The Heart Does Not Grow Back: A Novel (32 page)

So they put his heart inside me and I lived. And I knew at once what Hollie felt when my kidney saved her, the incredible weight of responsibility and guilt. I called Thomas’s family and pretended to be one of Dale Sampson’s doctors. Thomas’s mother spoke with pride, not only for what he had done in life, but because he had almost saved Dale Sampson from death. She talked with the wobble of a woman on the edge but never broke down, each word an act of bravery, every phrase inching her closer to reconciling herself with the loss of her son.

He was a young man of twenty-four, a hunter, a fisherman. He still dated his high school sweetheart and his family found a diamond ring in his bedroom drawer. His visitation took six hours, so well attended the funeral home could not accommodate the line. His friends rounded the block—the rowdy, twentysomething types whose lives he had touched. They did not pass by his casket quickly. They lingered.

His mother called him handsome. She called him her light. I promised her his heart did not go to waste and I meant it. I truly did.

My plan had been to kill the Samaritan, but that was useless. The Samaritan was an invention. He wasn’t real. Dale Sampson was the problem. Dale Sampson had to die.

*   *   *

After the surgery, I woke up in a rental house Doc had rigged specially to help me recover. Understandably, Doc was out there selling my death and satisfying one final, daunting loose end—Captain Hayes. The doctor who performed the surgery, an ancient man named Jed Banks, checked in from time to time. He taught me some card games—Hearts, Pinochle. The nurse who took care of me on a daily basis was Jed’s daughter, who had an easy smile and beat me at all the card games her father taught me. Doc trusted them with my secret and after getting to know them a little better, so did I.

After a few days, Doc Venhaus finally showed up. “You’re recovering splendidly,” he said. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you still had a little of that Samaritan juice running through you.” I held up the gauze-wrapped remains of my hand. If I were still the Samaritan, I wouldn’t have been looking at a mangled stump. After he checked my charts and vitals, he sat down next to my bed. He looked relieved. The color had returned to his face compared to his spectral complexion on the day he’d stood at the lectern.

“So, how’s it looking out there?” I said.

“As with most celebrity deaths, your flaws are forgiven and your sainthood is imminent.”

“And everyone believes I’m dead?”

“‘Everyone’ is a strong word. If you scrape the bottom of the Internet, you’ll find plenty of theories about the circumstances behind your death. None of them even remotely correct. My favorite is the one in which you’ll be resurrected in three days and the rapture will begin.”

“It’s been three days, though,” I said.

“They’re holding out for midnight,” he said with a smile. “But, as expected, Hayes is skeptical. I was thorough and we got lucky, so I’d say skepticism versus him pulling out my fingernails with pliers is a good outcome. But you were right—his interest in you waned since the operation. It turns out that his research team had also suspected that your heart was the source of your gift.”

“Whether I’m dead or alive, you still embarrassed the shit out of him with that surgical switch, so I’d keep my head on a swivel if I were you.”

“He
was
embarrassed. And impressed. He offered me a job,” he said.

“No shit?”

“My experience with your condition, my status as Harold’s primary, my knowledge of Hayes and his research aims, my ability to pull off a covert operation … I guess he figures it’s better to have me on the team than to have to bury me in the desert somewhere.”

Harold had my heart now, and with it, the attention of Captain Hayes and the shadowy interests he represented. Even if the ability to regenerate didn’t transfer to Harold with the heart, the organ was still a national treasure to Hayes. Did that mean Harold was getting his ticket punched to the Research Triangle? Frankly, if it did, I didn’t give a fuck. Rae and her child would be taken care of, and I didn’t imagine Harold would be getting back into the meth trade or slapping his wife around with Uncle Sam’s head perpetually up his ass.

Soon after the visit, Banks and Venhaus agreed to release me, as long as I agreed to some confidential medical checkups in the coming weeks to help further monitor my recovery. The plan was for Venhaus to rent out a hotel room wherever I settled down so he could make house calls, checking to make sure my stump was healing properly, inspecting my road rash for infection, bringing me prescription meds to help get me through the always-excruciating healing process. More than that, I knew he wanted to play psychologist and make sure I was doing okay.

