I decide ten minutes into our first session at the cardiac center that I’m going to buy Amanda a T-shirt that reads, And How Does That Make You Feel? That’s been her response to everything so far, from my reaction to a very permanent-looking plastic nameplate being inserted into the Room 211 slot, to the fact that the password to the WiFi is hearthealthy.
“So yesterday was your first day here,” she says, her ankle tapping against one leg of the rolling chair she’s wheeled into my room for what she calls a sit-down even though I’m lying on the couch. “Have you met the other residents?”
I shake my head, not wanting to go into detail. Mom and Dad left after getting me settled, like this was fourth-grade camp and it would be easier for everyone if they cut the cord fast. Except at camp we were all lost and bewildered, forming groups for safety right away. Here the packs are already in place, and I’m wandering among them with half my face sewn back on, which automatically made them close ranks. I ate my dinner in a corner while pretending to read the menu that informed me how everything I eat here is perfectly calibrated to not make me spontaneously die.
“This must all be coming as quite a shock,” Amanda goes on, after making some sort of note on her pad, probably about my antisocial behavior.
“No,” I deadpan. “I’ve been expecting it.”
Amanda uncrosses her legs, and I notice that her socks don’t match. “Look,” she says, “you asked me to be here. The therapist who usually covers ER on-call would have taken one look at you and dished you off to a four-letter without thinking twice.”
“Four-letter?”
“Someone with a lot more credentials than me,” she explains.
“You’re turning into a complicated case, Sasha Stone,” Amanda goes on, chewing on the end of her eraser while she looks over her notes. “The night of the accident you told me you jumped out your bedroom window. But I’m seeing in the notes from your cardiac team now you claim it was a fall?”
“It was a fall,” I repeat the end of her question as a statement.
She looks up. Her face would be cool and collected if it wasn’t for the bit of eraser hanging off her lip. “You sure about that?”
“Yes,” I say.
“You wouldn’t just be changing your story because a suicide attempt would automatically bar you from receiving a new heart?”
“No.”
“Okay,” Amanda says agreeably. She looks back down at her notes, which I’m sure is a ploy since there are only a few lines written there.
“So . . .” She turns a page. It’s covered in writing; I spot the names Jones and Faber.
“You talked to the medics?” I blurt. Shanna’s sudden charging inside me forces the words out before my brain pulls the plug.
“Yes,” Amanda says. “How do you feel about that?”
“Fine,” I lie. I’m very good at keeping a straight face under all circumstances, but since my face’s new default is definitely un-straight I have no idea if I look confident or not.
“How would you feel if I told you that as an advocate for mental health, I’m not in agreement with the concept of those with mental issues being denied working organs?” Amanda asks.
I shrug. But I’m listening.
“Sasha,” Amanda leans forward, drops her voice. “You need a new heart; that’s the cardiac center’s job. My job is to help you, and judging by what you said to the medics, you could use it.”
“And whose job is it to monitor you?” I ask. “Someone who wouldn’t be cool with you withholding such information, I bet.”
“That’s true,” Amanda says casually. “But to be honest, I’m not terribly happy with my boss right now. Apparently your dad made a sizable donation to the ad campaign for our next tax levy. I get to rearrange my schedule—and my other patients—to fit yours.”
Amanda says get to in a tone that informs me she’s not thrilled about it, and I get the feeling Dad probably made that donation out of my college savings once he realized hospitals were my better bet in the short term.
“So I was reassigned from a court hearing today for someone I’ve been working with closely for six months to be with Sasha Stone, who answers my questions with monosyllables and sarcasm.”
“Also, I requested you,” I say quietly, eyes on the floor. I’m guessing Amanda hasn’t been requested for anything since eighth-grade lab partners, and I’m right. Her anger deflates like one of my welcome balloons, now hanging limply around knee height.
“I know,” she says, but her voice has a key change, the sharps removed. “Which I would assume means you’d rather talk to me than someone else. So let’s do the actual talking part, and skip the bullshit.”
I like the way she swears; it reminds me of Brooke.
“Okay,” I say.
Amanda resituates herself on the chair and looks back at her notes. I’m expecting her to come at me with something impressive next, a bit of medical terminology or something self-affirming to show me that she knows what she’s doing. Instead she snaps her folder shut.
“So what’s going on with you?”
It throws me. I had my shoulders squared, ready for a verbal sparring match in the thirty minutes that are left in our session. Instead she asked me a simple question, and while my mind ponders the longer answer, my mouth pops out the simple one.
“I’m dying.”
Amanda nods, doing me the courtesy of not insisting along with the rest of the cardiac center that everything will be all right if we put a happy face on.
“A week ago I was alive, and now I’m dying,” I go on. “In a few days they’re putting a machine in me that will do what my heart won’t.”
“Yes,” Amanda says, flipping her folder again briefly. “An LVAD. It’s to assist your left ventricle with pumping.”
I feel a small smile, maybe a three on the pain scale of happiness. Amanda smiles back. “What’s funny?”
“I was thinking of my friend Brooke and how she accidentally googled pump king instead of pumpkin. Or maybe it wasn’t an accident. It’s hard to tell with her.”
“Brooke?” Amanda repeats. “She’s a friend of yours?”
“Yeah, she’s . . . yeah.” I think she is, anyway.
