“Stella!” Mom shushes me like I’ve said something offensive instead of totally true. She’s always on me about asking too many questions.
“Yes, technically.” Dr. Belkin checks the tube that trails out of my left arm. I can’t say I like him much—not personally anyway—but we reached an understanding a long time ago. We’re on the same team, he and I. It’s my job to maintain a pulse and his job to see that I do and, believe me, I’m all too happy to be another bump in his success rate.
“What we’ll do is prepare the cavity in your chest. A spot for the new heart to sit.” Dr. Belkin draws a circle in the air and I picture a bunch of people in white face masks hovering over me at an operating table, scraping out my insides like I’m a human jack-o’-lantern. My palms start to sweat at the thought of the foreign heart. I dig my fingernail into the white flesh underneath my forearm, the spot where the blue veins push up into a plump little bulb at the base of my wrist, and scratch a cherry-red line. A nervous habit I picked up during my sickness. Illness upon illness, that’s how it works. “Once your new heart is positioned, we’ll sew it in place and stitch together the arteries.” He locks his fingers together to demonstrate and my stomach performs a flip-flop.
“I’ll look like Frankenstein.” I feel the sting on my skin leftover from my fingernail, and picture it fading away from red to pink to white. Then gone.
Dr. Belkin forces a chuckle that doesn’t reach his eyes, which are cold and calculating, as always. “Maybe a little. But at least you’ll be walking and talking.” The man makes a good point.
“And what if you put it in wrong?” I ask. This time my mom doesn’t interrupt me.
“We won’t put it in wrong.”
“But my body could reject it. The heart, I mean?”
Dr. Belkin frowns. “We’re going to do our best to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
There are more questions on the tip of my tongue, but I let them sit there unasked. Instead, I chance a look at my mother, whose expression is unreadable, and take a deep breath, thinking again about how there are fifteen dead people in the history of the world for every living one and wondering which end of the chart I’ll wind up on.
On the nightstand next to me, there’s a vase full of daisies from our neighbors and a big pink teddy bear sent by my teachers. Dozens of cards line the windowsill, some from my best friends, some from people I’ve never met.
My ears start ringing now, and I’m getting a tingly sensation in my toes, and I’m watching the room and my mother and Dr. Belkin, and suddenly it feels like there’s a piece of glass between me and the rest of the world. I swallow hard: the glass evaporates, but the ringing is still there.
The moment hangs there a second too long before Dr. Belkin asks me again if I’m ready and pats my knee under the thin hospital blanket. He’s awkward when he tries to have a good bedside manner, but I don’t mind, because I can barely feel the spot where he touched me. It’s as if this body is somebody else’s. “Three o’clock,” he says, glancing at the clock on the wall and then back at his clipboard. “We better get going.”
“Ready.” I lie.
Dad strolls in, holding the hand of a teetering Elsie, who toddles over the threshold and into my room looking frustratingly adorable, as usual. Big pink bow, soft brown curls, and chubby cherub fingers you can’t help but get the urge to lick icing off of.
Dad scoops her up and places her on the side of my bed. “Tell your sister we’ll see her soon,” he coos. He’s all scruffy beard and smiles and his calming presence spreads over me like a warm bath. When Mom’s watching Elsie he winks at me, and I know it’s a secret meant for just us two to share.
Elsie pats my arm and laughs. A lump grows inside my throat as I look at my baby sister. She was brought into this world a short ten months after I found out I’d probably be making an early exit. As if I was a replaceable doll that happened to be back-ordered by a few years. I wonder if she’ll grow up to look like me, with stick-straight black hair and green eyes that are too wide, or whether her hair will stay brown and curly, like Dad’s, her skin the same tan color. I wish someone could promise to send me a postcard in the afterlife just in case I die.
“Are you nervous, sweetie?” Big fat tears line my mother’s eyelashes as she slides off the bed and studies me with her head tilted.
I shake my head and force a smile. “This body ain’t big enough for the both of us,” I tease, donning a thick Western accent. My parents like when I joke around about my condition. That sort of humor is sick-kid gold. It makes adults think we’re resilient, when really, my limbs have that shaky feeling I get just after I throw up.
What I really want to tell her is that I’m terrified. Terrified I’ll miss high school and my friends and a normal life. Terrified that Elsie will take my place in the family and I’ll be forgotten. Terrified that I’ll never have a real boyfriend.
Dad ruffles my hair with the hand that’s not clinging to Elsie. “That’s the spirit, kiddo.” The creases lining the corners of his eyes are damp.
For a brief moment, my heart physically aches and I think maybe there’s some good left in it after all, but I catch myself right away, since now isn’t the time to get tricked all over again. There’s only one punishment for treason and it’s death. And if I have to wrestle my stupid, defective heart all the way into the depths of the underworld, then that’s what I’ll do, and I swear to God, if only one of us can survive, it’s sure as hell going to be me.
I slide my iPhone out from underneath the back of my hospital gown. I’ve been clinging to it—my only connection to the outside world—but now I’ll have to give it up. My hands shake as my thumb slides across the screen. The nurses are unhooking me from machines. My family is staring at me. Orderlies are busy clearing a path. And yet I’ve never been so alone. My bed is a planet around which everyone else orbits. It must be this realization that plants inside me the sudden desire to tell one person in the world how I feel. It’s a need that takes hold like roots in soil.
I’ve been avoiding Henry, but with trembling fingers I type one sentence: I’m scared. The words appear one letter at a time until I’m left staring at them all spelled out in front of me. If nothing else, I think, they’re true, and there are worse ways to end things. So I hit send and try to imagine I’ve mailed the fear along with it.
Mom pulls my head to her lips and pushes my hair back, so the scrub nurse can put a shower cap over it. Mom takes my phone and the jewelry that I’m wearing, along with the stuffed puppy I keep for good luck.