The Forgetting (2 page)

That night I slept badly. In my dreams, I stood on a lonely street corner, waiting for someone to come pick me up. But when a car finally pulled up to the curb, I turned and ran, shadows at my back as I fled across rooftops and fire escapes.

When I woke up, I couldn't shake that feeling of being chased. Maybe it was my new heart, trying to keep up with the rest of my body. That little catch echoed in between my heartbeats. I tried to ignore it as I lay in bed, counting the ceiling tiles. The more I pretended it wasn't there, the louder it became.

Dr. Harrison had glossed over it, but I knew enough about organ transplants to know that rejection was very possible. Was that what the catch meant? Was my body rejecting my new heart? I couldn't go back to sleep. Every breath felt fragile as blown glass. My hands ached for my oboe. It was the one thing that would tether me to my old self.

Another nurse came in the morning to take my vitals and announced that I could move to a regular room. I sunk low onto my pillows while they wheeled my bed down the hall, onto the elevator, and up one floor. My new room was beige instead of white, and no one wore masks.

Mom showed up less than an hour later. She looked a lot better; the circles under her eyes weren't quite so dark. “Dad and Colt are coming later this morning,” she said after she'd kissed my cheek and settled herself into the chair next to the bed. She reached for a canvas bag at her feet. “I thought you'd like to see all the cards you got.”

I raised the bed so that I sat upright. Mom set the bag gently in my lap. Cards in every shape and color spilled out onto the blanket. “Who sent all these?”

“Everyone.” Mom tucked an imaginary stray hair behind my ear. “Everyone was so worried.”

I thumbed through the cards from all my friends and teachers, my aunt and uncle and cousins, my grandparents, even the secretaries at school. “People wanted to send flowers, but they're not allowed in the ICU,” Mom told me. “So everyone sent flowers and gifts to the house. You'll get them when you come home.”

“Did Dr. Harrison tell you when that will be?”

“I haven't seen her this morning, but I'm sure she'll be by soon.”

As if on cue, the door opened. It wasn't Dr. Harrison, though. It was the orderly with my breakfast. “Liquids and soft foods for the next twenty-four hours,” he told me. “Got to get your system back on track.”

I made a face at the mushy food on the tray. “Is any of this actually healthy?”

The orderly laughed. “Sadly, ‘healthy' doesn't always mean appetizing.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Tell you what—if you eat one thing on this tray, I'll get you a milk shake.”

Mom looked up from the card she was reading. “I really don't think—”

“Oh come on, Mom.” I pointed at the orderly. “He says it's okay and he works here.” I picked up the least disgusting-looking dish and dug in while the orderly watched. When I was done, I looked up at him, eyebrows raised.

He nodded his approval. “One milk shake coming up. What flavor?”

“Ooh, do you have strawberry? That's my favorite.”

“Georgie.” Mom shook her head. “She's kidding, of course.”

“No, I'm not,” I said. “It's always been my favorite flavor.”

Mom narrowed her eyes at me. “What kind of meds is she on?”

The orderly reached for my chart at the end of the bed. I looked from him back to Mom. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Because you can't eat strawberries and you know it,” Mom said. Her gaze was hard on me, like she was trying to see into my brain. “You've been allergic to them your whole life.” She spoke to the orderly but didn't take her eyes off me. “I fed her strawberry-banana yogurt when she was nine months old, and she went into anaphylactic shock. It was the scariest day of my life…until…”

The orderly held up my chart. “It says right here. Strawberry allergy.” He peered down at me. “You have a weird sense of humor.”

I forced a laugh. “Yeah. So I've been told.” The relief was palpable as he and Mom laughed, and I changed my order to vanilla. As he turned to go, I asked in as casual a tone as I could muster, “So, um, the meds I'm on—
are
they, like, really strong?”

He peeked at my chart again. “Pretty strong. Why? Are you in pain?”

“No, but I—” I made myself shrug. “I feel a little fuzzy. That's all.”

“You should talk to your nurse about lowering the meds. That might help.”

“Okay.”

He smiled at me. “One vanilla milk shake coming up.”

