Alive (2 page)

“I’ll look like Frankenstein.” I feel the sting on my skin leftover from my fingernail, and picture it fading away from red to pink to white. Then gone.

Dr. Belkin forces a chuckle that doesn’t reach his eyes, which are cold and calculating, as always. “Maybe a little. But at least you’ll be walking and talking.” The man
makes a good point.

“And what if you put it in wrong?” I ask. This time my mom doesn’t interrupt me.

“We won’t put it in wrong.”

“But my body could reject it. The heart, I mean?”

Dr. Belkin frowns. “We’re going to do our best to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

There are more questions on the tip of my tongue, but I let them sit there unasked. Instead, I chance a look at my mother, whose expression is unreadable, and take a deep breath, thinking again
about how there are fifteen dead people in the history of the world for every living one and wondering which end of the chart I’ll wind up on.

On the nightstand next to me, there’s a vase full of daisies from our neighbors and a big pink teddy bear sent by my teachers. Dozens of cards line the windowsill, some from my best
friends, some from people I’ve never met.

My ears start ringing now, and I’m getting a tingly sensation in my toes, and I’m watching the room and my mother and Dr. Belkin, and suddenly it feels like there’s a piece of
glass between me and the rest of the world. I swallow hard: the glass evaporates, but the ringing is still there.

The moment hangs there a second too long before Dr. Belkin asks me again if I’m ready and pats my knee under the thin hospital blanket. He’s awkward when he tries to have a good
bedside manner, but I don’t mind, because I can barely feel the spot where he touched me. It’s as if this body is somebody else’s. “Three o’clock,” he says,
glancing at the clock on the wall and then back at his clipboard. “We better get going.”

“Ready.” I lie.

Dad strolls in, holding the hand of a teetering Elsie, who toddles over the threshold and into my room looking frustratingly adorable, as usual. Big pink bow, soft brown curls, and chubby cherub
fingers you can’t help but get the urge to lick icing off of.

Dad scoops her up and places her on the side of my bed. “Tell your sister we’ll see her soon,” he coos. He’s all scruffy beard and smiles and his calming presence spreads
over me like a warm bath. When Mom’s watching Elsie he winks at me, and I know it’s a secret meant for just us two to share.

Elsie pats my arm and laughs. A lump grows inside my throat as I look at my baby sister. She was brought into this world a short ten months after I found out I’d probably be making an
early exit. As if I was a replaceable doll that happened to be back-ordered by a few years. I wonder if she’ll grow up to look like me, with stick-straight black hair and green eyes that are
too wide, or whether her hair will stay brown and curly, like Dad’s, her skin the same tan color. I wish someone could promise to send me a postcard in the afterlife just in case I die.

“Are you nervous, sweetie?” Big fat tears line my mother’s eyelashes as she slides off the bed and studies me with her head tilted.

I shake my head and force a smile. “This body ain’t big enough for the both of us,” I tease, donning a thick Western accent. My parents like when I joke around about my
condition. That sort of humor is sick-kid gold. It makes adults think we’re resilient, when really, my limbs have that shaky feeling I get just after I throw up.

What I really want to tell her is that I’m terrified. Terrified I’ll miss high school and my friends and a normal life. Terrified that Elsie will take my place in the family and
I’ll be forgotten. Terrified that I’ll never have a real boyfriend.

Dad ruffles my hair with the hand that’s not clinging to Elsie. “That’s the spirit, kiddo.” The creases lining the corners of his eyes are damp.

For a brief moment, my heart physically aches and I think maybe there’s some good left in it after all, but I catch myself right away, since now isn’t the time to get tricked all
over again. There’s only one punishment for treason and it’s death. And if I have to wrestle my stupid, defective heart all the way into the depths of the underworld, then that’s
what I’ll do, and I swear to God, if only one of us can survive, it’s sure as hell going to be me.

