Second Hand Heart (7 page)

I’m not sure why, but somehow it felt important to find her.

Maybe because I felt as if I knew Abigail, having received a letter from her, thanking me profusely and discussing the prospect of our all meeting in person just as soon as Vida got out of ICU. Tossing it about as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Something that could never destroy an already tenuous life. Keep anyone from moving on. As if it were something that couldn’t even cause pain.

Notice I talk about it as if I’m in no way responsible for it. But I have to report the truth, which is this: If I’d wanted to remain anonymous, so that Abigail had never known how to reach me, I could have. In fact, anonymity would have been the default setting for this donor arrangement. The donor program encourages her to write to me. But they don’t give away my address. I invited further contact. Then, the moment said contact accepted my invitation, I backed up and began to feel imposed upon.

And yet, there I was in the hospital, ready for the drama to begin.

Why? Hard to say. I’m halfway guessing.

I suppose we wanted to think of it as one of those happy human interest stories on the evening news. Life springs from death, and even the deepest tragedy can open up to reveal a miracle in its wake. And here is the gratified young woman, lying in a hospital bed, breathing. Living! Living proof.

What a tribute to the deceased woman and her grieving family!

As I stood in that stark hospital hallway, I believe it was dawning on me that there would be more to it than that. It would be real.

Maybe this is why it was so important for me to find Abigail. She was my partner in denial, and I needed her. Perhaps, with her help, I could still find my way back.

I even asked at the nurse’s station on Vida’s floor, but as far as they knew she had gone home for a nap.

I had two choices. Come back later. As if one drive to the hospital hadn’t used up a week’s worth of my scant supply of energy already. Or let myself into the girl’s room alone, without introduction.

I suppose there was a third choice of forgetting the whole questionable idea. Accepting that I had hit a logistical and emotional red light, perhaps for a reason.

But I dismissed that idea, having passed a point of no return within myself on this Vida issue.

I decided that seeing her alone at first was preferable anyway. With no one taking notice, able to observe that I’d come with an agenda, some indistinct expectation for gain. Especially if that expectation turned out to be misguided. Especially if I was about to fall on my ass.

I steeled myself outside her door for so long that two nurses came by and gave me questioning glances. One with raised eyebrows. As if I must need something. And I did. But nothing they would likely have on hand.

I walked through the door.

I expected her to be asleep, but she sat half-propped-up, her dark eyes wide open and staring at me. There was some startling element to them, something wild and intense. I’d expected at least to see her groggy and half-conscious. Just a handful of days after such a traumatic surgery, wasn’t she still on some kind of heavy painkiller? If so, what must her eyes look like naturally?

I couldn’t imagine she was nineteen, though I knew from her mother’s letter that she was. She seemed high-school age, underweight and frail. Perhaps borderline anorexic, with dirty-blonde hair which might actually have been dirty, or just looked it. She had dark circles under her eyes, a body strangely slack and at rest, only her eyes fully alive. Only her right thumb was in motion, rubbing an obsessive, repetitive pattern over a small oval object.

Above the neckline of her hospital gown I could see the top of the scar, shockingly unbandaged and still stapled. It caught and tingled in my stomach and made me feel squeamish, as though I should sit down.

“You’re the guy,” she said. “Huh?”

I never bothered to ask how she knew. I figured I must be wearing it on my face, entering her room with an expression that only one person in her world could possibly fit.

“Yes,” I said. “I am the guy.”

I walked over closer, and sat down on a hard plastic chair. I remember a vague sense of disappointment. I’m not sure what I thought I might see. Whatever it was, I didn’t see it. Just a stranger, a girl I’d never met before.

She turned her head to follow me with the stare. Her assessment of me made me uncomfortable, a role reversal I hadn’t meant to allow. I found myself wondering what her stare did while I was elsewhere. It was all part of that disconnectedness, that sense that only I existed in the world, because everything else felt like a dream.

“My mom wasn’t kidding in her letter,” she said. “It really was a matter of probably days. I was going to die that soon. You really get a chance to look death right in the face. You know?”

“Is that what the worry stone is about? That is a worry stone you’ve got there in your hand. Isn’t it?”

She held it up under the lamp, as if to scrutinize it more closely. Or to allow me to. Or both.

“Come here,” she said. “I want to show you this.” I moved closer, not sure what I was trying to see.

“See how it’s smoother right there?” She indicated the spot with her thumb. Then she held the stone by the edges.

I looked closely, but I wasn’t sure if I could see or not. Maybe it was a little smoother. The difference wasn’t all that clear.

“I actually did that with my thumb,” she said. “Wore away stone.”

I touched her thumb. I wanted to feel it, to see if she had a callous. To see what had worn away more of what. Who was really winning.

The sudden touch electrified us. Or, actually, maybe it only electrified me. How would I know about her? She did have a heavy callous on that thumb, the kind guitar players have on the tips of their fingers.

“It’s like water,” she said. And I had no idea what was like water. Certainly nothing I could see. “You wouldn’t think water could wear away stone. But it does. It just takes its time. I want to see if I can wear a little groove right into the center of this rock. It may take a while. But I’ve got time. Now I do.”

“I should go,” I said.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?” Without hesitation I said, “No.”

“No? No? I didn’t think anybody would be cynical enough to say no.”

Her thumb returned to its almost circular pattern over the worry stone. I guess if your goal is to wear a groove into solid rock it doesn’t pay to take vacations.