“Thanks.” I turned my head to Mom. She was still watching me like I might explode at any moment. “I'm pretty tired, actually. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night.”

Her face softened and she reached for my hand. “Maybe I should leave you alone to nap. Rest is the most important thing for you right now.”

“Okay.” I leaned back on the pillows but my whole body was tense. The minute the door closed behind Mom, I sat straight up and wrapped my fingers around my head, pressing into my skull like I could touch my thoughts.

How could I simply forget a lifelong allergy? And it wasn't just that. I distinctly remembered strawberry being my favorite flavor of anything—ice cream, Jell-O, Pop-Tarts. I knew the taste of strawberry, could even recall the feeling of strawberry seeds in between my teeth. How could I know that if I'd never eaten them?

It was the meds. That had to be it. Drugs did things to your brain. My parents had been drilling that into me ever since I could understand the phrase “peer pressure.” I eased back onto the pillows. Without effort, a memory surfaced—not of an allergy, but of a cake.
Three
layers
of
shortcake
dripping
with
strawberries…a big number FIVE candle flickering at the top. I lean over to blow it out, a voice whispering in my ear. “Happy birthday, baby…
”

I blinked. The memory was so vivid that I could smell the whipped cream on that cake. But if I'd been allergic to strawberries since I was nine months old, that could not have been my fifth birthday cake. It couldn't be my memory. There was no way.

And in the quiet of the room, that little catch in my heart swelled like a symphony.

• • •

I spent the entire time I should have been napping trying to ignore the sound of that catch and racking my brain for any memory of an allergy. It wasn't there. It was just—gone. Was Vicodin really that strong? A little squirmy something inside me told me it wasn't. But that
had
to be the reason. There was no other logical explanation.

Mom returned after “naptime” with Dad and Colt in tow. “Nice hair,” my little brother said when he saw me.

Considering that it hadn't been washed since I'd been admitted to the hospital, I could only imagine how my hair looked. “I almost
died
and all you can come up with is ‘nice hair'? You're slipping.”

Colt sat on the edge of my bed and pinched my leg. “Can you feel that?”

“I'm not paralyzed, you moron.”

“Okay, stop it, you two,” Dad said. He kissed my forehead. “How are you feeling today, sweetie?”

“Like someone cracked my chest open, ripped my heart out, and put in a new one.”

He winced. “Not funny, Georgie.”

“I thought it was hilarious,” Colt said. He was still pinching my leg. I kicked him. It was a nice distraction. Maybe the strawberry shortcake was at a birthday party that I'd been to when I was five. Memories faded after a while… I had to be remembering it wrong. Except I could remember biting into that cake…could still remember the sweet taste and the feel of the strawberry juice dribbling down my chin. I kicked Colt again and pulled my mind into the present.

The door pushed open and Dr. Harrison bustled in. “How's your new room, Georgie?”

“Great. Thanks.”

She read the printout on the monitor next to the bed. “Everything's looking good, really good.”

“You're sure?” I regretted the words the instant they were out of my mouth. Mom and Dad looked terrified, and Colt leaned in closer to me like I might sprout wings at any moment and
how
cool
would
that
be
? Dr. Harrison lowered the printout, her eyes narrowed.

“I mean, I just wondered, because I feel…” I trailed off. Dr. Harrison looked like she was about to wheel me back into surgery.

“Yes? You feel?” she prompted.

I cleared my throat. “Nothing. I mean, I feel fine. Physically. I just feel…I don't know. Off.”

Dr. Harrison half smiled. “It's natural to feel that way. Your body has been through a major trauma. But according to this”—she waved the printout—“everything is absolutely on track.”

Mom and Dad relaxed, and Colt pulled back, disappointed. “Okay,” I said, eager to get off this train of thought. “So when can I go home?”

Dr. Harrison pulled a pen out of her coat pocket, wrote something on the chart attached to the monitor, and tucked the pen back into her pocket. “At least another week.” I groaned and she gave me a sympathetic smile. “I know, I know. But we need to make sure all your other organs are cooperating with your new heart. And we have to get you used to your new regimen.”

