by Ginger Scott
“For a long time, I was surviving and beating odds. Then the fatigue got worse,” I say to a nodding audience. They don’t know my story personally, but they all know how my story goes. Stories like mine—they have fuzzy endings, no spoilers that tell me exactly how my life’s going to play out. I’ve always been of the mindset that my life is what I make of it—even if I have half a heart.
That’s what got me here.
“I was a status two. Not sick enough to get the first heart out of the gate. Not even sick enough to get the tenth, really. And my parents, brother, and I spent a year getting called into Philadelphia, from our home in Delaware, for false hope and rejections. All for a surgery and post-op treatment that we couldn’t afford in the first place.”
“I got scared—plain and simple,” I shrug. “I was fifteen at the time, almost sixteen, and looking at a black hole. I couldn’t get excited for things like driving or prom or the Friday-night football game. My girlfriends were all growing up, getting boyfriends, figuring out who they were, but I knew who I was. I was too busy being both frightened and hopeful of moving from status two to status one. That fear consumed me, and it could have paralyzed me. Instead…I wrote a letter.”
“I don’t know how many letters Dr. Miranda Wheaton gets. All these years, I’ve never actually asked her,” I say, turning to face my saving grace, my brow pinched as I shake my head at her in question.
She raises her shoulders as she smiles and whispers, “It’s a lot.” I laugh to myself, turning back to my podium.
“She says a lot,” I say, garnering a few chuckles from the crowd. “Well, I don’t know what it was that convinced her to open mine, read it, and then fly all the way to Delaware to meet with me and my parents in person, but I’m sure I’ll never be able to repeat the magic of those words in my letter again. I hope I never have to.”
“I was Dr. Wheaton’s twenty-first donated surgery. As she said when she met with my family months before it actually happened—the wait for a new heart would still be long. And there would still be false starts. But Chicago was where I needed to be.
“So we moved. And I homeschooled for the first few months in the city while my parents looked for work, and a suburb we could afford. I spent those early weeks waiting for the call—for a heart—at home. But part of being a status-twoer, is not being sick enough not to want to leave your house—or, if you’re a teenager, to be somewhere with friends. So I went to school, and life…it went on—the safety net of hope that Dr. Wheaton swore would come there to catch me when I fell.
“On November first of my sophomore year of high school, that net…it worked,” I smile, no longer registering the fact that I’m in front of anyone at all. “There was a heart, and it wasn’t right for anyone above me. But it was perfect for me. I was pulled from school, and in surgery in less than three hours.”
“Dr. Wheaton is sitting up here next to me tonight, thanks to her generosity. I don’t take it lightly, and I hope one day I get to stand at the operating table with her, assisting and learning, as we give a gift like this,” I say, my hand clutched against my heart—my second heart, “to someone else. It is an honor, distinguished guests, to present to you Miranda Wheaton…this year’s recipient of the S. Holden Taft Award.”
The applause erupts quickly as everyone gets to their feet. Dr. Wheaton hugs me as we exchange spots. When I get to my seat, the enormity of everything catches up to me, and breathing begins to feel difficult.
It’s a panic attack. I know them. I don’t have them often, only when I let myself really stop and think about…well…my life. Usually, I’m just working hard, studying, applying for something—pushing. Always pushing. It’s when I stop that I realize—holy shit, I’m alive.
I’m sitting in a chair at the end of the row, so as Dr. Wheaton begins her talk, I excuse myself to the small curtained area to the side of the stage, and around to the wall behind the rows of dinner tables. There’s a water station, and my hand is shaking as I guzzle cup after cup.
“You probably need to breathe more than you need to drink,” he says. My IT guy is also my emergency medic. So far, he’s getting all the hero roles, and I’m only technically-inept and skittish. I should be more embarrassed, but I’m to overwhelmed, so I nod in agreement, handing the small paper cup to him and raising my arms above my head to open up my lungs.
