If I Had a Heart (The Hawthorne Duology #1)

1. What the Doctors Say

1

What the Doctors Say

Ever

I’ve been told for years that living in the moment was the only way to escape the suffocating reality of my mortality, but what if the moment is so much more painful than death?

“Miss Knight.” The doctor’s voice cut through my thoughts faster than the scalpel. She was a cold woman with sallow skin and sunken eyes that held no remorse for the words she delivered to me.

“I heard you,” I said quietly. “So, what are my other options?”

Her shoulders dropped slightly, and a vague wave of sympathy replaced the impassiveness set there since I walked in the door.

“When treating advanced hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, we usually start with procedures that involve cardiac ablation. We inject a small amount of alcohol into the bloodstream that heart muscles and improves your blood flow, but unfortunately, your condition has deteriorated to a point where this option is no longer viable.”

I bit into my bottom lip, tasting the acidic tang of my blood, and savored that it was still there. It was still pumping, for now.

“In advanced cases such as yours, replacement has been an option explored by doctors, but —”

“But you won’t put me on the list,” I said as a bitter taste filled my mouth.

Dr. Warren sighed loudly through her nose, mouth pinched as she stared at me through round glasses that didn’t suit her pointy, rat-like face. “We can’t submit you for approval with your history.”

I stood abruptly from the chair as my body felt numb, no, worse than numb. I was in utter agony, like shards of glass were being drug across my skin with precision — not missing the raised scars and burns that were hidden beneath my sleeves.

“Miss Knight, we need to discuss —”

The door closed behind me before the rat could speak any more lies. Pretty little lies told to others who wouldn’t make the organ transplant list due to a volley of reasons that were probably far better than my own. Either they were too old, or the transplant would be dangerous in their current condition. There were children who couldn’t find a suitable donor for their blood-type, or a mother of three whose cancer had spread too far. They would all sit at home with their hands clasped in prayer, waiting for a miracle, while I swallowed another pill and tried to drown myself in cheap vodka night after night.

If they had taken my pain seriously these last two years instead of dismissing me, this condition could have been found earlier. Maybe even early enough to make a difference! Unfortunately, no one listens to the woes of an addict, and I’d been pushed from office to office until I was finally found incapacitated on a subway train. After that, they were forced to perform the right tests, but it was too late. My failing heart, combined with my addiction, had pushed my body to the point of breaking.

That’s why I wouldn’t make the list — the pills in my pocket and the long stints in psychiatric wards after failed attempts to make the pain stop. Why would they go through the trouble of giving a perfectly good heart to someone who wouldn’t take care of it? It made a nauseating amount of sense, but I couldn’t help but curse the system anyway. If they’d taken my pain and health seriously instead of ignoring me for years, then this could have been found earlier, but no one cares about the woes of a depressed addict. They were just counting down the days until my failures succeeded.

Life was comical in that sense, telling me my time was up once I had finally accepted that my attempts to die wouldn’t work. I grow a will to live, and life shoves its finger down my throat and makes me throw it all backup.

My hands shook as I pressed the cigarette between my lips, not caring about the dirty looks from passerbyers as they entered the hospital. Fuck them. Couldn’t a dying woman have a smoke in peace?

“You’re supposed to inhale those,” a deep voice interrupted my run-away train of thought. I had been staring blankly into the bushes, letting the ember burn its way up the cancer-stick, but the heat didn’t register in my hands. I couldn’t feel a damn thing anymore.

I looked up into a pair of dark eyes, so deep that they were like blackholes that sucked in all the light around them. My own eyes drifted down, taking in his other features. High cheekbones, a freshly shaven face, and a jawline that could slice open my chest.

“If you’re going to inflict your second-hand smoke on everyone else here, you should at least be benefiting from the nicotine high you’re obviously in desperate need of.”

I huffed a laugh and brought the cigarette back to my lips, inhaling the scalding kiss of the tobacco’s dying ember. I couldn’t feel the familiar heart anymore nor bask in the nicotine high , as the stranger so gracefully pointed out. He watched me throw the filter to the ground, giving it a twist below my toe before shoving my hands back into my pockets.

“Sometimes it’s all about the chase,” I grumbled as he cocked his head to the side.

He was an extraordinarily tall man, with broad shoulders that tapered down to a thin waist draped in expressive and immaculately pressed slacks. I could see my pale complexion in the shine of his oxfords. Shoes that were far too expensive to be near the likes of me and too close now for my comfort. He had taken a languid step in my direction, his hand flexing around the handle of his briefcase and making my own throat constrict. I could imagine the sort of things he could do with that hand.

“Do you like the chase? Needing to hide away in fear that whatever is hunting you might actually succeed while deep down you pray that it finds you? Ends the game that has left you tired and hopeless?”

My mouth fell open, and god, those lips! They curled knowingly like a cat that had cornered its mouse. He looked down, his strong nose at me, head lowered like a wolf on the hunt.

“I don’t think you really want the chase to be over. You just want to know that the game will continue tomorrow. Another loop through the maze, another spike of adrenaline to remind you you’re alive, and then you’ll do it all over again.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” I sputtered as his dark brows rose in surprise, though we could both hear the tremble in my voice. “And I’m not being chased by anything but my own mortality.”

Again, his head tilted, and he leaned forward to tower over me. I couldn’t remember him getting this close, and the heel of my boot slid back into the stone wall of the hospital. It was dark out, the sun setting so early in the winter, but the orange glow of the parking lot lights haloed his obsidian locks like a crown of flames. Dark curls fell just above his brow, casting shadows on his beautiful face. He looked like an angel.

A fallen one.

