Second Hand Heart (2 page)

She showed me how she had worried a slightly smoother spot on to the stone by rubbing it with her thumb all the way to America.

She went on a boat and it took weeks.

She told me I could put all my worry into the stone. And maybe it would even wear a groove into solid rock.

I said something like, “You’re kidding. This is only skin.” And I held up my thumb so she could see what was only skin.

“Water is only water,” Esther said. “But water can wear away stone.”

I took the stone in my hand and held it. I liked the weight of it, and the warmth of it, from being gripped so tightly in Esther’s palm.

I said, “Maybe I won’t have time.”

“Or maybe you will,” she said. “No one can tell you when you are going to die. You die when you are done. Not a moment before. Not a moment after. No matter what anyone says. No matter what anyone wishes for you.”

“Thank you for the worry stone,” I said. “But I actually don’t think I’m very worried.”

“Really?” she said.

“I don’t think so.”

“Most people in your situation would be worried.”

“Maybe because they were never in my situation before. I’ve always been in my situation.”

Esther shook her head and clucked with her tongue. “Maybe you have worry and you don’t know. Just like you have air all around you, but you don’t know. If sometimes you had air and sometimes not, then you would know.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“It really doesn’t matter what you have,” she said. “Whatever it is, give it to the worry stone all the same.”

So I’ve been rubbing it smooth(er) ever since.

On Lying in the Hospital Waiting for a Heart

I
’m number one on the list for a heart. That’s sort of the good news and the bad news all mixed up into one. Short version, it means I’m more likely to die than anybody else on the list, as best they can figure these things. So it’s one of those contests nobody’s dying to win. No pun intended. Then again, if there’s a heart, it’s nice to be number one on the list for it.

It’s all very emotionally complicated.

Here’s the bad news: there isn’t any heart right now for anybody on the list. Not even number one. That could change at any time, I suppose. But this is now. And there isn’t a heart.

Ready for the statistics that go with the “urgent” category? The majority of patients on that list will either die or be transplanted within two weeks.

So this life of mine is coming down to the wire. One way or the other.

Last weekend was a late-spring holiday. One of those ones nobody really cares about. Just a stupid excuse to give everybody Monday off.

My mother was nervous and guilty all weekend long.

She just kept moving. All weekend. She moved into my hospital room. She moved out of it. She walked from my bed to the window. She walked back. She dusted the food tray. (Right, like dust is always a problem in hospital rooms.) Pulled dead petals off the flowers. Went out for a walk in the hall. Came back.

If I’d had more energy, I’d have screamed. But I can’t even breathe well enough to breathe, not to mention to scream.

Not that I don’t get where she’s coming from. But when you’re nervous and somebody else is nervous, too, you feel like you want them to help you stay calm. Maybe it’s not a reasonable request, but you do. Otherwise their nervous kind of stands on the shoulders of your nervous, and then the whole nervous thing is so big and tall that it gets to be too much nervous for anybody to bear. Especially anybody with a bad heart. And then the whole shaky system wants to come crashing down.

So, even though I know it’s probably not really fair, it was hard not to blame her nervousness. If for no other reason than the sheer volume of it. Figuratively speaking. It didn’t literally make any noise. But in another way it drowned out everything else in the room. Hell, everything else in the world.

Now. In fairness to my mom, here’s what was so hard about this weekend in particular: there are more traffic fatalities on a holiday weekend. Really, if you know the statistics, you know the chances are very good that someone will die.

This is why she was nervous: because maybe nobody would. Or, worse yet, maybe somebody would, but they wouldn’t have a donor sticker on their license. Or their family would get squeamish, and decide to bury them all in one piece.

That drives her out of her mind.

Also, this is the part probably nobody knows but me. This is the secret part about why she was feeling guilty: because maybe somebody would. Because part of her was wishing somebody would.

Nobody did.

On Dying

I
think I look at it differently than other people do. And I think the way I look at it is right, and the way other people look at it is wrong.