I slide my iPhone out from underneath the back of my hospital gown. I’ve been clinging to it—my only connection to the outside world—but now I’ll have to give it up. My
hands shake as my thumb slides across the screen. The nurses are unhooking me from machines. My family is staring at me. Orderlies are busy clearing a path. And yet I’ve never been so alone.
My bed is a planet around which everyone else orbits. It must be this realization that plants inside me the sudden desire to tell one person in the world how I feel. It’s a need that takes
hold like roots in soil.

I’ve been avoiding Henry, but with trembling fingers I type one sentence:
I’m scared
. The words appear one letter at a time until I’m left staring at them all spelled
out in front of me. If nothing else, I think, they’re true, and there are worse ways to end things. So I hit send and try to imagine I’ve mailed the fear along with it.

Mom pulls my head to her lips and pushes my hair back, so the scrub nurse can put a shower cap over it. Mom takes my phone and the jewelry that I’m wearing, along with the stuffed puppy I
keep for good luck.

Before I know it, they’re starting to roll me away. Panic wells up inside me and I just barely get out, “See you soon,” even though I’m already facing backward as Dr.
Belkin and the nurse push me out of room G216. Of course, Elsie’s crying again.

The double doors rush at me, swinging open at the last second. I stare up at the ceiling tiles instead and watch them whiz past one by one. We’re in a new room now, with a giant light
overhead and a crowd of masked clinicians. From somewhere behind me, an anesthesiologist is telling me to count, so I do it, and I’m counting out loud: “Ten, nine,
eight…”

I see myself holding Elsie, right after she was born.
Seven…
Covered in blood, she’s sticky and screaming, but brand-new and strangely beautiful. She stretches her fingers up,
clasping at nothing. Her tiny mouth sucks the air.

Six…

I watch as black water closes over the top of her head, submerging tiny wisps of baby hair. My eyelids flutter. Or at least they try to. Bubbles break the surface.

Five…

Only I’m not sure if I’m counting anymore. There’s a boy. His eyes are shaded. His face is a flash and then it’s gone, replaced by a body. I can’t see whose. The
face is turned, hair splayed out like it’s floating in the ocean. I should tell someone. I should.

But I can’t because
four
. The word is announced as if over a loudspeaker.

On cue, the room goes dark, or at least it’s dark for me. There’s a tight squeeze against my lungs and then—

Spoiler alert: I’m not dead.

I know there are people at school wondering, wanting to ask one of my (very few) close friends, but not sure how. They’ve probably tried checking my Facebook page for signs of
life—or death. They can’t. It’s locked unless I let you in.

The truth is, I’m superstitious. In the weeks after surgery, every day was a waiting game, breath held, an anybody’s-guess version of Russian roulette—will my body accept the
new organ or not? Staying at the hospital was a routine step in the surgery, but it felt like purgatory.

Days turned into weeks and still my clock kept ticking. My parents are still the last holdouts, even more hesitant than I was to make the big
Stella’s okay
broadcast. Nobody wants
to show our hand, to publicize that we cheated death. The weaker hand has won. Only you can’t live that way forever. Can you?

I snap shut the lid of a yellow marker and admire my handiwork. On the wall of my bedroom hangs a calendar. Between this year and the year before there are a total of 237 red
x
’s,
one for each day of school I missed. The five weeks are a solid block of angry crosses. I slashed each over the date, often pushing so hard the ink bled onto the page beneath.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Mom leans in the doorway, warming her fingers with a steaming mug of coffee. “Dr. Belkin said—”

“Dr. Belkin said it was
fine
.” The red marker lies in the garbage can beside my nightstand. With the yellow, I’ve colored a bright sun on today’s date to mark my
return.
At last,
I think, unable to suppress a smile. My skin practically crawls with longing to get out of this house. Four weeks ago I’d have said I had cabin fever. By now
it’s escalated to full-on cooped-up pneumonia.

“Fine.” She stirs her coffee with a miniature spoon and concentrates on the cream swirling into milky brown. “But that doesn’t mean advisable.”

