Second Hand Heart (22 page)

“Maybe I wouldn’t have. If I had known all this. You know. That it was still alive and still … her. You know?”

“But your only other option was to let it die and then bury it in the ground, or throw it in the cremation furnace. Does that really sound like a more appealing option?”

“When you put it like that, I guess not.”

“Look, Richard. I like talking to you. But I’m absolutely famished—”

“Right. I understand. Absolutely. Thanks for your time.”

I turned and began to walk off the stage, not wanting her to see that I was stung by her abruptness.

“Richard.”

I stopped, but did not turn. I still wanted to hide my reaction.

“Yes?”

“You’re jumping ahead and ending up in all the wrong places. I wasn’t brushing you off. I was about to ask you if you’ve eaten.”

I turned back, and looked into her face. It seemed open. Impassive, yet somehow invested. Curious.

“Actually, no. I haven’t. Not since breakfast.”

“Do you have a car here?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Good. Because I don’t.”

“This is very generous of you.”

“No, it’s very generous of you. You just volunteered to pick up the check.”

My mouth smiled without warning. Without permission. It felt out of place, as if I had suddenly begun speaking a foreign language.

“My pleasure,” I said. “The least I can do.”

Connie, Or Else

“T
ell me about your wife,” she said, tearing into a fresh, hard-crusted roll and then buttering it with a molded pat of butter which had not been properly softened.

“What about her?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Do you really want to know about her?”

“I want to know about you. And she’s obviously the biggest part of you there is to know about right now. And I know from experience that people who’ve lost loved ones are comforted by sharing about them. And we do have time …”

I sat without speaking for a moment, and she held the basket of rolls in my direction. I could well have reached for them myself. I got the impression that she was encouraging me to eat. I knew I should. My blood sugar must have been regrettably low.

I took one, but then just set it on its little plate and forgot all about it again.

I wanted to ask why she wanted to know about me. But it was too loaded a question. It suggested, hinted at, a subtext I was pretty sure did not exist. I was convinced I would only make a fool of myself, and perhaps embarrass her as well, if I asked.

“I don’t know what I should tell you about her.”

“Tell me how you met.”

“OK,” I said, gathering up the story inside me. I sat back and smiled slightly. She was right. It was a comforting memory.

“She was a big hiking enthusiast,” I said. “And so was I. And so one early October I was camping up at the North Rim Grand Canyon, and then I hiked down to the river and spent one night at the bottom. And that was where I first saw her. At Phantom Ranch. I never even talked to her. Not then. I just saw her there. I was camping at Bright Angel, right nearby, but I had reserved meals at the ranch. And I guess maybe she was in a women’s dorm. I didn’t really know, but I was guessing, because she seemed to be alone. Anyway, I saw her in the dining room at dinner, and I noticed her, but it wasn’t a big deal. I just noticed. And then at the first breakfast — the five thirty breakfast — I came in and there she was again, but she was at a table with all other women and there were no empty seats near her. I guess it’s easy to gravitate toward the people in your dorm. Maybe you don’t really know them, but there’s some familiarity.

“So then after breakfast we took off hiking. I was headed back to the North Rim, and so was she. Which is interesting, because probably more than nine people out of ten hike from and to the South Rim. I found out later that she was hiking rim-to-rim. South Rim to North Rim, and then she was going to take a shuttle bus back, but I ended up driving her back. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, I had this insane, chauvinistic notion that I’d slow up my pace so that we’d keep passing each other every time one of us took a rest break. Which turned out to be really funny. Because I nearly killed myself trying to keep up with her.”

Dr. Matsuko laughed, and in nearly that same instant the waiter arrived.

“Well, now,” he said, “are we ready to order or do we need a little more time?”

I’m not fond of those who use the editorial (or royal?) “we,” but maybe if I were to be completely honest with myself, I might have had a chip on my shoulder because I’d been lost in my story, and happy there, and did not like being bumped back into my current reality.

I said, “Dr. Matsuko, are you ready to order?”

“Connie,” she said. “And I’m going to be incredibly sinful tonight and eat red meat. The New York strip steak. With salad. Whatever you serve as your house dressing will be fine so long as it’s not made with soy oil.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the waiter said. “How would you like your steak done?”

“I know it’s very gauche, but I would like it as close to well done as I can get it without making your chef cry.”

I smiled and so did the waiter.

Then he turned his attention to me, and I realized I’d done no homework whatsoever pursuant to ordering dinner.

To get out of it, I said, “I’ll have the same. Medium rare.”

“Soup or salad?”

“What’s the soup?”

“Cream of mushroom and leek, or clam chowder.”

“Clam chowder.”

He whisked away our menus and blessedly retreated.

“Now let’s see,” I said. “Where was I, Dr. Matsuko?”

“First of all,” she said, “if you call me Dr. Matsuko one more time I swear on my honor as a scientist that I will shamelessly bitch-slap you in front of this entire restaurant full of people, as loudly and flamboyantly as possible. It’s either Connie or suffer the consequences, and don’t say I didn’t warn you. Secondly, you were struggling to keep up with the pace of your future wife, you chauvinistic, overconfident male hiker, you.”