But it wasn’t time for me to settle down. Not yet.

*   *   *

Dale Sampson was dead, but whatever was left behind, whatever new person would emerge, that was up to me and I wasn’t going to let Dale regenerate—the Dale who would turn on the TV and wait his life away.

Instead, in the days that followed my death, when I was strong enough, I did what amounted to spreading Dale’s ashes. I needed to put him to rest.

Hollie’s engagement was over and she was back to working double shifts. I could never know if Dale ever crossed her mind, or if she remembered that kiss or how long her phone went without ringing. I honestly hoped not.

She was at home on a Saturday. I was in a rented Corolla, watching her house from an angle, parked along the street. The sun was out and Melissa was playing outside, her yellow dress swirling in the breeze. Hollie sat on the steps, her knees close together, hugging herself, watching her daughter at play. I should have been nervous that Hollie would spot me and recognize me, but I was just happy to see them outside. Specks of dandelion floated in the air as Mel blew on the stems. Hollie’s hair was in a simple ponytail, her face devoid of heavy makeup. Just a casual day around the house. I’m pretty sure that in moments like that, she was glad she wasn’t dead—even if times were hard, these were moments that softened life, making it easier to lay the bricks you had to lay to make it worth it.

I knew that Hollie was good and that she deserved two things—the truth and a fresh start of her own, a place where her darker thoughts would no longer be allowed to fester.

A UPS truck pulled up with a signature-confirmation delivery. Hollie looked appropriately puzzled as she unzipped the envelope. At first it looked empty, but she eventually fished out the cashier’s check for $400,000 that now belonged to her. She collapsed onto her ass as the check fluttered through the air, her trembling hand covering her mouth. I’m pretty sure she knew it was me, that I was alive somewhere and while I wasn’t so good at calling people back, I could still save someone if you gave me enough chances to get it right.

*   *   *

When the flowers arrived at the hospital, Rae probably thought they might’ve been from a friend, wishing Harold a speedy recovery, even though roses weren’t exactly the flower of choice for get-well bouquets.

I sent only eleven roses. The twelfth was in the envelope tucked inside the forest of stems—the dead rose,
the
rose, the one I had left on that windowsill years ago, the one she kept, the one she gave back to me to close the loop. But the loop wasn’t hers to close.

The dead rose was folded up inside of a note—one that I always kept in my wallet, allowing it to survive a fire her husband set and underneath her handwriting from all those years ago was my own sloppy shorthand:
Forgiveness makes the heart grow back. D.

And just like that, it was her turn to wonder and wait, only this time the loop was truly closed. I believe that every time there’s a knock on her door, a part of her will wonder if it’s me. We all allow ourselves to think about different versions of ourselves from time to time—what would have happened if I ended up with this person, or avoided this bullet, or made this choice? She would wonder, I was sure of it. If this served as a kind of fucked-up punishment, that wasn’t my priority—she simply had to know that what she did to me was forgiven, and I wasn’t wondering about us. Not anymore.

*   *   *

Mack finished up a long recovery. When he was strong enough to convince the doctors to discharge him, for some unknown reason he took the bus, though I’m sure he had enough money to fly first class if he wanted to. Instead, I followed him to a bus station and when L.A. was in the rearview mirror, I knew he was gone for good.

I followed the bus in my rented Corolla. I wanted to know where Mack would choose to heal up and get over the death of his best friend. He went to Grayson, of all places, which was sort of touching, but kind of a bizarre choice given what we had left behind there. He checked in at the Allsop Motel and immediately went to work house-hunting. He wasn’t a thorough guy—I saw him shake the Realtor’s hand during his second walk-through of a brick ranch-style house in a nice subdivision near the outskirts of town.

I waited until the sale was for sure, until the Realtor showed up to take down the “for sale” sign and carry a bottle of Champagne into the house. I figured he’d leave it in the fridge with a note of congratulations or something, since Mack was about to be a first-time homeowner.

And I thought he needed a housewarming present.

