The Heart Does Not Grow Back: A Novel (31 page)

“It’s too late to back out,” I said. “I just can’t now. Try your best, but if I die, fuck it.”

“Why are you in such a hurry to die?” Venhaus said.

“I’m not,” I said. “I haven’t been for a while now, actually. I love a girl and I love my friend, but I never
acted
, Doc, and I can’t say I could have stopped the massacre or my friend getting his shoulder blown off, but I sure as shit let her get away. Hell, I let myself get away. I have this power and what did I do? Nothing, not really. Sure, I let people take from me, a lung here, a kidney there—”

“You’re giving now,” Doc said.

“And I’m not going to stop,” I said. “If I live through this, that is.”

“The odds are not in favor of that outcome,” Doc said. “Not anymore.”

I reached out and took Doc’s hand. He squeezed back. “You promised, Doc.” I said. “This is what I want.”

He got me to an operating room, but he was there as my friend now, not a doctor. There were plenty of doctors scurrying around us. All of them old, sporting neat, white beards and glasses. I was pleased to see these old men of a noble trade whose days of ambition were long behind them, men who respected Venhaus and the secrets that needed to be kept that day.

I handed my arm over for an IV and Doc never took his hand off my shoulder. He waited, along with me, for a countdown backward from ten.

No mention of Rae, which was disappointing, if only because I’d wanted to finally measure myself as a man in her eyes—maybe glimpse her looking down on me with gratitude—even love. Or maybe she’d have just seen me as a manipulative asshole anyway, parlaying her need for my heart into a chance to shackle her with memories of me forever.

*   *   *

Harold agreed to take a huge gamble and allow his surgery to begin before I even arrived at the hospital. Doc Venhaus had taken every precaution to keep the location a secret, but with Harold’s deteriorating condition, Doc had the surgical team begin Harold’s surgery early. Once he was on bypass and his heart was out, if we were discovered it would be far more difficult to shut it down and let a man die since the surgery would already be under way.

I was home, a surgical room with cold lights, icy steel, and unbreakable silence. Doc was only going to observe the surgery—this was outside his realm of expertise, yet he had screened and organized the surgical team that would be plucking out my heart and planting it in Harold. He stood over me as final preparations were made.

“How much longer?” I asked.

“Very soon,” he said.

I waited. He added nothing.

“Do you think she’s coming to see me? To say good-bye?” I said, finally.

“Surgery is imminent, Dale. I have serious doubts about your ability to withstand an operation this serious without complications, so please don’t make me feel guilty by voicing your regrets at the last possible second.”

“Fair enough,” I said, and stared at the ceiling, waiting for the mask to fall on my face.

Doctors bustled around me as I stared at the lights.

“Any last words?” Venhaus said. “Not to scare you, Dale, but I’d put your chances at thirty percent, and that’s generous. We’ll try our best, and even if we’re successful and you live, you’re not really living, so to speak. People will ask what your last words were. So say what you will for posterity’s sake.”

“I guess whatever I choose will be a
Jeopardy!
question a hundred years from now. Might be as close to immortality as I’m ever going to get.” I thought about Rae. Where would I be if I had never seen her that day in Wal-Mart? If she had moved to any city but Grayson?

“Fuck it,” I said. “No last words. Just nothing.”

Doc stood beside me. He put his hand on my forearm and I saw pain in his eyes. He was a doctor, practiced at exuding confidence and authority, but the guise fell away when he touched me, his face shaded with doubt and fear.

Doc was the one left most exposed by our little ruse, because at some point soon, he would have to answer to Hayes, whom he had double-crossed to make this happen. Venhaus was brought onto the show under the condition of being Hayes’s inside man, and we’d taken advantage of that. Venhaus had whispered in Hayes’s ear that I was arranging a secret surgery. He revealed the location—Keck Hospital. Then, early in the morning, he leaked the Keck location to the press, all the while setting us up at the UCLA Medical Center. I have no idea how he pulled that off with no leaks, but when it comes to miracles, sometimes you just don’t ask. Sometimes you just want to believe in the magic.

“She’s here,” Doc said. “She wanted to see you to say good-bye, but only once you were anesthetized,” he said.

“I won’t say anything,” I said. “I’ll keep my eyes closed. I’ll stay completely still.”

He nodded. Another surgeon whispered something in his ear, but Doc shook his head and said, “No, it will be fine. It doesn’t hurt anything.”

“Hold this tube in your mouth,” he said.

I pretended to be put-under, my eyes closed, my breathing slow, the tube tasting like a chewed-up plastic straw in my now-dry mouth. I waited.

I sensed her beside me. Even with the air heavy and antiseptic, I recognized the fragrance of flowery soap, remembering a time when the soapy smell mixed with the acrid and beautiful scent of sex. Not being able to open my eyes and see her was agony, but I endured and kept them gently shut. She sobbed for a few long moments, trying to bite herself back from completely losing it. I could hear Doc comforting her. Her touch was surprising and electric, popping off a jolt of tension in the muscles of my hand and arm. I wondered if that tipped her off to my consciousness, but I continued to play dead. She curled her fingers into mine and kissed the back of my hand, pressing it against her cheek and holding it there. Then, she opened my hand and kissed the center, her tears gathering in the seams of my palm.

She moved my open hand to her belly: tight, round, and swollen. The real person who drove her to pen the letter.

Nothing like finally staring down the truth until it’s far too late. The possibility of ending up with Rae and settling into some normal, domestic life had once lingered deep inside of me. Once I felt her child thudding against the walls of her stomach, she was truly gone for good. Harold’s child, a child she would lie for. A kid she’d fuck someone all day for. She knew Harold was scum but loved the baby so fiercely that she’d do whatever it took to give her child a father—even if it meant grinding the last happy parts of me into dust. I wondered if Harold knew about that part, if he gave her permission to seduce me into compliance. She could have told me she was pregnant and taken her chances, but what mother takes chances? She knew I loved her and wasn’t about to lose that edge.