“Right,” I said, shaking off the fact that it was hard to know how to react to her effusive, joking candor. “I was just getting up to Cottonwood. Which is a campground part-way up to the rim. Supposed to be sort of a halfway point, but it’s really closer to the river. I had fallen behind by then, but when I got up there she was there, and it was clear she was going to set up camp. And my plan had been to hike to the North Rim all in one day. But I changed my plan.”

“Ah. And that’s where you talked to her.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure. That would be a much better story. The real story is very embarrassing. We were there most of the afternoon and all evening — along with dozens of other people of course — and I smiled and said hi to her once at a water spigot, and she said hi back, but I never actually got up the courage to talk to her.

“When I got up in the morning, it was just barely light, but she had already broken camp and gone. I practically ran up the trail, but I never saw her. She had a head start, and she was fast. So, that was it. I’d blown my chance. I was absolutely morose. I got up top, and I was just going to go back to my campsite, but then I suddenly got it in my head that an iced drink would be nice. Even though it was pretty cool out. You know, North Rim. Eight-thousand-plus feet in October. But still, I was heated up from the hiking. So I walked over to the lodge. Well, limped over to the lodge. And they have this thing called the sun porch. Have you ever been to the North Rim Lodge?”

She shrugged and shook her head. “I’ve never even been to the Grand Canyon.”

“Oh, you should. You must. Anyway, the sun porch. Part of it is inside, but with big windows. And then there’s this big open outdoor stone patio. It’s right at the edge of the canyon. And I mean that literally. Right at the edge. So you can sit out there, near a low stone wall, and drink your cold drink, and stare out into that beautiful red-rock abyss … So, anyway, I got myself a lemonade and limped out there, and—”

“And don’t tell me. Let me guess. There was your future wife.”

“No. She was not there. And I sort of had it in my head that she might be. But she wasn’t. Not yet. There were only two seats left, and they were together. Literally. Like a chair for two. So I took one side. And about two minutes later I heard this woman’s voice asking if the seat next to me was taken. And I looked up …”

“Please tell me you at least got up the nerve to tell her the seat was not taken.”

“I did. Indeed. I said it wasn’t. And she sat down and then she asked, ‘Aren’t you that guy I kept seeing on the trail …?’”

“And the rest is history,” she said. “Her recipient is very lucky. To get a hiker’s heart.”

I didn’t answer.

“Sorry,” she said. “Too much reality too fast. I pulled you up out of your happy place so fast you got the bends. It’s written all over your face.”

“Not your fault.”

“I do have a bad habit of dumping the truth on people like ice water from a very large bucket. Ask anyone.”

But I wasn’t sure who I was supposed to ask. And I had no idea what to say any more to Dr. Matsuko. Connie.

She caught my stress and talked right through it. “What’s that thing in your hand? If you don’t mind my asking. That thing you keep fiddling with.”

I opened my left hand, exposed the worry stone, and looked at it blankly, as though surprised to see it there.

“Oh. That’s a worry stone.”

“Ah.”

“It’s not mine, actually. It belongs to … the recipient.”

“Ah,” she said. “I’m sure there’s a story behind that.”

“There is,” I said.

But I didn’t tell it.

Unintended Consequences

“S
o, let me explain why I said what I said. The thing that made your face turn green.” She sawed a long slice through her decidedly crispy New York steak. Looked up at my confused face. “About the first few months.”

“Oh. Right,” I said. “That.”

“Here’s what we know. And what we don’t know. We know that cells die. That’s a given. So, after a good long length of time … seven years is an acceptable rule of thumb … there won’t be one living cell in the heart that was alive at the time of donation. Now, does that mean those cells, aggregate that heart, will now bear no relation to your wife’s heart and be purely a product of its new host? No. It does not. The cells will still be the daughter cells of the donor heart. Cardiac stem cells may never die. And they’re the seed for new cells, but the new cells will be raised by the new host. And a cell is not an island. It’s constantly influenced by conditions external to it, which is to say, conditions in the new host body. Everything from what he eats …” She paused. “He?”

“She.”

“Right. She. No wonder it’s so complicated for you. Everything from what she eats, to what she worries about, to her opinions about herself. Stress. Environmental factors. Cells are constantly being bombarded by nourishment — or lack of same — information, energy, including what we call ‘non-local’ energy: biochemical influence, hormones, drugs. The more time goes on, the more the transplanted organ becomes some combination of its original owner and its new owner. But what combination? How much of each? And when? That’s the part we don’t know. There hasn’t been a lot of pure scientific research on this. Most of what we know about it is entirely anecdotal. All I can tell you for sure is that your wife’s heart is most purely your wife’s heart closest to the actual date of transplantation. Everything else is still a mystery at this point.”

“So the memories will get lost, is that what you’re saying?”

“Well, no. How can they, really? Once you remember that you remember something, you don’t forget it again. And then the memory rightly belongs to the new host, and is stored in every cell of the new host’s body, and then there’s just no telling what’s what. This is where our current science just falls flat on its face, I’m afraid. This is where a scientist with any humility at all will need to admit that God or nature or what-have-you has created something quite beyond our understanding in the human being. And even if we did understand it, this is something outside nature. God did not create a donor heart sewn into a new body. That’s our handiwork. And privy to all sorts of unintended consequences, I’m sure.”