Chapter Nine
COLD GEL, A WAND PRESSING around under my ribs, and a screen full of gray weather that happens to be my own heart as it thumps away.
"There she is," the tech says.
Today's my annual eval, same as every year since the transplant. They photograph her (as in my heart), take enough of my blood to concern a vampire, and ask me the questions I always answer, and underneath all of it runs the same low hum that's run under every appointment for two years.
Please still be happy in there. Please still want to stay. And please, oh pretty please, please be okay.
"You quit your last job," the cardiologist notes, scrolling. "New one less stressful?"
"Wildly more stressful. I'm an actress now."
"And you're eating."
"Someone force-feeds me nightly. It's a whole situation."
She's still reading the screen, and then she stops reading it and looks at me over her glasses, and her whole face shifts into the careful look doctors get when they're about to say a true sentence.
"Jassy, I'll be honest with you. This is the best your numbers have looked since your surgery.
Ejection fraction, rhythm, all of it. Whatever changed in your life this past couple of months"—she taps the frozen image of my heart, that stubborn little engine—"keep it.
A heart this healthy usually belongs to someone who's being looked after.
Someone's clearly making sure you rest, and eat, and get worried about. "
All I can do is laugh weakly. I know exactly who that 'someone' is, but I can't seem to make myself say anything about him, and I realize it's because I'm scared.
Terrified even. It's like a part of me is convinced that if I say just one word about him, he becomes real, and real things can be taken away.
TWO FLOORS UP, BEHIND glass he had no reason to be standing behind, Maximo watched the elevator numbers count down and didn't go anywhere near them.
He had sworn he would never set foot in this building again. His sister had been rushed in through those same doors and never came back out, and for two years the sight of the logo on a passing ambulance had been enough to close his throat.
He had come anyway. He came every year she had an appointment, and every year he stood exactly here, where he could confirm she walked in and confirm she walked out, and never once let her see him do it.
His phone buzzed. A message from the office he paid to make sure her name stayed at the top of the best cardiologist's list, a fact she'd never learn if he had anything to say about it.
Patient discharged. All clear. Excellent results.
Maximo read it twice. Then he let himself do the one thing he permitted himself in this building, which was to lean his forehead against the cold glass and breathe, once, all the way out.
His sister had died here.
Her heart had just filled a screen two floors down, healthy, thriving, loved, and the man responsible for the loving was standing where no one could see him, forbidden from the room, forbidden from the girl, forbidden from every single thing he wanted.