“Hey.” The sudden strength in her voice gets my attention. She’s been quiet all this week. She doesn’t speak but sometimes she cries, like something’s just reminded her that she’s all alone. Regardless of the fact that I’m there, walking her both ways, holding her hand when she needs it.
I get it. It’s the way we mourn. We’re fine for moments and then we fall victim to the memories. It kills us to come back to the present.
Even though it’s only early November, the bite of winter is in the air and it’s turned Laura’s neck pink. The tip of her nose is the same shade. With her hand on her front door, keeping it open, she looks out at me.
A gust of wind goes by and I slip my right hand into my jacket pocket, so very aware of how cold the left one is. My palm is warm from her skin and her touch, but the back of my hand is freezing. She let me hold her hand though, so there’s no chance I’m letting her go.
“Yeah?” I ask her, raising my voice as I turn on the uneven stone steps of this old townhouse. I think she’s going to say thank you; she says it every day even though she doesn’t want me to be her babysitter. At least that’s what she says, but I don’t believe it. “You already told me thanks,” I remind her before she can say anything.
She’s busy chewing on her bottom lip, her baby blues wide while I wait.
There’s a moment, a vulnerable one between us. A moment where she wants something—needs something from me—and I’ll be damned if I don’t need it too.
This is all up to her though. Every move is hers to make.
“What do you want, Babygirl?” I ask her, doing everything I can to hide what I want from creeping into my tone.
The moment is over, waning slowly when she shakes her head, her long hair falling down the front of her sweater and hiding half her face from me. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”
I shouldn’t feel hollow inside when I force the smile to my lips. It matches the one she gives me too.
“Thanks again.”
“No problem.” I nearly walk away. I’m so close to letting her shut me out, but just the thought of it makes me feel empty. I don’t like the way I feel without her.
“Hey,” I call back before I can stop myself.
“Yeah?” The way she says the single word sounds faint and it almost gets lost in the wind. She perks up with hope though and whatever it is she’s hoping for, I hope she gets it.
“Do you eat?”
It takes her a moment, but she laughs at the ridiculous question and the sweet sound makes me smile as I jog up the steps to get back to her. “I’m hungry and I was thinking, if you’re hungry, you want to come with me?”
I can’t be so out of shape that I’m breathless after making my way up her steps to be closer to her but I blame it on that, and not on the nerves. “Come with me to dinner,” I say, making it a demand rather than a question.
She chews on that bottom lip for a moment longer, debating as the blush rises to her cheeks. “Yeah,” she answers. “I could eat something.”
All that tension melts, all the nerves go away. When she’s next to me, it’s all just fine. It’s perfect.
The click of the television and the silence that follows brings me back to now, back to the chance to make things right. Just a little longer, I think. He’s got to be going to bed.
The stairs creak and with the old floors, I can easily hear him upstairs when he finally leaves. Thank fuck.
I should wait to call Jase, wait until I’m sure that the man upstairs is asleep and won’t come back, but my patience is thin. I’ve already wasted too much time. At that thought, I move as quickly as I can.
I know Jase’s phone number by heart so I dial it, holding my breath. I’m fucked if he doesn’t answer. And Laura…
Fuck.
The other end only rings twice. Both times, I stare down at my hands as they shake.
“Who’s this?” Jase answers in a deadly tone. It’s the best thing I’ve ever heard in my life.
Please God, don’t let me be too late. She needs me. She’s always needed me.
I need her more. More than anything.
Laura
My hands are still trembling. I’m huddled up, tucked away in the corner of this bed, bracing myself against the painted white cement wall of the cell. Hours have passed, but I still struggle to fully wrap my head around it all.
I’m a nurse. I’ve read about it. I comprehend the words. I just can’t believe it’s true.
Arrhythmia is apparently the least of my worries. The walls of my heart are weak.
Too weak. Even if I’d had my medicine, it wouldn’t have helped. It was only a matter of time before my heart gave out.
That’s what the doctor said when I woke up in the medical center at the back of the jail. I was out for hours; the defibrillator brought my heart back to a steady beat. I know about the medical center here, but I’m not familiar with the doctor who monitored me. He showed me everything though. I saw my charts.
I have systolic heart failure.
The doctor’s voice won’t shut up in my head. He keeps looking at me with those pale green eyes from behind his spectacles. You have systolic heart failure. His voice was so calm, his hand resting lightly on mine. He was a kind doctor, but as I wiped away the tears from the corners of my eyes, I couldn’t help but hate him for having to deliver that news to me.
“Your heart is weak,” he told me. “You’ll be high on the donor list; you’re in good health.” He touched my shoulder, barely gripping me but I could only look at where his hand met the orange fabric of my newly appointed attire.
The scene plays again and again. It can’t be real.
More tests need to be done and an appointment has been scheduled for the first of said tests, but the chest X-ray is a smoking gun. The second I saw it, I knew. He didn’t even have to tell me; I knew just from looking.
“The arrhythmia has developed into something more dangerous.”
I read all about this in textbooks when I was still in school. I’ve never had a patient with heart failure though. They’re always older in the educational videos and on TV shows.
I’m in my twenties, relatively healthy, but my heart is failing me. Really, I’ve failed my heart. I knew something was wrong, yet I never followed through. I let my health slip. They could have caught this sooner.
The next appointment, once my current situation is more concrete either way, will consist of an EKG to confirm, and then I wait. I wait for someone to die so I can have their heart. That’s the best option I have. Of course, there’s medication to take and lifestyle adjustments to relieve the symptoms in the meantime… like removing stressors from my environment. There is no doubt though from Dr. Conway. I won’t survive more than a year with this heart. That’s what he told me. No more than a year at best.
I hardly notice the hot tears anymore.
Sitting cross-legged on the thin mattress in my new cell, I try to focus on all the other noise around me. At least I have a mattress now, and not just a bench. I have a blanket too, and a toilet identical to the one from before is in the corner.
I don’t know if this bed is mine or if the one across from me was supposed to be mine. I’m the only one in this cell, for now. I was told several things while I went through the booking process. But it was all a blur as they took my fingerprints and mug shot. All I kept hearing was: a year, at most.