I don’t say that about too many things. I’m not vain. I’m not one of those people who always thinks I’m right about everything. I’m just one of those people who always thinks I’m right about this.

Here’s why, and I think it’s a very good reason: let’s say the subject is something else besides death. Say it’s a mountain. Or a tree.

Yeah. Let’s say it’s a tree.

I’m standing under the branches of it. Close enough to reach out and feel the texture of the bark against my palm. The rest of you are two or three miles back, peering through binoculars with foggy lenses.

Now. I ask you. Who knows more about the tree?

Here’s what I think about dying: I think it’s not so much about being and then not being. I think it’s more about where you are. Not whether you are.

Take me. I’m lying on this hospital bed. Dying. Unless someone dies suddenly in an accident while they’re still young and healthy and gives me a heart, and they die in a way that it can be harvested in time, and it gets to me really fast. But let me tell you, there’s not much time left for all that stuff to fall into place. Meanwhile, here I am, getting weaker and weaker. Like this light that just dims and dims. Until after a while you can’t see it at all. Maybe it gives a little flicker. And then nothing. Out.

My mother cries and says, “That’s it, she’s gone. No more Vida.”

But somewhere else, in some other place — some very different place — there’s this little flicker of light, and somebody is saying, “Look. What’s that? Someone new is here.” And I think they’re very happy about that.

And maybe the someone new isn’t exactly Vida. Definitely not in every earthly sense of the word. And definitely she doesn’t have my skinny body. But it’s me.

I still am. I’m just not what you expected me to be, from experience.

You can live with that. Right? Not if you’re my mother you can’t.

On the Heart

I
t wasn’t even a holiday. Just a regular weekday night. And some woman skidded off the road in her car.

I don’t know too much about her. Just what my mother told me. That her name was Lorraine Buckner Bailey, and that she went by Lorrie. And that she was thirty-three years old.

And the accident was pretty close by, too. San Jose. Maybe an hour by car, though I doubt that’s the way they’ll send the heart.

I wanted to know if she had any kids, but I was afraid to ask. My mom gets very emotional around stuff like that. Even though when she was telling me about the heart, she was very, very happy. Like, if you didn’t know better, you would think it was too much happy to ever knock her out of.

But I know her pretty well. And it was too much happy, really.

It’s like when you’re a kid and your mom sees you roughhousing with your cousins and screaming with laughter, and she says something like, “You’re laughing now, but in a minute somebody’s going to be crying.” Because you’re overexcited.

It’s like there’s a fine line between hyper-happy and falling apart.

Actually, I only know that from watching my cousins play. I could never afford to get overexcited. I wonder if I’ll be able to get overexcited when I get the heart. Or whether I’ll stay mostly pretty quiet out of habit.

Either way, I don’t have it yet, and I definitely can’t afford too much excitement right now. And my mother was sort of wearing me down. Actually, my mother was definitely wearing me down. After a while my cardiac surgeon, Dr. Vasquez, came in and congratulated me, and said how happy she was for me, and told my mom I needed rest.

So I actually got a little time alone. As you can tell, I’m using the time to write in my journal.

While I’m writing, I’m picturing my mother out in the hallway, jumping up and down as quietly as possible.

On My Mother and the Heart

M
y mother feels guilty.

She won’t say so. But I know. I know her pretty well. She feels guilty because she’s so happy. And she knows she shouldn’t be happy when a woman just died. She keeps saying she’s sad that the woman died, but happy that her husband was willing to donate the heart. That’s not entirely true, which is why she feels guilty.

She didn’t know Lorrie Buckner Bailey. And she knows me.

Probably we should feel bad when anybody dies. I mean, if you’re not into my flickering-out theory. If we’re going to feel bad about anybody, then we should feel bad about everybody. Even if we don’t know them, we should still feel bad.

But we never do.

On How Much I Have to Hurry