He showed up in a Ford F-150 with the dealer tags still on it, and when he saw a covered car in his new house’s driveway, I’m pretty sure he knew right away, even before he yanked off the sheath to reveal a brand-new, metallic green Ford Mustang. I could see the smile on his face from a block away. I didn’t leave a note. I didn’t know what to say. Maybe one day we’d shake hands again, finally as men. Maybe we’d head west in that Mustang just like we always said we would and make what we built in our hearts as boys into reality. We’d just drive and we wouldn’t be sure of anything, but we’d be in that mythic convertible and the world would seem big again because it was a place where you could say you were going to do something someday and by God, you fucking did it.

“Sampsonite, motherfuckers!” he screamed. He walked around the car twice, then patted the hood like it was an old friend.

*   *   *

My first meeting with Doc was supposed to be a week after he released me from that backwater rental hut, free to start up a new life on my own terms. He texted me directions to a Motel 6 off a California freeway and a room number, having already made a reservation.

I cared about Doc Venhaus. I trusted and respected him. I didn’t want to stand him up like that, leaving him in the cold dark of some shithole motel. I never told him I wasn’t going to show, that I was already long gone. I never told him I had no intention of revisiting any part of my old life for a long, long time. I imagine on the day of our meeting he called or sent a text and got an out-of-service message telling him that my phone was disconnected. He wouldn’t be surprised, knowing just as well as I did that he was the final person I had to leave behind.

TWENTY-SIX

I was gone from Los Angeles, and just like L.A., I was leaving every last piece of Dale Sampson behind.

As for the new me, after I finished with Mack, Rae, Hollie, and Doc, I ended up in a big city again. Turns out the city life was a fit—the way the streets pulsate, always on, full of attitude and opportunity. I got the highest apartment with the most glass I could possibly get. I wanted to look out into the skyline, into the lights, into the sea of cars and people. The glass made me feel naked and barren and isolated all at the same time. My future was out there somewhere, but first I had to wait.

The healing was slow and unspectacular, but I kept telling myself it was due to the new heart. Our speculation that my healing gifts were centered, somehow, in the heart, was proving to be accurate. After its removal, my power to heal was gone. From the road rash, I had thick puddles of scab tissue flaking away at the edges, with pink underneath. The scar on my chest was pink and getting smaller, but it was still a scar, not the miraculous and undetectable white line the Samaritan used to produce. I limped a little from the gunshot. All the healing was progressing at a slow, normal, human pace.

I told myself the true answer was under the stump of gauze I had at the end of my right arm, the hand they removed during my surgery. The right hand, where it all began, and where it all might end. Soon, I’d have to take the gauze off and gaze at the stump and lament the opportunity I had lost, the gift I had wasted.

Truth was, after I got out of surgery, after the promise I made to Doc, a commitment to action, to never being the same—I wanted my road rash to vanish without a trace. I wanted to unwrap my gauze and see my hand returned, whole again. I wanted to make Thomas’s mother proud of the sacrifice he had made. And it was possible—wasn’t it? Maybe it was me all along, something beyond what science could explain. Maybe the gift that flowed through me could somehow accept and embrace this new heart after enough time had passed, restoring my gifts, now that I was ready for them.

I woke up each day hoping I’d feel their return. Then, and only then, I would unwrap the gauze to look at my hand.

The days brimmed with that familiar pain of healing, but I didn’t waste them, not like I used to. I walked the streets at night, stopping in bookstores for coffee and bars for the occasional beer. I ate greasy meals in corner diners, I walked around shopping malls and watched teenagers hold hands. I smiled at people, almost daring them to recognize me, even though I was careful to conceal my injuries and to obscure my face with hats and hoodies. Still, they smiled back. I left big tips on small checks and put bills in the cups of beggars. Not world-changing stuff, but it felt like a start. I knew there was plenty I could do, even if my hand did not return.

Weeks after Dale Sampson’s death, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up for a long, long time, not until the sound of thunder shook me from my bed. I was already barely sleeping due to the unmistakable itch of healing.

I stood before my new city, the glass of my apartment’s floor-to-ceiling windows wide and clear before me. The city looked as if it were melting as raindrops pattered against the glass. Lightning ripped the sky and I didn’t turn on the lights. Sometimes, you don’t need to see.