“Regimen?”

“Well, you'll be on medication for the rest of your life—”

“The rest of my life?” I clamped my lips together. I hadn't meant for my voice to go up that high.

“To ensure that your body doesn't reject your heart.” She made it sound so matter-of-fact but that word—
reject
—was a punch in the gut. “You'll need to learn the signs of rejection—fever and chills, kind of like the flu—and come in immediately if anything like that happens. Most of the time it's just a matter of adjusting your medication.”

Most
of the time. My face must have registered my anxiety because Dr. Harrison gave my shoulder a little pat. “Don't worry, pretty soon you won't even think twice about it. People who have heart transplants can have healthy, normal lives.”

“Yeah, but what's normal now?” Everything seemed to have a new definition. Would I graduate on time? Ace my Juilliard audition and start there in the fall?

“Kelly Perkins climbed Mount Everest several years after receiving a heart transplant,” Colt said. We all stared at him. He shrugged. “I looked up how long people live after getting a new heart and she came up.”

“How long?” I took a deep breath. “How long
can
I live?”

“A long time,” Dr. Harrison said firmly. “And your brother is right; some heart transplant survivors have gone on to do extraordinary things.”

“She also climbed Mount Fuji, Mount Kilimanjaro, and the Matterhorn,” Colt said. He dug a piece of gum out of his pocket and popped it into his mouth. “Dwight Kroening competed in Ironman competitions after getting his. And Erik Compton qualified for the PGA tour after getting his
second
heart transplant.” He chewed loudly.

“Thanks, Wikipedia.” I rolled my eyes at him but I'd never been so grateful for his obsessive web-searching tendencies. Still, I wondered if Kelly Perkins heard a little catch in between her heartbeats. “So I'm assuming that if I can climb Mount Everest, I can play my oboe, right?”

“Your oboe?” Dr. Harrison raised an eyebrow.

“My Juilliard audition is in six weeks,” I said. “I can still do it, right?”

“Let's just take things one day at a time,” Dr. Harrison said. “Your prognosis is excellent. I see no reason why you can't eventually return to your normal activities.”

Eventually?
What the hell did
eventually
mean? “But the audition—”

“You shouldn't be worrying about that now,” Dr. Harrison said. “You need to be focused on your recovery.”

My entire family snorted in unison. Dr. Harrison raised her eyebrows. “Georgie has been focused on Juilliard since she was ten,” Dad explained. “It would take nothing less than a heart transplant to make her think about anything else.”

“Well, she'll have to,” Dr. Harrison said. She looked down at me, and her impassive face cracked a smile. “But I anticipate a full recovery. You're doing better than most heart patients I've had. That is one strong heart you have in there now.”

My insides shuddered. I didn't want a strong heart inside me. I wanted my old heart, no matter how weak it was. And as if in answer to my thoughts, I heard
IT
. That Catch. I was starting to think of it with a capital
C
. I sucked in air and looked up at Dr. Harrison, but she was talking medical jargon to my parents. If nothing showed up on the monitor, then it was all in my head. Great. Now, on top of everything, I was crazy. The last thing I wanted was for them to wheel me right into the psych ward. That would definitely cancel out Juilliard.

Before they all left, Mom gave me my phone so I could slog through all the get-well emails and Facebook messages. The minute my family was out the door, I did what Colt would do and looked up “pneumonia and side effects” on the Internet. Maybe the fever I'd had with the pneumonia caused memory loss. I searched that too but came up with the answer that memory loss caused by a fever usually equaled a brain tumor. I clicked out of that right away and went to my Facebook page.

That, at least, I could make sense of. All my friends had posted well wishes, and now that I was in a regular room, some of them were planning to visit and there was a back-and-forth conversation about what worked for everyone. As I read through it, I realized how much I had missed. Days of music lessons and orchestra practice, an audition for a community orchestra that my best friend, Ella, had gotten accepted to, classes and tests that I'd have to make up, Sydney's birthday party that had apparently spawned a dozen inside jokes I wasn't privy to, and a class trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum that I'd been looking forward to for weeks.