“Everyone is equal in death, but those who can bring it to heel are extraordinary,” he said as his tongue peeked between his lips and ran along his teeth. “How long have you been running, little rabbit?”

I swallowed hard, shoulders shaking as the predator loomed over me. “Forever,” I whispered into the space between us. “But the doctors say I’m finally out of time.”

My eyes widened as his hand rose, a silver ring glinting in the gloom as he ran a feather-light touch across my cheekbone. It was so light; I could have been imagining it.

“Don’t stop running, even though death is nipping at your heels. There are those who are far faster than the hand of God if you only know where to look.”

I scoffed, my shoulders pressing into the stone behind me as the man appraised me like a piece of fine art. He seemed to be soaking in every detail of my face, getting closer to the painting as I hung against the wall without protection. “I’ve looked into every state-funded cardiac center the government is willing to pay for. Sometimes, the hand of God is kinder than the medical bills that would surely crush me and leave me to rot on the sidewalk.”

He hummed low in his chest, and the sound traveled across the inches that separated us and nestled like a purr — stop my racing heart. A heart that was slowly dying and fading away like the sands of an hourglass. A broken time-keeper where the sand fell into nothingness, and it couldn’t be flipped and reset. That’s what a heart transplant would do for me. Reset the sands, and give me more time to figure out the mess that is my life.

“Is it the cost of the surgery or the fact that you’re an addict that’s keeping you from continuing the chase?”

Flames licked up my neck as the hot wave of shame was washed away by my pride. How dare he? Some pompous stranger outside of a hospital had no right to analyze me under a microscope when I wanted to wallow in solitude. I wasn’t an ant under his looking glass, running from the light that would surely burn me the same way his eyes did right now.

“Get away from me,” I hissed as he looked proud of himself. He had hit the nail on the head, and another inch of my coffin was sealed in place. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

He straightened, the fabric of his peacoat stretching nicely over his shoulders as he kept his eyes on me like a restraint. I couldn’t move, pinned down by invisible straps that reminded me of the ones from the hospital. The ones they had tightened until it felt like I was being buried alive and burned by the fluorescent bulbs of the psychiatric ward. A spotlight onto my shame that still made it hard to enter a hospital at all, which was why it hurt so damned bad to be told there was nothing they could do. It had taken me months to build up enough courage to call my doctor and set an appointment, just to be passed around from specialist to specialist and told that it was hopeless.

My face must have been a book, telling him everything he needed to know about the fears running rampant inside my mind because he took a healthy step away, and the bindings seemed to release. I could breathe again, but barely. His dark gaze still made it impossible to get away.

“What’s your name, little rabbit?”

I swallowed, and his eyes fell to my throat like he could sink his teeth into it. I opened my mouth to respond, hypnotized by his gaze, but the screeching sound of tires and the blaring sirens of an ambulance broke the spell. The mystery man spun on his heels as the ambulance came to a stop outside the hospital doors, and paramedics jumped out with a volley of shouts.

“He’s coding!” One of them shouted as nurses flooded the sidewalk and helped take the gurney from the paramedics.

“Dr. Hawthorne!” A nurse shouted as the man disappeared into the sea of blue scrubs and white coats.

I stumbled away, tripping over the bushes in an attempt to distance myself from the scene and make my escape. I quickly forced my feet to move, hastening down the sidewalk and into the dark alley that surrounded the South End Medical Center.

My breath came out in white plumes, chest shaking not only from the cold but from the sudden release of the man’s presence. I didn’t stop walking until I was home, the door slamming behind me and my back sliding down the wall as shudders threatened to crumble my already deteriorating body. I could feel my heart racing too fast and the unsteady rhythm deafening me until it was hard to see straight.

I tried to take deep breaths, but all they did was make the room around me spin and contort like a kaleidoscope of suffocation and irregular drums.

Bump.

Bump, bump, bump.

Bump.

Bump, Bump.

“Fuck,” I said as tears escaped, leaving a warm trail through my frost-bitten cheeks. Boston winters were brutal, and the wind scratched and bit at my face like those Hitchcock birds. I was always surprised when I managed to get home without shedding a few drops of blood to Jack Frost and his brutal show of authority in the Northeast.

My palm rested atop my heart, willing to slow down before I passed out. This was one of the tell-tale signs that something had been seriously wrong with me. My chest would feel like there was an angry beast, pounding its fists against my sternum and trying to break through the cell its master had trapped it in. I would feel choked, my throat collapsing like a tunnel, and then everything would go dark. This went on for months before I finally admitted to myself that something was wrong , and no amount of weed and pills was going to quiet the angry creature that needed to escape.

I half stumbled, half crawled into my bathroom as bile rose in my throat. Instead of taking the time to breathe, my body felt the need to dispel everything I’d eaten that day and leave me even weaker than before.

I spit into the toilet and leaned into the cold tile of the bath until I could take long and needed breaths through my nose. Everything was sour, bitter, and painful. This is how life has felt for me going on a decade now. An endless cycle of numbness, then hurt and panic, followed by the slashing attempt to let the monster out. To rip through my skin and release the creature that seemed to consume me from the inside.

But once it was free, it would hunt me down. Chase me through the night until I was out of breath and out of time. Once it caught me, its teeth would sink into the flesh of my neck and shake. Shake me so violently that I would lose sight of what was real.

I’d then wake up strapped down like an animal and blinded by my shame until I told myself I wanted to live.

I want to wake up and feel okay again.

Now, the choice was taken from me.

“Patients suffering from AHC at your level have a life expectancy of approximately one year. I’d say with your substance abuse, you have less than that.”

“I finally did it,” I whispered in the empty apartment. “I’m going to die.”