bed Becca shouts, “That doctor you’re screaming at saved my life at least half a dozen times! That doctor is probably the most important person in my life. Get out of here!”
A steady click of heels down the hall. “What seems to be the issue…” Dr. Lebow’s voice trails off as she stares at me. Dappy without his makeup. Recognition flashes. “You,” she says.
This is the doctor I threatened to kill. This is the doctor who presided over the death of my twin sister.
“Please save her,” I say.
Dr. Lebow begins to speak, then stops. After a moment she points at me and says, “Because of all the joy you have brought people over the last few weeks, I will give you fifteen minutes to leave this unit, return the outfit and exit the hospital premises. In fifteen minutes I will call security. If you are seen here again, you will be arrested for trespassing and anything else I can come up with. Do you understand?”
“I was only—”
“Do you understand?” she says again, louder and more firmly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She checks her watch. “Go.”
I glance back toward Becca. She has her earbuds in, eyes shut as she cries. I sag, tears streaming down my face. I leave. Part of me wants her to know who I really am—it might change something. She might call me back. But she doesn’t know me.
Everyone stares as I leave the unit and the waiting room. It could be that they heard it all. I’m ashamed. In the volunteer office, Fatima watches grimly as I pull off the shoes, the pants and the shirt. Then she holds the door open for me as I head for the lobby. I sense the eyes of security guards. I don’t know what else to do. The revolving doors thud with the passage of each person as they exit. Accelerating and then decelerating sharply. Thud, thud, thud…thud…thud. Thud, thud, thud…thud…thud. Once through those doors I’m never allowed back.
I text Dennis a string of messages.
They caught me.
I’m banned.
Becca doesn’t want to see me but doesn’t even know who I am. Her heart is rejecting.
What do I do?
Dennis responds, first with a sad-face emoji and then: Sorry, man. This is a puzzle I can’t hack.
Puzzle. I pocket the phone after checking the time. Only five minutes have elapsed.
I need help. I know only one person who might be able to solve my predicament. Someone who loves a good puzzle.
Eight minutes remain.
“I need to speak to Joy,” I tell Jeannie. She squints at me. “It’s me, Dappy, without the makeup.” She nods with recognition and waves me through.
“Sure, but she’s in a helluva mood. Room 358.”
I knock at Joy’s door. She’s doing a crossword in the light of the windows. “What’s a seven-letter word for ‘go away’?” she asks without looking up.
“Vamoose. It’s me, Dappy. Emerson. Emmitt, I mean.”
She looks up. “What are you talking about?”
“I have”—I check my watch—“seven minutes before I get arrested. Can you help me?”
She sets aside the half-finished crossword. “Live-action escape room? I’m in.”
“Here’s the situation. My sister, Minnie, died. She gave her organs away, and I hunted down everyone who received them to film them, so my parents could see all the good Minnie did.”
“Odd, but I’m following so far. Go on,” Joy says. “Sorry, BTW.”
Six minutes.
“Thanks. My heart—the person who received my sister’s heart, she didn’t want to talk to me, so I hacked the hospital records to figure out who she was and found out she was still in the hospital. Because they sort of caught me during the whole hacking thing, I had to disguise myself as a clown to sneak onto her unit, where I tried to meet her and help her. We were already talking in letters, and I sort of really—”
“Like her, yup, go on,” she says.
“We made the video, but she still doesn’t know who I am. I just found out her heart—my sister’s heart—is rejecting, and I went ballistic, and the doctor figured out who I am, and she sent me away and security is going to arrest me if I don’t leave the hospital in six—no—five minutes.”
Joy’s face has lost its hardness. Her lower lip protrudes, and her head tilts. She rises and reaches for my hand. I hit her halfway across the floor in a big hug.
“That sucks. What a mess,” she says.
I’m crying again. But I don’t have time for tears. “How do I fix this? How do I tell her how I feel and that I’m sorry? I only wanted to help everyone.”
A wet splotch of tears darkens the shoulder of her gown. Joy’s shaking her head as if I’m asking all the wrong questions. “You can’t help anyone from a jail cell,” she says. “You can’t help everyone. You have to go, but before you do, I have a riddle for you.”
“Can’t you just give me the answer?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think you’ll make it out of here if I do.”
I nod.
“What, when divided by eight, can create eight more, but adding the eight will never be whole?”
Three minutes. I frown, trying to force myself to think. Blood pounds in my ears.
“Go!” she cries.
I run. Past the penguin. Past Jeannie. Down the stairs and out the atrium doors even as security files in behind me.
