“Reading material!”
Mom’s chirpy greeting first thing in the morning matches some of the beeps from my bedside, a grating soprano of cheer that borders on panic. I toss aside a copy of People that’s three months out of date.
“Finally,” I say, hands out for my laptop. Instead I get a brochure with a smiling Asian kid on the front and a helpful-looking white doctor in the background. The Children’s Cardiac Center is written across the top, supposedly made endearing by primary colors and crayon print.
“What is this?” I ask as Dad comes in carrying a box of granola bars that I asked for.
Mom sits down next to me, putting her bags down on either side of her chair. I notice she always keeps the one that holds her notes about mental disorders on the far side where I can’t reach.
“It’s a program from the children’s hospital,” she explains. “It’s a really nice place, honey. You’d have your own room and—”
“I have my own room,” I interrupt. “It’s at home.”
Mom looks to Dad to deliver the bad news, her optimistic vocabulary not able to compute what comes next.
“You’re not going to be able to go home,” he says, leaning back against the wall. “Your heart rhythms haven’t been stable on the monitor and your blood pressure has been barely in the normal range. You’re going to need to be under constant care until—”
He breaks off so abruptly that I feel a spike of fear. “Until what? I die?”
“No, honey.” Mom’s hand shoots out, fingers on my wrist as if the simple act of feeling my pulse will keep those words at bay. “Until we’re able to find you a transplant.”
She says it as if search and rescue is out looking for a heart that may have been misplaced, not that we’re waiting for someone else to die so that I can live.
“How did I go from fine to needing a new heart?”
“You weren’t fine,” Dad says. “This . . . this . . .”
“Dilated cardiomyopathy,” Mom supplies.
“It’s always been there,” he goes on, not even attempting the pronunciation. “Your mom said you passed out the other day in the living room and that you’ve been sleeping a lot.”
I don’t point out that he’s only listing things Mom has told him, nothing he’s witnessed himself. I wonder how loudly Mom had to scream to call the ambulance in order to get past his earplugs.
“Your dad is right,” Mom says, her hand tightening on my wrist. “The signs were there, we just didn’t know what they were pointing to. So in a way, it’s a good thing that—”
“Patricia,” Dad warns, his voice tight.
“Well, maybe it is,” Mom shoots back. “Otherwise we might not have known until she . . . she . . .”
“Until I had an embolism or massive heart failure.” Leave it to Mom to find the silver lining of me propelling myself outdoors through plate glass.
“We met with a heart specialist yesterday,” she goes on. “The team decided it would be best for you to be under constant care for your heart in the cardiac center. They’re concerned about the conditions surrounding your fall from the window but are willing to admit you to the center as long as you have regular visits from a mental health specialist. I told the team that you and Amanda had really hit it off.”
The team. I picture a line of cheerleaders, some with hearts next to the deep-V neckline of the uniform, some with brains. Me and Amanda really “hitting it off” while shaking pom-poms. Rah-rah. Go team.
I flip open the brochure to see a shiny reception area with fresh flowers and a smiling woman waiting to check me in. On the top of the page it reads, Welcome, not Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here. I bet if I set this next to a brochure for an indoor water park there wouldn’t be much difference. All the language is comforting, using words like care, comfort, and convenience. Nowhere do I see surgery, scalpel, or sedative.
There aren’t pictures of crash carts or red alarm lights going off, there’s no blood spatter on these gowns, or exposed organs. Everything that happens in this place for the dying looks like a good time, closely watched over by smiling people who only want me to enjoy myself.
“So I live there?”
“Yes,” Mom says. “There are plenty of kids your age there,” she adds as I glance at a shot of toddlers in a finger-painting class. None of them have IVs in their arms or machines attached to them.
“You’ll be able to keep up with your schoolwork, too,” Mom goes on. “There are online classes you can take so you’ll graduate on time, or they can arrange for tutors on site if you’d like.”
I’ve gone from valedictorian to hoping to graduate on time. I flip to the back of the brochure, which has driving directions and a map of their campus, probably the only one I’ll ever see.
“What do you think, honey?” Mom asks, her hand on mine once again. “It looks nice, doesn’t it?”
The brick facade of the cardiac center does indeed look nice, very much like an admissions center for a college. But I’m willing to bet there are panels with hidden defibrillators everywhere, and that all the doorways are wide enough to admit wheelchairs. I put the brochure down, resting beside my knee.
“I don’t understand how this happened,” I say.
Dad shifts against the wall, his eyes on the ground. “It happened because of me,” he says.
twenty
I. Things I Know
A. 30 percent of dilated cardiomyopathy patients inherited their disease from a parent.
B. Mine came from Dad.
1. He didn’t know he had it, and only found out after both he and Mom were tested to determine the origin of mine. Now Mom has two silver linings to be thankful for.
2. He’d been ignoring his own symptoms for years, attributing them to stress and not wanting to upset Mom.
3. His isn’t as bad as mine and will be treated with a pacemaker.
II. Things I Don’t Know
A. How many silver linings it takes to bring the whole cloud crashing down
I wait until Mom and Dad are gone to plug in my laptop, it being the consolation prize for learning I won’t be going home. As promised, they’d taken all the internet browsers off it, but they don’t know the first thing about messaging services. I pull up the one I use most often, weighing the pros and cons about who I should reach out to. I choose Brooke, because she’s online at the moment, and settle for something simple to announce my continued presence among the living.
Hey.
Holy shit that really u Sasha?
Really me. Still in the hospital.
I won’t ask if ur ok b/c I know ur not but I am so so so sorry about what we said. U don’t even know.
I didn’t throw myself out the window because of my friends, but if Brooke wants to keep apologizing for it, I’m going to let her. I take a pic of my busted face with the webcam, closing my eyes. I send it to her without a caption.
FUCK
I rest my fingers for a little bit so that she can stare at what’s left of me before I let her off the hook.
You would love it here. Lots of stitches and open wounds.