“Well, I stand by my answer,” I said. “But it’s not cynicism. Just the opposite. I have too much respect for love to believe that. I don’t even believe in the concept of falling in love. The falling part, I mean. We should all be so lucky that love is something you just fall into. Like, “A funny thing happened to me today. I was walking down the street and I tripped and fell into some love.” You don’t fall down to love, you climb up to it. There’s hard work involved. That’s why I believe you can’t love someone you don’t know. Loving someone is knowing them.”

Then I stopped myself, breathed. Felt half-dizzy, as though I weren’t in the room at all, which I’ve been feeling a lot these past few days. And I realized I’d said a great deal more than necessary.

I’ve been talking too much lately. On the rare occasions when there is anyone around to talk to. I never used to be a man who talked too much. Everything is changing.

“Then I need to know you,” she said.

The door to her room swung open, and a woman came in. I knew it was Abigail, Vida’s mother. I could tell. I’d known it would be.

I jumped to my feet, defensive somehow, as though I’d been caught doing something wrong.

Her head tilted, questioningly, probably hoping I would identify myself without forcing her to be so rude as to ask.

“Richard Bailey,” I said.

Her face softened, and she hurried across the room and threw her arms around me. And did not let go. I stood awkwardly, not quite embracing her in return. In time I managed to put one hand on her back, a sort of brotherly pat, and she turned me loose.

I realized I’d been forgetting to breathe.

She was small and short and had to crane her neck back to look up into my face. And I’m hardly a giant. Her eyes held too much, and too much of it was for me. I didn’t want all that, so I looked away.

“You got my letter,” she said.

“Yes. Thank you for that.”

“I meant what I said, Mr. Bailey, I want you to know that. We are so, so sorry for your loss. We wouldn’t want you to think that because we gained from it we’re not just as full of empathy for you.”

“I don’t,” I said.

I could feel myself needing to get away. Needing to go back into my shut-down mode. Needing to be home, with the covers over me, and no one watching. I felt unable to carry that moment.

I had run out of gas.

“I wouldn’t think that,” I said. “As close as you just came to losing a loved one, you probably understand better than anybody.”

I edged for the door.

“You’re not leaving?” she said.

“I have to. I’ll be back. I’ll come back when I’m… I just have to get some fresh air,” I said. “Or something.” At the door I looked back at Vida, and of course she was still staring at me. Her eyes were still the only part of her fully alive, her thumb still the only moveable piece.

“Thanks for the heart,” she said.

It was a surprisingly simple statement in the midst of all that life and death and indebtedness.

“You’re welcome.”

I turned to leave. But then, for reasons hard to explain, I looked back over my shoulder one more time.

Vida had taken a bound book with a blank cover off the table and picked up a pen. I was slightly curious. Was she journaling her life? Was she anxious to write down the details of our encounter before they faded away?

I didn’t stay around to find out.

•  •  •

I drove the forty miles home and went to bed for two days.

•  •  •

While I was in bed, I thought about journals. I’d never kept one. I’d never given them much thought. Was there a comfort in them? There must be, or people wouldn’t bother with them. Still, I wasn’t sure I could imagine where such comfort would be hiding.

Then again, how often can one really stand outside comfort and correctly imagine it, especially if it’s in an entirely new and unexplored realm?

Even though I still don’t know for sure if that was a journal I’d seen in Vida’s hands or not, I finally got up out of bed this morning, two days later, ventured out of the house, bought this journal, and wrote down this account of my meeting with Vida and Abigail.

I can’t honestly say whether I found the journaling comforting or not. Definitely compelling. There is something about telling a story, even to ourselves, that makes us want to continue with the telling.

But comfort … I think it would take more comfort than this to break through my walls.

Will there be more to my story with Vida and Abigail? I not only don’t know, I don’t even know my preference in the matter.

Just in case, though, I bought a nice thick journal.

From:
Myra Buckner
To:
Richard Bailey

Dear Richard,

I’m wondering if I might try one more time to talk you out of going to meet the girl.

Here’s my concern: you asked me if I believe that the heart really is the seat of all human emotion. I’m not sure if you remember, but when I was down for the funeral, you asked me that. Just out of nowhere.

I’m not sure if I do believe that. I’m not sure it was something I’d ever thought about before.

At first I thought nothing of the question. Or little of it, anyway. I thought it was a more general curiosity.

But last night as I was going to sleep, I put it together with something else you said to me when I was down for the funeral. Were they meant to be together? I still don’t know. But, if so, I’m troubled by what they add up to.

You said you’d watched a program once, a year or so ago. A handful of people with transplanted organs. They seemed to feel some connection with their donors, the people they carried a small part of, inside. A trace memory here, a favorite food there.

Do you remember saying that to me?

It crossed my mind that possibly, just possibly, you might attach too much emotional significance to Lorrie’s heart. As if it can still love as she did. As if it were a valentine heart, and not a real one. But it’s an organ, Richard. Just an organ. It pumps blood, and that’s all.

I apologize for putting that so bluntly. I remember how you said the truth is a type of violence to you now. But really, that’s why I’m saying this. I thought it might be better to hear it from me than to cut open a vein with it in the real world.

You’re tender now, Richard. We’ve suffered a terrible loss. Don’t go.

It’s just an organ, Richard. It doesn’t carry anything but blood. Someone else’s now.

With love and apologies, Your mother-in-law (yes, still),

Myra

From:
Richard Bailey,
To:
Myra Buckner

Dear Myra,

Are you sure?

Is there even a very small chance you could be wrong?

Also, it’s too late. Sorry.

Can’t tell you who was right and who was wrong about going because the jury is still out on that.

My best to you,

Richard

The Rubber and the Road