Two
1656 Words
Thump.
Thump.
…Thump.
That foreign pattern plays over in my head, but my brain is too heavy to formulate any lucid notes. I don’t like it.
My eyes aren’t ready to open, but I force them to take in my surroundings because I’ve been incoherent for long enough. I blink past the blurry veil to see the apprehensive face of my mother.
“Oh, thank God,” she says on a rushed breath. “If you didn’t just have surgery, I would slap you for not telling us.”
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…his heart 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 f**k 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 music is my 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.
I know she wants her to be on board with whatever decision I make, but she will fight me if I decide to stop taking the medication. But this is my choice and she knows I always get what I want.
A young nurse enters and I throw her a flirty smile because although she is really beautiful, there is something I need, and it’s not her number. She goes to check my vitals, leaning in close. She smells of ripened strawberries on a spring day.
The hospital gown sags low and she doesn’t make it a secret that she’s looking down the front of it, no doubt attempting to work out what my tattoos are. My body is randomly inked with sheet music from my favorite pieces. Some are just a bar of music, but each note means something to me; it helped shape me into who I am today.
My favorite is down the side of my neck, starting under my ear—I have the opening musical notes of my favorite classical piece—Moonlight Sonata.
She tilts her head to take in the piano keys tattooed on the outside of my forearm. “I take it you like music then?”
“What gave it away?” I quip, throwing her a flirty smile.
She nervously brushes a strand of hair behind her ear.
“I don’t suppose I can borrow your pen?”
Before she can object, I reach for the pen which is clipped to the collar of her scrubs. A shudder of breath leaves her.
“And some paper?”
She appears confused by my request, but doesn’t see the harm in it and she digs into her pocket. She tears off a few sheets from her small notepad.
I position the movable tray in front of me and shift to sit upright, ignoring the pain in my entire body. “Thank you.”
She places the sheets of paper onto the tray and watches with interest as I organize them in a line. Pen in left hand, I begin to draw the keys of a piano, lost in that world I go to whenever music is near. When I am done, I look at the sight before me and a sense of peace overcomes me.
My fingers twitch just as they always do and this to me, this is foreplay. This is what gets me hard. I place my fingers on the makeshift keys and close my eyes, familiarizing myself with my mistress because all I want to do is make her scream.
I decide to play a piece I already know, something a little upbeat—Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 seems like the perfect choice.
I wait for the music to kick-start in my brain, but all I hear is white noise. I give it a minute because Dr. Norton said this was normal, but when all I hear is…nothing, a heaviness kicks me in the chest. I am aware of his heart beginning to trounce wildly, but I ignore it because that sound is the only thing I can hear.
It is drowning out all other noise and I want it to stop.
I move my fingers to the keys I’ve memorized by heart, but I hear nothing.
“Dutch, your heart rate—”
But I ignore the nurse.
I push aside her voice filled with concern and every other sound which is drowning out the music and focus. However, the harder I concentrate, the foggier things become.
No f*****g way will I surrender.
I vaguely hear the sudden commotion of machines beeping and a flurry of panicked voices swarming around me because the faster his heart beats and the harder it is to breathe, the music begins to breed. It’s small at first, a flicker of light, but as the pain heightens and I struggle for air…I hear it.
Music flows through me and my fingers move.
The soothing sounds of the notes are all I need because the harder I play, the faster his heart beats. I ignore it, however, and let the music consume me, surrendering to the melodies which flood my brain.
Finally, I am home.
“Dutch! Can you hear me?” Dr. Norton screams. Her voice amalgamates with the music and it feeds the beast.
I only play harder.
“Nurse, get me the defibrillator. Now! He is about to go into cardiac arrest!”
His heart gets faster and faster. Louder and louder. And unfamiliar images begin to flick before me; memories that aren’t mine. They make me want to vomit—blood, so much blood.
There is only one thing I can do to make it go away.
Blindly reaching for the pen, I violently stab it into my chest, scissoring it along the fresh wound. Blood coats me and the warmth fills me with such joy. I dig my fingers into the wound, desperate to pull out the heart with my bare hands.
“Dutch, no, please no. Please, God, no!” My mom’s guttural sobs are the perfect transition into a somber chord.
I can hear it loudly. It’s beautiful and I never want it to end.
But when his heart suddenly stops, the hollow echo ceasing to deafen me, I realize that is what I need to finish this masterpiece. This foreign alien within my chest needs to stop beating for me to exist.
Ironic, this was supposed to save me, but it looks like I am beyond saving.
DC al Coda…
- Writer