“I was ready to go back weeks ago.” I tie a ribbon around the base of my ponytail and admire my reflection in the mirror. On my last visit to Dr. Belkin, I’d petitioned for a
clean bill of health, but he’d sentenced me to another seven days. I would have invoked the rules of the Geneva Convention if I’d thought it’d convince anyone that I deserved an
early release. But I waited. Patiently. So that no one would question my judgment the moment I was cut loose.

My recovery hasn’t exactly been a straight line. There’ve been side effects. Painful ones. In the mirror the remnants of dark, bruise-like circles peek through the concealer
underneath my eyes. Bones protrude from my thin wrists. I keep these things hidden from my mom. They’re only distractions. I’m lucky she can’t see the worst of it. My chest has
been feeding me a raw, incessant ache ever since I returned home from the hospital. Sometimes I peek underneath my shirt, certain that I’ll find pus oozing out of the wound. I never do.
That’s the thing about pain: it’s invisible.

“What are the rules?” she asks.

I sigh, retucking my shirt. “Wash my hands frequently. Maintain a bland diet. Don’t elevate my heart rate unless I want to malfunction. Happy?” I say, grabbing my bag off my
bed.

“I’d prefer not to think about my daughter
malfunctioning
.” She trails me down the hall toward the entryway.

“I figured it sounded nicer than the real word—
dead
.” I stop at the front door and turn to face her. The corners of her eyes crinkle like tissue paper under her
wire-frame glasses. “Mom.” I try to sound firm, adult. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”

My mom’s cheeks cave as she purses her lips. “Another week at home wouldn’t kill you.”

I push open the door, letting in a burst of fresh air, which isn’t steeped in sun like I’d imagined, but slick and soggy. I breathe in a heaping mouthful and smile. “No, Mom.
It would.”

Seven o’clock. I push the lock button one more time on the keys to my black Jetta before looking up at the school I never thought I’d see again. It’s already
been in session for six weeks. The late September air’s filled with a million crystallized droplets so minuscule they seem to hang suspended rather than fall. They clog up my pores and pull
at the strands in the hair-sprayed ponytail I spent fifteen minutes combing this morning.

Everything’s deadly quiet here. The gravel parking lot’s empty and the sky is still gray, making outlines fuzzy and out of focus. The oak trees, portables, and the American flag that
droops limply from the pole all loom in the murky air like abandoned carnival rides. It’s my favorite time, these stolen minutes in a place normally teeming with people.

I take a sip of coffee from a silver travel mug, and as if in response, my heart performs a kick. I rub at the spot on the outside of my chest where it feels as if my new heart may have left a
bruised rib. I push on one of the bones to feel it. The muted pain spreads up my breast and I knead it with my fingertips.

Relax,
I tell it. First-day jitters. I trudge through the parking lot to the mist-soaked grass alongside the library’s edge. Through the fog I see someone cut across my path. His
figure is obscured by the gray dripping from the sky, but sharpens as our trajectories converge. He’s tall, with hands shoved into his pockets as he walks briskly in the opposite
direction.

“’Morning,” I mutter when we’re only a few feet apart. His head tilts and he nods before brushing by without a sound.

I take another swig from my coffee mug and resist the urge to glance back. Our school is two redbrick buildings with cement trim framing a grassy quadrangle that’s dotted with picnic
tables and black-and-white checkered benches. An arched covered walkway connects them, and portables lie on the outskirts like shantytowns for student body overflow. The school itself backs up
against a thick stand of pine trees that Duwamish High students call simply The Woods. Where lazy prep school boys in wrinkled polos cut out to smoke cigarettes between classes and sneak their
hands up the plaid skirt of any girl who’s willing.

It’s early still. Too early to head to class. The main entrance will be locked while the teachers try to enjoy their last few minutes of peace and quiet. But the janitor always props open
the back door of the west-side building, the one closest to the woods and, conveniently, nearest to my locker. That’s where I head.