“Can you tell me about your sister?”
Amanda’s folder is shut, her eyes on mine. But I’m willing to bet she’s got every word of my conversation with Jones and Faber memorized.
“I don’t know.” I say. “Can I?”
“Yes.”
I study her, something most people can’t take for long. A liar is easy to spot, and lying is easy to do once you’ve learned how badly others do it. But Amanda isn’t a liar, and all the truth that’s in me comes out, heading for her like a magnet.
“I did jump out the window,” I say. “But it wasn’t me, it was my sister.”
Amanda opens her folder again, writing perfectly on the lines even though she keeps her eyes on me.
“My sister was upset about something and she felt that was the most logical reaction. She’s very emotionally driven. Her name is Shanna,” I tell Amanda, and spell it out for her. “I absorbed her in the womb and her heart took the place of mine.”
Amanda glances up at me, pen still. “What can you tell me about Shanna?”
I feel a small shudder deep inside, a life stretching back into wakefulness at the sound of her name. I hold Amanda’s eyes, waiting for her to contradict me as I speak.
“She likes sex and boys who will give it to her; she likes the smell of cigarettes and beer mixed with exhaust fumes. She likes to be shocking and say lewd things. She likes cold night air. She likes to have her way.”
“Is that the only thing you have in common?” Amanda asks, head still down. I stare at the uneven part in her hair, wondering if she knows it looks bad or just doesn’t care.
“Other than an entire body, yes,” I say.
“But only the heart is hers?” Amanda’s pen scratches away, the pad of paper shifting up and down on her knees.
“Yes, only the heart, but sometimes she uses our whole body for whatever she wants.”
“And she wants things like . . .” Amanda’s pen hovers, ready to record my sister’s dark leanings with cheap ink and a yellow legal pad. It feels good to see it there, an inanimate object about to take witness to my truths.
“A boy. Isaac.”
“Isaac,” Amanda repeats, tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth while she writes.
“He’s why she jumped,” I explain. “They got into a fight. I guess. Kind of. He wanted something more from me—her—than I was looking for with him. And then we—I—sent him a nasty text while he was waiting for me down in the driveway and he took off. So she kind of panicked and . . .”
“. . . and took the fastest route down,” Amanda says. Which actually makes my sister sound logical.
“Shanna’s bones come up out of my gums sometimes,” I tell her.
Amanda nods like that’s to be expected. “Tell me more about Shanna’s bones.”
“I used to think they were pieces of clarinet reed,” I tell her. “But then Shanna said it’s actually her bones working their way out of my system from when I absorbed her.”
“Shanna said this?”
I consider my answer for a long moment, wanting to get it right. “She didn’t say it. She wrote it down.”
“That’s how you two communicate?”
“That and when she throws us through storm windows to express dissatisfaction.”
Amanda raises an eyebrow to let me know I’ve violated the sarcasm rule. I have to admit she’s got the eyebrow raise down.
“Yes, that’s how we communicate,” I amend.
“And when did this begin?”
Like everything else it falls somewhere on the timeline of my life where the biggest demarcation is losing my virginity to Isaac Harver. “I think it was after,” I say.
“After?”
“No, sorry—just before.”
“Before what, Sasha?”
I feel a flush, my heart still capable of shoving all the blood up to my face. “I’d rather not say.”
“That’s fine,” she says agreeably. “But if you’re not open with me I’m not going to be a terribly effective therapist.”
I think I’m going to be very open to plenty of people next week when they put the LVAD inside me, so I leave that barrier in place. Amanda allows it, giving me the space of a quarter rest before continuing.
“Do you want to add anything more about Shanna right now?”
There’s a blip on the screen, my heart rate monitor disagreeing with this line of questioning. “No.”
“How about Brooke?”
“I miss her,” I say, apparently an embolism not being the only spontaneous thing that can happen.
“When is the last time you saw Brooke?”
I can fudge this one a little, since I last spoke to Brooke the other night over messaging, but I haven’t technically seen her since . . .
“The night of the accident.”
“So she knows about it?”
“She saw it happen,” I tell her, gratified by the surprise on Amanda’s face as the professional mask she was attempting to mold slips a little.
“She was there?”
“No, I was Skyping with Brooke and Lilly,” I explain. Amanda nods and leaves space for me to go on, but I don’t know what to say.
I’ve thought about it while I stared at the reflective roof in the back of the squad, the cracked ceiling above my bed at Stillwell, and now the artfully decoupaged tiles of the cardiac center. I don’t know how I had my laptop tilted, if my friends would have only seen me run off screen and heard the crash, or if they actually saw me unravel right before their eyes, leaving behind a chunk of my hair on the remnants of the broken window.
“Did something happen during this chat?” Amanda asks.
“Lilly said something I didn’t like, and Brooke agreed,” I say stiffly.
“And what was that?”
“A word I won’t repeat.”
“Was it directed at you?”
“Yes.”
“And how did that make you feel?” Amanda pauses. “Is that really why you jumped out the window?”
“No,” I tell her. And it’s the truth. “Because I didn’t—”
“—jump out the window,” Amanda finishes for me. “Shanna did.”
I nod in agreement. “And trust me, Shanna doesn’t care what those two think.”
“What does Shanna care about?”
I glance at the clock just as the second hand ticks into place.
“Time’s up,” I say.