Before I know it, they’re starting to roll me away. Panic wells up inside me and I just barely get out, “See you soon,” even though I’m already facing backward as Dr. Belkin and the nurse push me out of room G216. Of course, Elsie’s crying again.
The double doors rush at me, swinging open at the last second. I stare up at the ceiling tiles instead and watch them whiz past one by one. We’re in a new room now, with a giant light overhead and a crowd of masked clinicians. From somewhere behind me, an anesthesiologist is telling me to count, so I do it, and I’m counting out loud: “Ten, nine, eight…”
I see myself holding Elsie, right after she was born. Seven…Covered in blood, she’s sticky and screaming, but brand-new and strangely beautiful. She stretches her fingers up, clasping at nothing. Her tiny mouth sucks the air.
Six…
I watch as black water closes over the top of her head, submerging tiny wisps of baby hair. My eyelids flutter. Or at least they try to. Bubbles break the surface.
Five…
Only I’m not sure if I’m counting anymore. There’s a boy. His eyes are shaded. His face is a flash and then it’s gone, replaced by a body. I can’t see whose. The face is turned, hair splayed out like it’s floating in the ocean. I should tell someone. I should.
But I can’t because four. The word is announced as if over a loudspeaker.
On cue, the room goes dark, or at least it’s dark for me. There’s a tight squeeze against my lungs and then—
Spoiler alert: I’m not dead.
I know there are people at school wondering, wanting to ask one of my (very few) close friends, but not sure how. They’ve probably tried checking my Facebook page for signs of life—or death. They can’t. It’s locked unless I let you in.
The truth is, I’m superstitious. In the weeks after surgery, every day was a waiting game, breath held, an anybody’s-guess version of Russian roulette—will my body accept the new organ or not? Staying at the hospital was a routine step in the surgery, but it felt like purgatory.
Days turned into weeks and still my clock kept ticking. My parents are still the last holdouts, even more hesitant than I was to make the big Stella’s okay broadcast. Nobody wants to show our hand, to publicize that we cheated death. The weaker hand has won. Only you can’t live that way forever. Can you?
I snap shut the lid of a yellow marker and admire my handiwork. On the wall of my bedroom hangs a calendar. Between this year and the year before there are a total of 237 red x’s, one for each day of school I missed. The five weeks are a solid block of angry crosses. I slashed each over the date, often pushing so hard the ink bled onto the page beneath.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Mom leans in the doorway, warming her fingers with a steaming mug of coffee. “Dr. Belkin said—”
“Dr. Belkin said it was fine.” The red marker lies in the garbage can beside my nightstand. With the yellow, I’ve colored a bright sun on today’s date to mark my return. At last, I think, unable to suppress a smile. My skin practically crawls with longing to get out of this house. Four weeks ago I’d have said I had cabin fever. By now it’s escalated to full-on cooped-up pneumonia.
“Fine.” She stirs her coffee with a miniature spoon and concentrates on the cream swirling into milky brown. “But that doesn’t mean advisable.”
“I was ready to go back weeks ago.” I tie a ribbon around the base of my ponytail and admire my reflection in the mirror. On my last visit to Dr. Belkin, I’d petitioned for a clean bill of health, but he’d sentenced me to another seven days. I would have invoked the rules of the Geneva Convention if I’d thought it’d convince anyone that I deserved an early release. But I waited. Patiently. So that no one would question my judgment the moment I was cut loose.
My recovery hasn’t exactly been a straight line. There’ve been side effects. Painful ones. In the mirror the remnants of dark, bruise-like circles peek through the concealer underneath my eyes. Bones protrude from my thin wrists. I keep these things hidden from my mom. They’re only distractions. I’m lucky she can’t see the worst of it. My chest has been feeding me a raw, incessant ache ever since I returned home from the hospital. Sometimes I peek underneath my shirt, certain that I’ll find pus oozing out of the wound. I never do. That’s the thing about pain: it’s invisible.
“What are the rules?” she asks.
I sigh, retucking my shirt. “Wash my hands frequently. Maintain a bland diet. Don’t elevate my heart rate unless I want to malfunction. Happy?” I say, grabbing my bag off my bed.
“I’d prefer not to think about my daughter malfunctioning.” She trails me down the hall toward the entryway.
“I figured it sounded nicer than the real word—dead.” I stop at the front door and turn to face her. The corners of her eyes crinkle like tissue paper under her wire-frame glasses. “Mom.” I try to sound firm, adult. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”
My mom’s cheeks cave as she purses her lips. “Another week at home wouldn’t kill you.”
I push open the door, letting in a burst of fresh air, which isn’t steeped in sun like I’d imagined, but slick and soggy. I breathe in a heaping mouthful and smile. “No, Mom. It would.”
Seven o’clock. I push the lock button one more time on the keys to my black Jetta before looking up at the school I never thought I’d see again. It’s already been in session for six weeks. The late September air’s filled with a million crystallized droplets so minuscule they seem to hang suspended rather than fall. They clog up my pores and pull at the strands in the hair-sprayed ponytail I spent fifteen minutes combing this morning.
Everything’s deadly quiet here. The gravel parking lot’s empty and the sky is still gray, making outlines fuzzy and out of focus. The oak trees, portables, and the American flag that droops limply from the pole all loom in the murky air like abandoned carnival rides. It’s my favorite time, these stolen minutes in a place normally teeming with people.
I take a sip of coffee from a silver travel mug, and as if in response, my heart performs a kick. I rub at the spot on the outside of my chest where it feels as if my new heart may have left a bruised rib. I push on one of the bones to feel it. The muted pain spreads up my breast and I knead it with my fingertips.
Relax, I tell it. First-day jitters. I trudge through the parking lot to the mist-soaked grass alongside the library’s edge. Through the fog I see someone cut across my path. His figure is obscured by the gray dripping from the sky, but sharpens as our trajectories converge. He’s tall, with hands shoved into his pockets as he walks briskly in the opposite direction.