I felt her kiss upon my forehead as she placed the dry, hard remains of a flower into my hand—a withered rose that was once placed on a windowsill all those years ago, flat from being kept in some book somewhere, now completing its journey of rejection.

“I just want you to know, Harold has been good to me a long time now. I want you to know that I’m sorry. I can’t say I love you, Dale, but I can say that I could have. I might have. If things were different for all of us.”

My eyes remained calm and closed, my jaw loose around the tube. I was out of my body now, visiting all those little crossroads where I might have ended up with her, but there were too many what-ifs to count. I was sick of counting them. My grip remained limp. I never felt so still. I felt like a pond on a windless morning. Another Dale might have spoken up or cried or begged for an explanation. She took my hand off of her womb.

“Good-bye, Dale.”

Perhaps it was my pulse that gave me away—the final scream of my Dale Sampson factory-installed heart, but she knew.

“I’m glad he was awake,” she said to Doc as she neared the door. “Now that it’s over, I’m glad.” And with that she was gone.

*   *   *

“We’re going to count down from ten,” the anesthetist said. “You won’t make it to one.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ve got experience at this. Tolerance. I can make it to one.” I smiled.

Doc took my hand. “So, about those last words, then?”

Goddammit—I couldn’t think of anything funny or clever. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and pictured a crowd of strangers outside with chants and signs, some with words of support and some of hate; and thought of Mack, and the burning house; and wondered when my life would flash before my eyes. But it already had, and it wasn’t that I was given nothing to miss, it was that I had not created anything to miss.

“Give everything,” I said, keeping my eyes closed.

“Well done, Dale,” Doc said, patting my forearm. “Now, don’t you go chattering and messing that one up, just in case we can’t pull this off.”

He was the last I heard of that world—him and the beep of machinery as the hissing mask descended upon me, driving the light away, and I counted down in my head and did not make it to one.

TWENTY-FIVE

They gathered up the press in one of the hospital’s conference rooms. Reporters huddled in a throbbing mass of mobile technology and bad fashion sense, with smartphones poked out to record whatever would be said at the haphazardly set-up lectern.

Dr. Allen Venhaus volunteered to announce the results. He said it was his responsibility, but he made everyone wait even though word had already leaked. Dale Sampson was dead.

He walked to the lectern wearing a white coat, running his hand over his stubbly scalp, perspiration shimmering in the creases of his forehead.

He approached the microphone and looked down, as if he had prepared notes, but he hadn’t, and didn’t even have his glasses on. He just stared at his hands, at the microphone, and all you could hear was the click of cameras. He coughed a little, clearing his throat, and then looked up into the lights, the cameras, the hungry eyes wanting to affirm what they’d already heard.

“Every surgery has complications. Risks,” he said. “Dale Sampson knew them better than anyone. At eleven forty-four today, he died of complications unrelated to his heart operation. As you may or may not know at this point, he was involved in a severe car accident this morning. His friend, Maxwell Tucker, is still in recovery and miraculously, despite severe internal injuries, his prognosis is positive. Mr. Sampson suffered similar internal injuries. Due to the tight timeline and the fact his medical team could not properly evaluate him for surgery, we suggested postponing the operation. However, Mr. Stillson, the recipient, was on bypass and awaiting a new heart. Mr. Sampson insisted on proceeding with the operation. We agreed, despite our best judgment, to allow this to continue, due mostly to Mr. Sampson’s unique gifts. Gifts that failed him today.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and cinched his eyes shut. The cameras went wild as he fought tears and lost, blinking them out. He took a long, audible sigh and continued.

“Dale’s last words were ‘Give everything.’ Words he lived by, words that cost him his life. Today I grieve as a doctor for the miracle that we lost, and I grieve as a friend for the good man who’s no longer a part of my life. I don’t intend on taking any questions, but Mr. Stillson did indeed get Dale’s heart. But only the organ. What Dale had inside of him, the person he was, that’s gone today unless we use his life as inspiration to take action. In Dale’s honor, I urge you all to do something a Samaritan would be proud of.”

Mack was watching from his hospital bed and tried not to let the pretty nurses see him break down.

Hollie watched, and while she didn’t cry, she called Melissa over to her and hugged her for so long, the little girl asked, “What’s wrong, Mommy?” Her engagement ring was gone. It was just them again, just the two of them and the struggle.

Raeanna held Harold’s hand and tried not to hear, but couldn’t help it. He was asleep, covered in tape and tubes, his skin crusted with the tint of iodine, and under the cover of machines beeping, she allowed herself to grieve as her baby kicked with every sob.

*   *   *

My new heart once belonged to a young man named Thomas, who suffered catastrophic head injuries in a car accident. He fell asleep at the wheel at the exact wrong time at the exact wrong location of the exact wrong curve. Had he missed the culvert, or worn his seat belt, or fallen asleep a moment before or after, maybe he’d have lived.

I didn’t need to be there to know exactly how it went: machines breathe for him, his brain dead, a shallow pulse nourishing a vacant body. A doctor approaches his parents, bereft in the hospital, their grief held in suspension, considering the nature of God and destiny and evil and love. And he asks them, “Is your son a donor?”

But the parents don’t hear a question—they hear surrender. They demand to know why he is giving up on their son. He explains clinical death but they will not listen. Not yet.

The problem with medicine is, too many people believe in miracles.

The doctor gently reminds them that time is of the essence. The parents still wait, hugging, crying, wondering, asking, wishing, hoping. The truth waits for those emotions to pass. The truth never softens. And they say yes, and Thomas’s wish to be a donor is carried out. A pager goes off somewhere.