“Breathe in until she looks to the left,” he whispers, now leaning against the wall next to me. I glance from him back up to Miranda, noticing that he’s right—she has a pattern to her speech. She starts at one side of the room, then switches topics, takes a breath and moves to the other.
I breathe with her on every turn—in several seconds, out several more. Eventually, this routine becomes kind of funny, and it makes me giggle. I breathe through it though, still feeling flutters in my belly from nerves. Unless…the flutters are from something else.
“When I had to give my first dissertation…this is how she told me to deal with the room,” he whispers next to me. “Divide it in half to make the crowd smaller. Thing is, I gave my dissertation to a table of seven people. Not a lot to divide, and frankly…I would have given anything for it to have been more crowded or noisier.”
I look at him, still breathing, but now on my own.
“When it’s a small room like that, you can totally hear when someone writes something down. Screws with your head,” he smirks. He’s playing it cool as if we’re just two people who like to stand off to the side—as if this is where we’re supposed to be.
I turn my head to watch the end of Miranda’s speech. She touches on the topic of me once more—at the end—when she lets everyone know about how I wrote her a second letter, after my surgery, telling her I had every intention of walking in her footsteps. She makes a joke of it, of how I was right, and it didn’t live up to the first one I wrote. But then she talks about how I beat out more than seven hundred other applicants for her mentorship, and my smile slips, because I’m sure everyone’s thinking about how I probably didn’t deserve the slot, that she picked me because she felt bad, or she thought I had a great story. Sometimes I let that doubt eat at me, and I feel a little inadequate. It gets a lot of applause today, though, and most of the room turns to look at me, so I plaster the smile back in place.
“Just keep breathing,” my mystery friend whispers from behind his hand as he pretends to run it over his beard. When the dean takes over at the podium again and begins recognizing others in the audience, my friend nudges me to get my attention, then nods over his shoulder, toward the double doors to the right of us. I follow him out quietly, and allow myself to sigh loudly, my lips flapping and making a motorcycle sound.
“Wow, you were really holding a lot of that in, huh?” he chuckles.
“I guess I was,” I say, feeling the threat of my chest tightening again now that we’re out in the hallway alone. I look down at my hands, which are clutching my purse hard, my knuckles white. I breathe out a short laugh and relax my hold.
“I’m Graham, by the way,” he says, his palm out, waiting for mine, which is clammy, and I’m embarrassed to touch him, but I do anyhow. When our hands meet, I notice more than I probably should just from shaking someone’s hand—like the fact that there’s a callus at the base of his fingers, and his nails are kept short, and his palms are unusually warm for the coldness of the room.
“Hi, Graham. I’m…Emma,” I start, squinting my eyes as I cut myself off with a shake of my head. “You know that already though, I guess.”
“Yeah, I got that from your speech,” he chuckles, leaning into me enough that his arm brushes against mine. “Which…nice job, by the way. I think you might have stolen her thunder.”
“Thanks,” I say, my face flushing and my lips twitching with the pressure to smile. The doors next to us push open before I can say anything else, and the crowd begins to exit a few people at a time, many stopping to congratulate me along the way. I’m not sure why—I didn’t win the award. I’m gracious anyh
ow, though, and Graham stands next to me the entire time.
“Well…what did you think?” Dr. Wheaton says as she steps through the doors last. Her eyes flit from me to Graham and back again. I open my mouth to speak, but before I can, Graham responds.
“It was better than your last speech. You still do the side-to-side thing, you know,” he says, his hands comfortably hung from his thumbs in his pants pockets, his head tilted at her in a friendly way. Something in his eyes is off, though, like while they may be familiar with each other—he’s also challenging her, maybe even baiting her a little.
“Graham, when you’ve been doing it one way as long as I have, you don’t change,” she answers, her mouth twisted, almost as if she’s scolding him.
“Yet you can learn the latest surgical techniques and master them,” he chuckles, nodding before turning his head away. “Funny what old dogs can learn.”
