Page 64

From Isaac

Thinking bout you

C you soon

From Heath

I hope all went well today.

Whether you believe that or not.

My phone is a weight in my hands, one I can barely lift. I stashed it in my hospital bag, tucked into a side pocket with tampons on top of it so no one would go digging. It’s dead by the time I’m out of ICU, five days after the surgery. I’ve been moved to a regular room in the hospital, and much like my phone I have to be near a power source at all times.

I’ve been complimented on odd things since coming out of surgery, how quickly I learn how to clean the exit cord on my own, how good my appetite is, how often I poop. I am like a baby, except one who menstruates, which is terribly inconvenient, though it does drive Dad out of the room at the mention of it, taking his pacemaker with him.

Mom asks if I need help, which creates an awkward moment when I ask exactly how she expects to help me putting a tampon in, and she follows Dad, telling me she’ll see if she can find more ice chips. I take care of everything in their absence, my IV tree and heart monitor following close behind, as I am once again part of a system and not whole on my own. My phone is charging and hidden under my pillow by the time they return, its cord anonymous among the many that create a web around me.

There is a line down my center, like a fish that has been gutted and then someone changed their mind, tried to fix everything with needle and thread. The stitches are very dark against my untouched skin, the wounded flesh an angry red. Now I understand why they would not let me see my face right away. Mom keeps redirecting my hands, my gaze, anything to keep me from touching and looking at where I once was open and am now closed again.

She asks me how I am feeling constantly, and I answer. I consider showing her my sister’s messages, scattered things that they are. But to do so would mean showing her the phone Brooke smuggled to me, or the laptop they think I only use for reading. I don’t tell her that we’re both still sulking a bit from the use of the word psychotic.

Because if that’s accurate then I’m crazy and she doesn’t exist.

Unacceptable.

For both of us.

My heart is still working in the morning. I know because I can hear it.

Mom is asleep in her chair, folded over to one side with her finger stuck in the pages of the DSM I slipped back into her bag during a visit to the cardiac center. I don’t know if she’s searching for more things that might be wrong with me or if she’s just one of those people who can’t not finish a book.

Dad is at the window, watching the sunrise. His eyes flick over to me when I move, and we stare at each other for a second.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like a machine,” I answer. “How are you feeling?”

“Like a human, but with a pacemaker,” he says.

I’m the first to look away.

“I thought it was my fault,” he says, his words directed at the window and the people pouring into the building to come and see their loved ones. The sick and the dying. The new ones who just came out of other people. Ones who haven’t done anything irrevocable yet that they can’t be forgiven for.

“It’s genetics.” I shrug.

He shakes his head. “I’d like to say that you’ll understand someday, Sasha. But I don’t know if you will.”

I press the button on my med line, the one that gives me a little more painkiller if I think I might need it. Dad’s talking, so I definitely think I might need it. He’s still looking out at the parking lot, like maybe someone out there is holding up cue cards.

“You’ve really done a number on your mom. You have no idea what it was like for her, losing that baby.”

“Shanna,” I correct him.

“And now you’re putting her through it again,” he plows on. “Twice over, because she could lose you too.”

I notice he doesn’t mention that he could lose me, maybe because that’s already been done.

“Technically you’re putting her through it,” I say. “If we’re operating under the assumption that my heart problems are from you.”