Heath shows up about fifteen minutes before we’re supposed to start meditating, so any kind of zen I might have achieved is instantly screwed. I’m in the common room in an overstuffed chair, my legs hanging off one side. Layla sits on the couch next to me, reading another trashy romance that her mom brought her. I’m swiping through my notes and running averages on blood types in my head when he finds me.
“Hey,” he says, setting my clarinet case on the floor by the chair.
“Hey,” I say back, and sit up. I still have on the tank, since they keep the heat pumped pretty high in here for the comfort of everyone with poor circulation. I know my chest scar is bright and eye-catching, but I still hate that it’s the first place his eyes go.
“You, uh . . . you doing okay?” He points at it like I don’t know what he’s referencing.
“No, you idiot, she needs a heart transplant,” Layla says.
“Heath, meet Layla,” I say. “Layla, Heath.”
“Hi.” He nods at her, and she nods back.
“So what are your odds on getting one?” he asks, and while others might find it insensitive, it’s a huge relief for me.
This is Heath and me, facts and figures, streams of data. We rely on the concrete and let the impulsive evaporate, which explains a lot about why we were together so long, an investment of our time we weren’t willing to bail on yet.
“It’s complicated,” I tell him. “We don’t really know the actual algorithm they use, but when a heart becomes available it’s determined by blood type, greatest need, and proximity of the recipient.”
“Oh.” Heath’s face falls a little bit. He knows I’m O neg because we coordinated the local blood drive for the past three years, the Red Cross volunteers’ faces lighting up when they saw my paperwork.
O is the universal donor, but O neg can only receive from other O negs, which make up about 7 percent of the world’s population. So they’d treat me like a queen and pump me dry. Getting that attention seemed cool then. Now it’s a death sentence.
“How’s Lilly?” I ask, and he has the grace to blush.
“She’s good.”
“Is she?” I say, and Layla makes a noise in her throat. “Well, thanks for bringing my clarinet.”
“Sasha, listen. I . . .” Heath looks around the room. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“I have to meditate in like five minutes.”
Heath’s jaw tightens, something I’m familiar with. “Then give me the five minutes.”
I get up and he sees the LVAD battery pack at my side. “What’s that?”
“Life support.” I slip past him and he follows me to my room, where I close the door behind us. We stand, awkwardly facing each other.
“So Brooke told me about . . . him.” He can’t say it, and I’m not helping him. I stare blankly.
“About who?”
“Seriously, Sash? C’mon. This isn’t easy for me either, you know.”
I’m about to tell him that it isn’t my job to make it easier, but whatever there was between us, no matter how thin the string, it pulls taut in the moment that I see tears standing in his eyes. Somewhere, my heart responds. But I can barely feel it.
“About Isaac?” I provide.
“Yeah,” he says. “I didn’t think you were the cheating type.”
I’ll be sending Brooke a text later. But right now Heath is the one in front of me, and the rational part of me knows he deserves an explanation.
“Do you want to sit down?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “You said five minutes.”
“This will take longer than that,” I say, and motion him toward the bed. He sits and I remain standing, eyes closed, hoping that somehow not looking at him will make this easier.
“I don’t know if this will help at all, but I think it explains a lot,” I say, pushing the chair in front of me and spinning it with my hands while I speak.
“What do you mean?”
“You know how I passed out at school?”
“Yeah, it was your heart.”
“Right,” I say slowly. “Except it’s not mine. I had a twin, Heath. I absorbed her in the womb, but her heart took the place of mine. Her name is Shanna, and I think she knew she only had so much time left. She fell for Isaac.”
I open my eyes to see the strain on Heath’s jaw has only increased.
“The heart wants what the heart wants,” I finish. “I had no say.”
“Are you serious right now?” Heath slams down a hand on the desk chair, and it stops midspin.
“I—I . . .” It’s my turn to stutter.
“Because it couldn’t possibly be your fault, right, Sasha?” His perfect complexion is red, his manicured finger sticking in my face. “You would never cheat on your boyfriend. You would never sneak out of the house. You would never have sex with Isaac Harver, would you?”
