“But, Sasha, she’s barely an adult herself. She’s not qualified to—to—”
“To fix me?” Mom drops her gaze, her thumbnail sliding under mine as if I were still a child needing someone to clean them.
“I thought you believed me about Shanna,” I say, watching as she rolls a bit of dirt out from under the nail, a piece of our yard that I managed to bring with me here to this forever-lit, sterile place. “I don’t need fixing. There’s nothing wrong with me, Mom,” I say, my voice rising.
“Sasha, please,” Mom shushes, glancing toward the door. “If the nurses think I’m upsetting you they won’t let me stay.”
“She’s here, Mom,” I say, pulling my hand away from her and reaching for the heart monitor. “I’ll show you.”
I find the time stamp, figure out the controls and scroll backward to where I was talking with Amanda.
“There,” I say, stabbing a finger at the blip on the screen, a valley out of concert with the rest of the terrain. “Shanna’s right there.”
Mom takes a deep breath, eyes closed. “No, honey,” she says finally, letting the words out with the exhale. “The doctor said it’s called dilated cardiomyopathy.”
nineteen
I. Things I Know
A. dilated cardiomyopathy: a heart muscle disease in which the left ventricle stretches too thin and cannot pump blood properly
1. Symptoms
a. Fatigue (Checkmark)
b. Shortness of breath (Checkmark)
c. Reduced ability to exercise (Band camp is over, so checkmark.)
d. Swelling in your legs, feet, or abdomen (Checkmark)
2. Complications
a. Heart failure (Some would argue that happened already.)
b. Regurgitation: blood flows backward into the heart when the ventricle fails to expel it (so your heart throws up back into itself)
c. Edema: fluid buildup (only after Isaac visits, ha-ha)
d. Arrhythmia: abnormal heart rhythm (So, like the sixth-grade band, but in my chest cavity)
e. Cardiac arrest: your heart suddenly stops beating (So . . . dead)
f. Blood clots: can form inside left ventricle, if they should enter the bloodstream may cause stroke, heart attack, or damage to other organs (Yes, this is what an embolism is. By my count, second mention of sudden death.)
II. Things I Don’t Know
A. What Shanna has to say about all this
Shanna has been silent since the diagnosis. Dad follows her lead, his jaw wired shut as I sit in between him and Mom, one facial muscle trembling as if it doesn’t quite have the strength necessary to do its job—much like my left ventricle. We’ve faced multiple doctors and specialists in this way in the week following my accident.
Mom is his polar opposite. She asks questions, repeats the answers, and has even begun to take notes as the doctors talk about treatments, tests, therapies, transplants. When she asked for my input I told her I’d noticed everything starts with a T. I don’t know what else to say. I am of no use in this situation that exists only because I have failed at something.
I take tests, sit, stand, walk on treadmills, raise my arms. Things are inserted and removed, radiation passes through my body with X-rays, and blood leaves in little tubes. But lots of little tubes add up, and I spend most of my time resting; the fatigue that I had noticed earlier seems to have tripled. Whether because there’s a reason for it now, or because it’s actually worse, I don’t know.
As soon as my chest tube and catheter are out I go to the bathroom on my own, making the trip the second Mom and Dad say good night and close the door behind them. My IV is still in, so I have to take the tree along, little bags of liquid that follow me as I go to empty a different bag of liquid that’s inside.
Nobody looks good under fluorescents, and bathroom tiles are probably the worst background for anyone other than a police lineup, so I avoid looking in the mirror as much as possible. I suppose I look like death. True death, not just the expression.
Judging from the initial reactions of everyone who walks into my hospital room I’m assuming if I’d died it would be a closed casket. I can feel hair growing back in on the side of my head that was shaved. It will be a while before it’s long enough to cover the fault line I can feel running from the middle of my forehead to behind my right ear. I touched the stitches briefly once, fingers exploring in the privacy of my room. The stitches holding my face together are close and thick, and I imagine the curvature of the wound makes my head look like a baseball.
I hold my hand up like a blinder so I’m not tempted to glance in the mirror as I use the bathroom. I run my finger over the rest of the wounds on my face, counting the stitches as if they might have changed since last time. Six trace my left jawline, three seem to be attaching my earlobe, and I’ve glimpsed at least eight curving from above my collarbone to disappear behind my back. It could go all the way down my spine like a zipper, for all I know. The wound in my side I’ve seen plenty, every time my shirt was lifted so that people could listen to my heart, my lungs, my failure to operate correctly.
It burns when I pee, the catheter leaving behind a trail of swollen tissue. I go back to my bed, careful not to tangle my IV in anything as I slide under the sheets and push buttons until I have the bed the way I want it. The lights are off, and I can just see the outline of myself in the black reflection of the windows. No details. No stitches. Just a girl, with holes where her eyes and mouth are.
“Shanna?” I say quietly, but she remains voiceless without pen and paper, or a phone.
And maybe it’s easier for her that way, not having to own up to the reality of the situation. I may have killed her, but she’ll be responsible for both our deaths when they come, her brag of a stronger heart clearly being in error. We’ll have plenty to talk about once I find a way for us to communicate again.
I look at my heart monitor, the irregularities frighteningly obvious.
I better hurry.
Everything has fallen away.
I ask Mom if she’s been in touch with my teachers about makeup work. She puts down a medical manual about the structure of the heart and pats my hand.
“Don’t worry about that right now.”
I look at Dad, but he’s studying the pain chart my nurse keeps referring to, his own mouth in a flat line that reflects the number four face.
“What about Oberlin?” I push. Mom waves her hand like my further education is a fat housefly with an errant flight pattern that might land in her hair.
I realize that it might be more fitting to be looking at caskets than curriculum, but my goals have faded drastically in a short amount of time. A week ago I was creating a spreadsheet of courses that I could take in order to get my bachelor’s in three years. Now I’m focused on my heart continuing to beat.