Outside I find a spot near a large oak tree. Shaking, I repack my bag and draw deep, shuddering breaths. Finally I sit down, press
my back against the rough bark and sob. I cry for Becca. I cry for Minnie. I cry for the struggling heart they share. And I can’t seem to stop. I have no answer, no solution to Joy’s riddle, no way to fix anything. Like Becca, I am out of options. The person I need to talk to about it all is gone. I press my palms against my eyes and still my tears.
It’s as though I’m holding my breath, but it’s not breath I’m holding, it’s misery, weighing me down, slowing my motions, as I stumble for the subway. As the doors open at my station platform, so do the gates to my pain. Becca had tethered me to Minnie. And finding Becca was meant to be a way to heal my family. The only way out, my film, has failed.
I push out of the subway car, ignoring other passengers, and climb the steps to the street, forcing my leaden legs on. I push through into the cool hall of home and right into my bed, where I fold myself into a fetal position, under my covers, the lightsaber of my Star Wars blanket at my throat.
THIRTY–FIVE
The empty walls of my room echo my gloom. I bury my head under the covers, entering a rank, unwashed underworld. People shift in and out of the room. I’m sat up and leaned forward. Mugs of soup are pressed against my lips. I only ever taste salt. Tears. Broth. Tears and broth.
Letters are read to me by my father. Then by my mother. She cries too.
Dennis cuts into my eyeline, but I focus on nothing. He’s a blur.
“She’s listening to death metal,” he says. “She’s drawing again—Dark Heart—it’s not good, Emmitt, all twisted corpses riding zombie dragons and…” Blah, blah, blah. A stifled blur. Someone opens a box. A poster is unfurled.
Eileen arrives. An hour later, a day? I have no idea. For a few minutes she uses the headset. She faces my mother, who grips her stomach with both hands as she speaks with Eileen. They argue, but finally Eileen squats by my bedside and asks how she can help. Then Gerry shows up with an iPad, swiping through what are probably photos of rare moths or butterflies, if I care to see. I don’t. He fades out of view but exclaims over Minnie’s diorama. When he returns, he holds the picture from the shelf and smiles sadly.
“That looks like a good day,” he tells me.
“It was,” my dad says.
It was. A nail is hammered into the wall.
“School,” someone says eventually. “You don’t want to miss the start of eleventh grade.”
“I don’t really want anything,” I explain. On the first day of school, Minnie and I would decide what to wear together. Every first day. Together. So many firsts after a death.
Words at least please them, and they go away.
For a while.
My mother keeps repeating something. On the fifth repetition, I hear, “Rebecca wants the end of the story.” In my gut I know she doesn’t. Is she Shelagh? Stabbed by needles, a cat originally with nine lives and seven heads, but only one left now. With a diving skunk, and Ivan as bait, the story can’t end well. Besides, she doesn’t want the ending from Dappy. Only from her heart brother. And he only wants to sink and sink.
Eileen returns. My mother speaks with her again. They’re no longer fighting.
I sleep and wake. Sleep and wake. There’s no rhyme or reason, but I prefer sleeping. I go to pee, eyes half-open, my hand brushing one wall to keep me upright. But on my return, I crawl under covers that feel different. Grandmother’s quilt perhaps. I dream. And forget.
When I wake, Ivan watches the diving skunk. The skunk’s beady stare fixes on the vole. This is the end. Ivan has invited the crowds to watch, so that they will see in his sacrifice what they have wrought. But that won’t bring Ivan back.
And then I realize I’m in Minnie’s room. In her bed. Crying on her pillow. My mother stands in the center of the room. She looks herself. Her before-Minnie-died self.
“Mom,” I say. “You’re back.”
She comes to me, sits on the bed and leans over, running a hand over my forehead. This close, I can see veins running blue beneath her pale skin. She quivers like a leaf. Eyes on me, she says, “You need to get up, Emmitt.”
I close my eyes and relax into the tender raking of her fingers through my hair.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
I keep my eyes shut. Eyelids like walls.
“I’m so sorry for abandoning you. You must have felt so alone. So scared.”
Yes.
“So…angry.”
I feel my Adam’s apple bob. Yes! A tear sneaks between my eyelids and slides into the hair at my temples.
“To have implied that we wished you hadn’t been born. That’s a terrible thing. I’m so, so sorry.”
I nod. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” After another moment of silence, during which the world slides a fraction more into balance, she adds, “You have an email.”
I blink away the tears. She hands me my phone and an open email.