There’s a flash of displeasure that crosses her face, but the consummate professional, she quickly masks it, her deep red lips smiling.
“For now. Until I teach someone else,” she says, directing the focus to me. I feel her eyes on me, and my head starts swimming with a little bit of fear and pride all at once.
“Better her than me,” he says, tossing a laugh out, still looking away from her.
“So how do you two know each other?” Miranda asks. I feel my stomach drop, suddenly nervous as my brain slowly starts to put their relationship together. Standing next to one another, it’s painfully clear—but apart, I guess my nerves blinded me.
“I just met her tonight, but…” Graham says, leaning toward me again, his elbow jutting out just enough to touch my arm. I catch Miranda’s eyes as they see it, and I can’t tell if the expression on her face is one that approves or not. “I was gonna see if I could convince her to meet me for coffee tomorrow.”
My eyes grow wide, and I feel like I’ve been thrown into some sort of sick and twisted test. I look to Dr. Wheaton, thinking I probably need her approval, or that maybe she’ll give me an out, telling him it’s not appropriate.
“Just make sure my son picks up the tab,” she says, bending toward my ear.
“Oh, yeah…right,” I giggle. It’s not a cool giggle, but a messy, nervous one, that turns into a choking kind of cough that leads me to have to excuse myself as she says goodbye to her son—her hot son…the one that just asked me out…in front of her…after having an awkward pissing match with her in front of me on top of it all. I’m really not sure if coffee with Graham is a good idea or not, but I’m not sure I have a choice in the matter now.
I spend longer than I need at the drinking fountain, until she’s walking out the main door with the dean and a few of her colleagues, leaving me with Graham, who’s somehow still calm and confident-looking. I don’t think his hands left his pockets once.
“So…coffee?”
The way he sucks in his top lip and raises his eyebrows is, well—it’s adorable, even if his clear need for dominance is a little off-putting. And it also seems to have rendered my tongue useless, because more than a few seconds have passed without an answer from me, and he’s starting to bunch his brow. And now he’s looking at me like maybe I’m a little off.
Maybe…maybe I am a little off?
“Oh, yeah. I mean, yes. Sure. I’d love to,” I stammer. Graham slips his hand from his pocket with his phone, holding it up and ready to type.
“What’s your number? I’ll text you early in the afternoon, and we’ll find a good time.”
I pause awkwardly-long again due to the inner-dialogue I have with myself, trying to decide if this is a good idea or a bad one. Eventually, I rattle off my number, my pulse speeding up as he types into his phone.
“Well…Emma,” he says, reaching for my hand again. I give it to him, and this time his touch is a little more familiar, and a little…more. His fingers wrap around my wrist, and when I look up at him, I notice the twitch in his lips as he watches his hold on me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sounds gerd…I mean, good. Gerd…is just on my mind I guess…medical awards dinner and all. Oh god.” I shut my eyes as he laughs. I open them as I start to take a step toward the door. “I swear, tomorrow I’ll be back at the top of my game. Public speaking does a number on me.”
“I look forward to seeing the top of your game,” he chuckles.
I raise a hand and spin to face the double glass doors, actively thinking about pushing them open, not running into them, not tripping, and walking quickly, but not too quickly away. This is why I don’t date. Thinking of all of this, trying not to look like a jackass for a solid minute—it’s too hard. Give me advanced chem and bio, instead.
My giddiness lasts only a few minutes, and soon I’m walking back to my apartment, dreading the fact that I have a date with someone.
Handsome as he may be, Graham is not Andrew.
These butterflies are not the same.
* * *
Andrew
I don’t think I’ve ever spent the night in a girl’s bed without getting something out of it. Even in Iowa, when I hooked up with girls my senior year or at junior college, I never stayed at a chick’s place without at least a hand job.
I could have had anything I wanted last night—anything…but Emma. That’s the problem. This whole thing—coming back to their apartment again, hooking up with Lindsey—it was always really about Emma.
Punishing Emma—seeing Emma.
