August. Age twenty.

My chest ached with every breath. I would need to lie down soon. Ten minutes of being on my feet was all I could handle. Forget the stairs. I glanced up them. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been upstairs. My parents had cleared out the den and brought the hospital bed down so I could stay on the ground floor. Mom had said she worried about me too much when she was gone—she didn’t want me to overexert myself.

I didn’t want to tell her that getting up to go to the fucking bathroom was an overexertion.

Mom had been doing her best to put on a brave face, but I’d heard her crying when she thought I wouldn’t know. Dad had remained stoic as ever, at least in front of me. But I could see it in his eyes. He knew. We both knew my time was running out.

Picking up my feet was hard work, but I did it anyway. I just needed to get to the kitchen to refill my water. I could do this.

Just outside the kitchen, I paused in front of a large wall covered in framed photos and memorabilia. Medals, plaques, framed newspaper articles. Photos of me winning. Always winning, the ref holding my arm up in the air. Looking strong, healthy. I shook my head. The wall looked like a shrine. That was appropriate, I supposed. Shrines were for dead people.

I would be, soon.

I glanced down at myself. My t-shirt hung off my thin frame, my body a fraction of its former size. All that muscle, so hard-earned from countless hours of training, melted away. My heart too weak to supply the blood my body needed.

I could feel every beat now. Labored. Heavy. A ticking clock, counting down the beats until my death.

It would have been easier if I’d just died that day at state. At least it would have been over quickly. I wouldn’t have had to endure this slow, agonizing deterioration. Two and a half years, countless pills, an open-heart surgery with a brutal recovery. And I was still dying.

I made it to the kitchen and refilled my water. Then came the slow, deliberate walk back to what was now my bedroom.

It was a strange thing, to look in that room and know I’d probably die there. Either there, or in a hospital, but I’d already told them to keep me home if they could. I wasn’t going back to a hospital ever again if I could help it. I’d had enough of them, and what did I have to show for it? Scars. Pain. And a heart that was still dying inside my chest.

“Sebastian,” Mom said from behind me. I’d almost made it to my room.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Honey, why are you up?” she asked. “Here, let me get that for you.”

She pointlessly took the water from my hand and walked past me to set it on the bedside table. “Come on, honey, let’s get you back in bed.”

“I’m good, Mom. I’ve got it.”

She clicked her tongue and took my arm. “I know you do. Come on.”

I let her help me into bed, my body aching from the strain of the walk to the kitchen. God, why did everything have to fucking hurt so much? Wasn’t it enough that I was wasting away?

She moved the wire from the battery pack and control unit that I was wearing. The VAD had done its job to keep my heart rhythm regular, but it hadn’t made my heart any stronger. It hadn’t helped me heal.

“I’m taking myself off the transplant list,” I said. I didn’t know what prompted me to blurt it out right then, but it was something I’d decided a while ago. I just hadn’t mustered the strength to tell my parents.

The color drained from my mom’s face. “What?”

“I’m taking myself off,” I said. “I don’t want a donor heart.”

“Sebastian, honey,” she said, “what are you talking about?”

I closed my eyes—so tired. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I’ve made my decision.”

“No,” Mom breathed. “You’re just tired. This has been so hard. But it isn’t going to last forever. You just have to hang on a little longer.”

“I’m sick of hanging on,” I said, my eyes still closed.

The bed moved as my mom sat down on the edge. Her trembling hand closed over mine. “Sebastian. No.”

The pain in her voice sent a renewed pang of agony through my chest. I forced my eyes open. “I don’t want to hurt you. But I’m exhausted. Even if by some miracle I do get a new heart, I’ll never be the same person. I don’t know what I would do. Who I would be.”

“When you’re healthy again, you’ll come back to your life,” she said. “You’ll be strong again, Sebastian. I know it.”

“Mom, we don’t know if I’ll ever fully recover,” I said. “The chances of getting a new heart are already slim. If I get one, my body could reject it. I don’t want to go through another surgery if I’m just going to die anyway.”

“But Sebastian—”

“Everything hurts,” I said, my eyes closing again. “I can barely get up to go to the bathroom. Every day I wake up worse than I was the day before. I’m dying, Mom.”

“Don’t you dare say that,” she said, heat in her voice.

“Not saying it won’t make it not true,” I said. “I’m going to die. You have to let me go.”

I kept my eyes closed, as much from exhaustion as to spare myself the sight of her tears. I knew they were there, rolling down her cheeks. But what else could I say? It was too late. I could feel it. I didn’t want to die, but holding onto false hope had become more painful than facing the truth.

“I’m not giving up on you,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “You aren’t giving up either.”

She squeezed my hand. In the two and a half years since my heart had first given out, she’d never once stopped believing. She’d been by my side through everything. Every painful moment.

Tears burned my eyes. I had no idea what it would be like to watch your child die. But I felt the depth of her pain. And I hated it. I hated what this had done to me, but even more than that, I hated what it had done to her. She was hanging on by an even thinner thread than I was.

I couldn’t spare her the pain of losing her son. That was inevitable. But if I gave up, she’d think she’d failed me. I realized, as I tried to squeeze her small hand, that I had to keep fighting. Maybe not fighting to live. But fighting to die in such a way that would allow my mom to find peace when I was gone. I could do that for her. I owed her that much.

“Okay, Mom,” I said, squeezing her hand again. My grip was weak, but she squeezed back. “I won’t give up.”

She smiled through her tears and placed her palm against my cheek. “No, you won’t.”

* * *

My mom’s voice woke me. I’d drifted off to sleep after she’d left the room. I took a deep breath, but my chest felt so heavy, like a concrete block rested on top of me. My heart beat slowly—halting, agonizing compressions of the dying muscle. In moments like this, it was hard not to panic. My lungs burned, like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Because I wasn’t. My heart was barely pumping enough to keep me alive.

“He’s… no, he’s asleep,” Mom said. I didn’t hear another voice. She must have been on the phone. “Yes. Yes, that’s right… What? Yes… Yes, I understand.”

The urgency in her voice grew. Instead of sliding back into the relief of slumber, I focused on her words. What had her so riled up?

“We can do that,” she said. “Yes, I know how to get there. Yes. Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. Oh my god. Robert! Sebastian!”

I swallowed in an attempt to moisten my dry throat, but my voice was still a weak croak. “Yeah?”

Quick footsteps down the stairs heralded my dad. My mom spoke to him, but I couldn’t make out what she said.

“Are you serious?” Dad said. “Oh thank god. Sebastian!”

They both appeared in my doorway, their eyes wide and bright.

“There’s a heart for you,” Mom said, her voice clear.

Her words settled over me like cold mist. A heart. The transplant I’d been waiting for, without even a shred of hope. When they’d put me on the transplant list, I’d honestly believed it was only for show. There would never actually be a heart for me. What were the chances? People died waiting for organ transplants every day.

“There’s… what?” I couldn’t fathom that she was serious. That this was real.

“A heart is being flown here right now,” she said. “We have to get to the hospital. There are still more tests to do. This isn’t a guarantee. But if the tests show it’s really a match, and your body can tolerate the surgery, it’s yours.”

A shock of numbness. That’s all I felt. No relief. No joy. I stared at my parents, their faces shining with hope, and I didn’t know what to think.

My dad walked in and sat beside me on the edge of the bed. He put his hand on my chest where he could feel the tenuous beats of my dying heart. “Son, it’s time.”