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“Not Lilly.”

Whoops. She got me on that one. It was like a hammer into my kneecap and I reacted. I should probably give Amanda more credit. Just not when it comes to personal grooming.

“Why isn’t Lilly your friend? Because she called you a name?”

“That, and she stole my boyfriend.”

Amanda nods at me, and I know I’m supposed to say more. I don’t want to, but apparently the void inside me that Dad is wising up to filled with words while I was dead to the world.

“Heath,” I explain. “He’s the guy I’ve been dating forever. And apparently he’s with Lilly now. So no, not my friend. Either of them.”

Amanda nods and makes some sort of note on her legal pad. As usual it’s very short, which makes me wonder about the pages and pages that she references later on. When she writes them. What she writes.

“And how does that make you feel?”

I don’t have a good answer for that. Well, I actually do, but I know it’s not the right one.

“I’ve got a lot going on right now,” I say instead.

In the big picture, this is true. In the day to day, this is a patent lie. I have very little going on other than ice chips and IVs.

“Your mom says a boy came to the house looking for you after the accident. Was that Heath?”

“No.” I shake my head. “That was Isaac.”

“So the LVAD surgery was successful,” she says. It’s a good tactic. She just changed subjects and made a statement instead of asking a question.

“Yes.” I lift my shirt to show her my cord and the little battery pack at my side.

“Was this the first time you had surgery?”

“No,” I tell her, easily pulling all my medical data up since it’s what I’m quizzed about most these days. “I had my wisdom teeth out when I was in junior high.”

“And how does the LVAD make you feel?”

I consider telling her about the butterfly in my chest that needs electricity to work, how it reminds me of the beetle with a pin through its living body, something I did, the big, bleeding red A on that science project. How that wasn’t terribly fulfilling because it was just another in a long line, before and after, my grades a long vowel-filled exhalation of superiority.

But she’s waiting with her pen and paper, ready to put it all down permanently. And these are dark things that need to stay inside. So I lie.

“Alive,” I say.

Alive Awake Aware /Alpha\ Aspire Atone Alone

I have the weirdest sensation when I finally return to the cardiac center: I’m glad to be back.

The heart wing of the hospital I had my LVAD surgery in was nice enough, as hospitals go. Which means that the floors were even and most of the nurses didn’t use scrunchies to hold their hair back. Other than that it was greatly lacking. By my second day in recovery they informed me they were short on space and I was going to have a roommate.

The first part of that compound word is correct. The second carries an implication of affection that was inaccurate at best. I shared a space with another person; we listened to each other breathe, roll over, and urinate for a period of two weeks. I can’t say that I would recognize her on the street, and we didn’t share so much as a good-bye as I was rolled past her bed in my wheelchair on the way out.

I spot a new girl in the cardiac center common room as I make my way down to 211, the SASHA STONE nameplate still in place there. The new girl is folded into an armchair, staring out the window like someone has appointed her to that task. I don’t know if she’s here because she already got a new heart and was moved here for rehab, or if she’s like the rest of us: waiting. She doesn’t notice me, but I knock on Layla’s door the moment Mom and Dad are convinced that I am appropriately settled and I won’t die from sadness the second they leave.

“Who’s the new girl?” I ask.

“Brandy,” Layla says. “And hi.”

“Hi.” I settle onto her bed, since she’s on the couch, tablet across her knees. She looks better than she did when I left, which isn’t saying a lot, but I won’t have to worry about my supply of Oxy for Angela running out anytime soon.

“What did I miss?”