Page 6 of Heart Sick
I try to shift, but everything feels heavy.
“Your father is just getting a coffee.” From the looks of her, I dare say either of them haven’t slept.
“How long have I been out of it?”
“A very long time.”
No timeline means it’s been days? Maybe weeks?
No wonder I feel like a zombie. But regardless of how fuzzy things are, the one thing which sounds steady is…hisheart which is in my chest. It’s funny, the first thing I think is, what did Dr. Norton do with my heart?
It’s a reject, so I’m sure it’s sent with all the other reject parts. But I can’t help but feel somewhat sad that it wasn’t given a nicer send-off. I mean, it did try its best for thirty years. To just discard it because it was no longer needed seems somewhat cruel.
I would have liked to keep it, as macabre as that is. It was the epicenter of who I was, and now, I have someone else’s heart beating within my chest.
“How are you feeling, Dutch?” Dr. Norton asks as she enters my room. She reaches for my chart off the end of the bed and begins reading over my vitals.
I owe her a lot. Not only has she tried to help me cope with this ordeal, she just gave me a new heart.
“Feeling okay. My brain is a little cloudy, though. That will go away, right?”
Dr. Norton nods as she knows why I’ve asked. I would rather not have a healthy heart if my brain remains plagued by this weight, which stunts my music. I am anxious that I cannot hear the notes in my head.
“Yes, that’s completely normal,” she replies, peering at me over the rim of her designer black-framed glasses. “The transplant was a complete success.”
My mother sighs in relief. But I know we aren’t in the clear just yet.
“But we have to be prepared that your immune system may reject the new heart. This is your body’s normal response to a foreign object. Your immune system sees the organ as a foreign threat and will attack it.”
“What does that mean?” my mom asks, hand over her throat, horrified.
“It just means Dutch will need to take medications to trick the immune system into accepting the transplant and stop the body from attacking it.”
“For how long?”
She doesn’t need to answer. I know how long by the look on her face.
“If they fuck with my head, then no, absolutely not.”
“Dutch!”
But my mom knows my stance on this.
“If I can’t compose, then I may as well be dead.” And I’m not being melodramatic.
“There is more to life than music.”
But that’s where she’s wrong. If I don’t have music running through my veins, then I don’t want this heart because musicismy heart.
“We can talk about this later. For now, I just want you to rest. The next forty-eight hours are imperative. We will monitor you very closely. No strenuous activity, nothing that will get your heart rate going. And especially, under no circumstances, are you to play music.”
“That’s a little hard, Doc, as I don’t see a grand piano laying around, do you?” I swiftly sweep my hand around the cramped room, the IV pole almost careening into the plastic chair.
I already feel the walls closing in on me and when this happens, I would sit in front of my piano and play my worries away.
“Diana, can I speak to you outside?”
My mom looks at the doctor apprehensively, but nods.