The butterfly in my chest is panicked, trying to fly away. I grip the chair in front of me, my knuckles white, my breath coming in short stabs.
“No,” I say, my voice shaky. “I wouldn’t.”
“Jesus Christ, Sasha,” he says. “Wake up.”
“I am awake!” I yell, the rabbit tempo of my heart beating in my ears. “Why can’t you just believe me? Ask my mom; she listens when I talk about Shanna.”
“Does she?” Heath asks, his own voice quiet now, hand at his side. “Or is she trying not to upset you and make you have a heart attack?”
“I guess you’re not worried about that.”
Somehow we’ve changed places. His anger evaporated his tears, while one has come from somewhere, sliding down my cheek, hot and salty. His hand is on the door, and he walks away from me as the chair rolls out from under my hands and I slide to the floor, more tears following me down.
“No,” he says. “I don’t give a damn.”
He doesn’t even look back.
The clarinet is waiting for me by the chair in the common room, a constant that has held for me in even the worst of times. Now, in the great tempest of my life, I am the one that abandoned it. I suspect that’s how it began, me denying music my talent and instead giving that time over to Isaac, forsaking my mind for my body, not knowing that the last did not belong entirely to me. And so Shanna erupted, tearing into my life as she destroyed it.
I walk into the meditation room, ignoring Layla’s questioning glance and Jo’s squeak of alarm as I kick the cassette tape player into a corner. My clarinet slides together reluctantly, punishing me for weeks of disuse. The cork is dry, the reed chipped and broken. I replace it, wetting a new one with my tongue, sucking on it to draw out the familiar taste of resin.
This is me, this is who I am. This is Sasha Stone, who would have graduated as valedictorian and gone to Oberlin, who would have been on a dark stage in a few years, wearing black, unable to see the audience because of stage lights but feeling them there, their eyes on her though an entire orchestra was onstage. Sasha Stone always garnered the attention. Sasha Stone stood out in a sea of stars.
But somehow I am here, not on a darkened stage but in a badly lit room with flickering fluorescents that hum to match the mechanical hearts of my audience members. I am here, with a harsh line down the middle of my face to match the one on my chest, a line that—should I ever make any stage—could never be covered by makeup. The light would seek it out. Illuminate it. All imperfections glare in the spotlight.
I tune up, the B flat scale dancing out of my fingers with ease. I see Layla draw a mat near her own, encouraging Brandy to join her. Jo does too, after a moment, her usual mat in the corner abandoned. I fly through another scale, second nature taking me through the warm-up I have done a hundred thousand times, my fingers happy to dance yet a bit stiff. I glance up to see that Layla and the other two have laid down on their mats, hands at their sides. I turn off the rest of the lights, the only illumination in the room coming from the rectangular window in the door. It lands at my feet, daring me to step inside.
It’s quiet in here, the girls’ breathing and our hearts the only noise. I give them something they’ll recognize, Pachelbel’s Canon, and even though it’s never been a favorite of mine I see faces gathering in the window, Nurse Karen and then Nurse Angela peeking in to see where the music is coming from. My fingers breeze through it, the notes familiar. Between my own breaths I hear the other girls’ evening out.
I finish off and ease into Schumann’s “First Loss,” a simple but elegant piece in E minor. It’s always been a favorite of mine, and though it’s written for children, there’s a true sadness in this song, followed by what feels like a paroxysm of rage at the end, a denial of what will happen, or perhaps already has. This song is about death, and while I’ve always known that, I never played it like I understood. Until now.
I wet my lips at the end, tightening the mouthpiece and checking the reed. I have to take a break before I launch into the next song. I’m out of breath and nearly wheezing when Jo’s voice rises from the darkness, surprising me.
“Hey, do you know that one song that kinda goes like this . . .” She hums a few bars of “Memory” from Cats, which takes me totally off guard but I gladly play it, stumbling over the bridge because I don’t have any music in front of me. The Sasha Stone of a few months ago could have improvised the entire piece, but that was a different girl, one whose fingers would never be tired after only three songs. One who could have played for hours without gasping. I flex my hands, easing out a cramp at the end of Jo’s request.
“How about . . . uh, the song they always play at graduations,” Brandy says.