I may not be able to write much more. Nothing bad. Just think it’ll be good for me to move on with this wonderful life, you know? Maybe you’ve already come to this conclusion too. That this is unnatural and unhealthy.
I guess it’s why you’ve gone quiet.
She doesn’t know…
The clown came a few days ago, and I tried, I swear I really tried, to kiss him, but things became awkward. His eyes told me it was more than a kiss, and that made me think I should wait for the right guy. I’m sorry it can’t be you, but I have my reasons.
Rejecting.
I will do it though. I will.
I promise to take good care of your sister’s heart. Before I go, I have one thing to ask. Could you finish the Ivan the Vole story? I want something for Shelagh too. Don’t leave her in the dark. What’s the twist? I can’t figure it out.
I love you.
Becca blooms in my mind, all pastels and lip gloss.
She didn’t sign it.
I slip back under the covers into my underworld, where I am safe with her. The door opens and closes. I sleep. And wake. At some point I move back to my room, collect my virtual-reality gear and join Minnie at the campfire, swearing to myself it’ll be the last time I do this, but after the final strum on her guitar—each time—I hit play again. I can visit Becca the same way whenever I like. Maybe that’s all I need.
“Liver Brother!” Joey shouts. “My turn!”
Joey yanks the blanket off the bed.
“Why do you deserve your organs if this is how you intend to treat them? Huh?”
I shudder in a ball, but he doesn’t go away.
“One week you’ve been sleeping. Get the hell up. It’s the one-week anniversary of my last drink. No thanks to you, I might add.” Joey kneels on the side of the bed. I feel the mattress bend. “The first night you didn’t call, I figured you were testing me, and I took the challenge—didn’t touch a drop. But the second night…that was hard. You’d left me to the bottle. Hard. But my kids and me, we three ferrets watched some of my favorite movies, and I pushed through it. The third night I was pissed at you. Real mad. You abandoned me. You broke a promise. And I know you’ve watched The Godfather enough to know what that means to us Italians. Well, now I’m even more pissed. Your friend Dennis called me, told me what had happened, and I thought, What a goddamn hypocrite.”
He leaves the bed. My mattress springs groan, and light fills the room. “At least when I was drinking, I felt like I was accomplishing something. What can you do from bed?”
In the corner of the room, my mom looks uncomfortable. Her hair has a brushed-out gloss to it. Although tired and lined, her cheeks have color, and her eyes are alive and in focus.
“Why do you want to live?” Joey asks, and I recognize the question.
I bring people stories. I bring people into stories.
“Why are you worth saving?”
I see now how harsh a question this is. I’m not sure I can live up to this standard every day. I will give it my all.
“How will sleeping more help you?”
Am I addicted to sleeping? “I’m n
ot sleeping. I’m being sad. Sadness is tractable.”
“Emmitt, your heart sister isn’t Minnie. All of us together. We’re not Minnie.”
What, when divided by eight, can create eight more, but adding all eight will never be whole? Joy said I couldn’t handle the answer, but I can now. An organ donor. A donor’s organs can save eight people. But you can’t put them back together again to replace the person who was lost. Joy saw right through it all. My movie had never been about my parents. It was always for me, to bring Minnie back to me. This was about me facing my grief, which was why I couldn’t face Becca’s heart’s rejection. But the video worked, just not how I had imagined it. It brought everyone here, and there my mom stands.
I say, my voice hoarse, “You’re right.”
“Well, we’re not dead. Your family isn’t dead.”
My mom’s biting on her knuckles—this is hard for her to hear, like it was for Carina.
“You aren’t dead.”
No. I’m not. I’m sorry it wasn’t me. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to catch you. I’m sorry I abandoned you in the hospital. That I couldn’t think beyond myself to what you would have wanted. Shame rushes through me. I taste bile.
“So what are you going to do?” Joey asks.
I bring people into stories.
I have an idea.
THIRTY–SIX
It’s not a crazy idea. It’s brilliant.
I explain the plan to Joey. When the nurse gathered the patient wish lists, Becca had asked for the view from the top of her roof. She’d gone on to explain in her letters that it wasn’t the big adventures she missed. It was the little ones. Investigating the bakery alley. Sprinting down a hill. For my apology, I’ll create a VR world for Becca of everything she always wanted to do but couldn’t. Then I’ll send my gear to the hospital, and at an appointed time we’ll join each other in the VR world, where I’ll reveal my real self to her—well, my virtual person, but really real.
“Really real?” Joey asks.
“As Emmitt,” I say.
“It’s crazy.”
“Yeah.”
Heart Sister Page 18