I guess in a way, I’m getting something out of this, but it doesn’t feel as good as I thought it would. There must be a shred of decency left inside me, because I made out with Lindsey until my lips were raw last night, and then we just went to sleep. In her bed. Fucking spooning like we were two kids sneaking off at camp. I bet she thinks I’m this big gentleman—either that, or an enormous pussy. She kept giving me these little signs, small tugs of her shirt, little exposures of her skin that signaled it was all clear for me to keep on moving.
But I couldn’t do it.
I started stroking her hair, putting her to sleep. I panicked, like I was babysitting an infant, and just trying to put it to sleep, the whole time feeling sick as fuck to my stomach. I lay there awake holding her, wishing she were Emma. Emma—who I hate. I hate Emma. I can’t even talk myself out of hating her. Yet…I keep fantasizing about touching her instead of Lindsey. That’s the only way I can make my affection feel like it’s real. My head gets cloudier with every minute that passes in this scenario I’ve trapped myself in.
I left their apartment when the sun came up, not able to take it any more. Lindsey woke up just enough to see I was leaving, but I kissed her back to bed and slipped out her door. I should have kept walking, but my eyes caught the sleeve of Emma’s shirt hanging from the side of the trashcan. It’s like she put it there to surrender—the only flag she has to wave.
It smelled like her. She still smells the same.
I should have left it in the trashcan where she put it. But I didn’t want her to surrender. I wanted her to keep playing, to have to hold on to this stupid piece of material that I now know reminds us both of before. I want her to have to look at it, too—even if she never wears it again.
If she surrenders, I win.
Then what?
I’m kind of impressed that she sent her roommate to me wearing it. Up until now, she’s been just taking my comments and dismissing them, even when I can tell they get to her. She’s been going along with this pretense that we don’t know each other. I have been giving her nothing but shit, and she’s just been taking it.
Until now.
“Didn’t your roommate wear that yesterday?” I say in an offhanded manner as I step out into the hallway from the locker room where Lindsey’s been waiting for me. I saw her in the sweatshirt during the goddamned game, and it was the only thing I could concentrate on. I blew a major play. All I want in the world is for her to take it off, to get rid of it. I feel a little bad about my comment, though, because I see her face fall as she look
s down and pulls the bottom of the sweatshirt out to look at it.
Shit…this part of my plan doesn’t feel good. Lindsey isn’t the one I mean to be provoking.
“Oh, I…yeah, I guess she did. I just like it, so she said I could borrow it,” she says. I can tell she’s lying because she’s embarrassed. Emma probably fed her some bullshit to make her feel pretty in that sweatshirt just so she’d wear it here, and I just crapped all over her. She pulls it off and folds it over her arm, though, and I smile to myself at how easy it was to take away Emma’s power.
Lindsey’s still pouting a little when I turn around. I grab my equipment bag and jerk it up higher on my shoulder, then lean into her, kissing her neck. “I like you better in your things,” I say, which makes her blush. She’s already forgotten about the sweatshirt.
“Harper, you still have to talk with coach. He’s pissed, dude,” Trent says as he comes out of the locker room, his eyes quickly noticing my date. He smirks and winks at me in front of her, which irritates me. He’s doing that eyebrow waggle too, which is only going to make Lindsey think I talk about her to Trent. I don’t. In fact, Trent doesn’t even know her name.
“I have a 4.0. There is literally nothing for me to study, so why should I waste time sitting there in the study lab,” I sigh, ready to get back to the fact that I blew my study hall hours, which I don’t need, and coach wants to bench me for it. Some system—the guy with the highest GPA gets the smack down, but Tony Agaluta, our goalie who’s flunking basic algebra, gets stickers on his goddamned helmet because he shows up at four o’clock every day for tutoring—and still fails!
“I don’t make the rules, Harp. And neither does coach,” Trent says. Sometimes I want to punch my friend. He’s like Dudley-Do-Right, even when he’s being logical.