“‘Pomp and Circumstance’?” I ask, and riff a few bars for her.
“Yeah, I kinda like that.”
“Sure,” I say, and this comes easily, branded onto my memory since freshman year.
The requests come quickly after that, with lots of guesses on my part and humming on theirs, but we piece together music in that cold room, musty mats underneath us, the air around us heavy with darkness and minor keys. My mind is agile, my fingers keen to play, and as I claim back this small piece of my life, I begin to plan how I will claim it all, once again.
?sister? talk to ME.
I am —her-e
My answer, written so that she will understand.
U had y/our/ time (minetime). Over [no]w. I need a F(u)t(ur)e.
To Brooke
Thanks a lot.
???
You told Heath about Isaac
Yep But I told you about Heath & Lilly
Found a great subreddit with gifs of blisters bursting
Staying mad at Brooke is impossible. I want to throw my phone, but instead I end up texting her back about Heath coming to give me the official shove-off and asking her to send pics of some sheet music I know she has stashed away. She says she will in exchange for shots of Brandy’s stump if she’s cool with that.
I’m doing a silent walk-through of some Brahms I think would work well for our next meditation when Layla and Brandy burst into my room.
“Who’s the douche?” Brandy demands, taking the spinning chair while Layla takes the couch.
“The douche?”
“The guy who walks like he stores the family Christmas tree in his ass,” Brandy elaborates, spinning first one direction, then another.
“Oh, Heath.” I snap apart my clarinet and take my time doing it. I don’t know what to say about him. He’s a chapter in a book I’ve already read, but one I’d keep on my bookshelf for a rainy day if I were desperately bored.
“Uh, yeah, Heath,” Layla says, mocking me. “What’s the story there?”
“He’s the guy I fit with,” I say as I snap my case shut.
“Like fit, fit?” Brandy asks, making a fist with one hand and jamming her index finger in it.
“Ew, no,” I say automatically.
“Then you don’t fit,” Layla says. “I don’t care if your clothes match or what. If the thought of bumping uglies with him makes you barf a little, it’s a no-go.”
“Can we talk about something other than my ugly?” I ask.
“How about a crane falling across three lanes of traffic on the eastbound?” Brandy offers. “Probably a few possibilities there.”
I shake my head. “Doubt it. Any life-threatening injuries probably involve crushing, ribs puncturing organs, and so on.”
“Bummer,” Layla says, and picks up my nail file.
“Although I guess there could be amputee situations, possible bleed-outs . . .” I tap my fingers on the bed railing, my eyes drifting to Brandy’s prosthetic.
She stops spinning in the chair. “Look, I’m kind of over it. So if you want to ask me stuff about my foot, go ahead.”
Layla tosses aside the file and moves over to the bed to join me. “Is it weird?”
“At first, yeah,” Brandy says. “But you just get used to it. Like, you wear glasses, right?” She points at Layla, who nods. “So when you get up first thing in the morning, what do you do?”
“I put my glasses on so I can see,” Layla says. “Otherwise I’m blind.”
“Right, so same thing. I get up and put on my foot so I can walk.”
“Wait, do you get half off on pedicures?” Layla asks, and I whack her on the arm. “Ow! What? She said she’s over it.”
“Want to hear something cool?” Brandy asks.
“Yes,” Layla and I say at the same time.
“So I sleepwalk, like, a lot,” Brandy says. “And after the amputation it was this big problem. Dad lined the floor around my bed with pillows every night, because I’d forget I had only one foot, and I’d try to get out of bed in my sleep.”
“Sucks,” Layla says, but Brandy shakes her head.
“I only fell a few times before my brain figured it out. So now I put my foot on in my sleep. Except once I put it on backward and it got stuck, and we had to go to the ER. That was not awesome.”
“How did you even explain that?” Layla asks.
“Wait, so even in a semiconscious state you knew to put your foot on?” I ask, redirecting the conversation before they start trading ER stories, which I’ve learned can quickly become a thing in the cardiac center.
“Yeah, I guess it’s kind of like people putting on clothes before they walk outside even when they’re sleepwalking. They just know.”
