I toss the magazine back at her. “That’s my favorite pair. I’ve had them forever.”
“Yeah, well in the interest of moving forward, it’s time you found a new favorite pair of shorts.”
We make the drive into town, with Ryan behind the wheel, which is always somewhere between fun and terrifying. With the music blasting loud and my sister singing next to me, it feels like it used to. Almost like it used to—but better, closer, like we’re in this together. We hit Target, the one major store in town, just like we used to before Ryan left for college, grab a coffee at Starbucks, and cruise the air-conditioned aisles for the things we need and don’t need. By the time I come home, I’ve got a whole new running wardrobe, courtesy of Ryan and her leftover travel money.
Up in my room, I take everything out of the bags and lay it out on the bed, feeling motivated by my new gear just like Ryan said I would. I check my phone for the fiftieth time, but there are no texts from Colton. It’s not quite dinner yet, and I have a little time to kill, so I cross the room to my desk, flip open my laptop, and click over to Shelby’s blog, hoping for something new, some new picture of him, or a little quote or story about him, but it’s the same post that’s been up since his one-year checkup.
To all our friends and family, we are so thankful for all your support. It’s been a long year, but Colton’s checkup came back great, and he’s finally adjusting to all his meds. . . .
I remember the pill box, and Colton swallowing the pills when he thought I couldn’t see him. I sit there for a moment, then type into the search box “Post–heart transplant medications.”
Millions of results come up in seconds, lots from medical journals and articles that I don’t think I’ll understand, but lower on the results page, a line from some sort of transplant message board catches my eye:
“You’ve traded in death for a lifetime of medical management. . . .”
I click on the link to the quote, which comes from a forty-two-year-old heart transplant patient. He continues:
Don’t get me wrong—I’d make that trade again in a second. And at my age, that’s something I can handle. There are limitations. Medical limitations, and physical ones too. Risks that you take when you’re young and don’t have a medical condition. Much as you want to, that’s not something you can forget. You can’t afford to. Doesn’t matter if you’re tired, or you don’t want to take them because you hate the way they make you feel. Doesn’t matter if there are major side effects. That’s a part of your life now, just like checkups, and biopsies, and monitoring your weight, blood pressure, heart rate. It’s a gift, but a huge responsibility to shoulder. And if you can’t find a way to get on board with all that, then you’re risking yourself and your transplant. You have to be careful with yourself, and honest about your limits.
I think of Colton. How healthy he seems. And strong. But maybe there are limitations I can’t see, or don’t know about. It makes me want to be careful with him—like the nurse said, like Shelby said without actually saying those words. It makes me feel responsible for his heart, in more ways than one.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“The rhythms that count—the rhythms of life, the rhythms of the spirit—are those that dance and course in life itself. The movement in gestation from conception to birth; the diastole and systole of the heart; the taking of each successive breath; the ebb and flow of tides in response to the pull of the moon and the sun; the wheeling of the seasons from one equinox or one solstice to another—these, not the eternally passing seconds registered on clocks and watches and not the days and months and years that the calendar imposes, define the time . . . we dwell within until our days our ended.”
—Allen Lacy, The Inviting Garden: Gardening for the Senses, Mind, and Spirit
AFTER THAT FIRST morning run, Ryan and I take turns choosing our running route. It’s busy at the office, more than Mom can handle on her own, so Dad is back to his normal routine and it’s just the two of us. We run down roads lined with row after row of rolling vineyards, down single-track trails into ravines with narrow creeks hidden beneath ferns and poison ivy. Sometimes we talk, but mostly it’s just us, and the morning, the rhythm of our feet, and breath, and heartbeats, and the burning of my muscles and lungs as they remember how to be alive.
After our runs, Ryan heads to Gran’s to paint and work on her portfolio, and I make the drive over to the coast. Somewhere along the road that twists and curves between the trees, I become the me who Colton knows.
We start meeting every day at the bluff where we went out kayaking that first day, and I wonder if it’s to avoid Shelby. If he’s keeping me a secret like I’ve kept him. I try not to think about it, and it’s easy when we’re together. He shows me every place he used to know, hidden coves and coastal roads, places that hold memories from his childhood. This is how I start to know him. I don’t have to ask any questions, because he shows me his past this way—the past he wants me to know, without any hospital beds, or oxygen tubes, or plastic boxes full of pills.