“Does it hurt?” Layla asks. “Like your . . . I don’t know, do you call it a stump?”
“Yeah, stump,” Brandy says. “It doesn’t hurt so much, no. But my foot still does sometimes, which isn’t so bad. But the itching makes me crazy.”
“Itching?” Layla sits up. “The foot that isn’t there can itch still? And you can’t scratch it, like ever? That is the literal worst.”
“Yep,” Brandy says. “The doctors tried to explain it to me. Basically what happens is my brain still gets signals from that foot, even though it’s not there. So sometimes it’ll hurt, or itch, or burn. It took a while for insurance to come through with my fake foot, so they tried mirror therapy for me first.”
“Explain mirror therapy,” I say.
“So, it’s like a box,” Brandy says, rolling the tray table over to put it in between her and us. “And there’s an opening on each side, and one on the top. If you’ve got your right hand, you stick it in that hole, okay?”
She pretends to stick her right hand into the imaginary box and we both nod.
“And the inside of the box has mirrors facing each other, so if you’re missing your left hand and it itches, you stick your right hand in there and look down through the top and your brain sees two hands and you scratch the one that looks like your left hand.”
“How does that work?” Layla asks.
“It’s a mirror image,” I tell her. “It tricks your brain into seeing the reflected image of your right hand, which it believes is the missing left. Then you scratch the hand you’re missing and your brain gets the visual signal that the itch has been scratched.”
“Thanks, nerd, I got that part,” Layla says. “I’m saying how do you scratch any hand at all if you’re missing the other one?”
“Oh, um . . .” I look to Brandy, who shrugs.
“I don’t know. I always just stuck my foot in it.”
“Wait, so if my left tit is bigger than my right and I stick it in there will my brain think I have two big tits?” Layla asks.
“Neither one of your tits is bigger than anything,” Brandy says.
“Plus you wouldn’t be able to look into the top window anyway,” I tell her.
Layla puts both her hands in the air and sighs. “You two are killing my dreams.”
“Once I got the prosthetic it kinda worked the same way,” Brandy goes on. “My eyes see me scratching my right foot and thinks it’s taken care of.”
“So your brain was still getting signals from your missing limb? That’s why it would itch?” I ask Brandy, trying to get back on topic.
“Yeah.” She nods, her hand subconsciously dropping to her foot to give it a scratch. “It’s called phantom limb syndrome.”
Medicine can’t explain why a phantom limb itches in the night, fingers scratching for skin that isn’t there. They don’t know how to silence the burn in a foot that doesn’t exist, the tingle in a hand rotting elsewhere. There is no answer for how a muscle not attached to the body can cramp, causing familiar pain in a limb long estranged from its owner.
They’ve tried. Severed nerve endings have been cauterized, stumps shortened, entire areas of the brain deadened to stop signals from nowhere. It doesn’t work. Instead of relief, the afflicted receive fresh pain to compound the suffering, scar tissue piled over trauma.
I don’t know how my heart left me, only that it did. Slipping from my fetal body as Shanna’s pushed it aside, the cells broken down and absorbed into Mom to be shed with her skin, contributing to a layer of dust somewhere in our home before I even arrived.
It has tried to reach me since then, sending signals like phantoms through my veins, pulsing toward my brain to tell me what I care for and who I love. It has succeeded, mostly, even what small strength it retained overpowering Shanna’s inadequate organ. She might be pumping our blood, but my wants and needs prevailed, until she knew there was only so much time left for her.
This is why Heath never felt vibrant to me, my feelings for him dulled by space and time, the signals from my rightful heart barely reaching me. This is why Isaac has fallen into me like a meteor, hot and fast, unavoidable, Shanna’s heart making demands as it winks out of existence. And while I can’t deny that my body enjoyed participating in her choices, it will come to an end.
I know I am the stronger of us, have already proven it by simply existing while she is merely clinging to life by my permission and only with the assistance of a machine that penetrated both of us, leaving metal entwined with our soft tissues. I will shed it, rid myself of the cords, the metal, the machines, the needles, the endless cheery faces asking what I need but not able to give me anything.
I will restore Sasha Stone.
I will be me.