Chapter 29 #3
“This is kind of crazy,” she comments as she drives through an overflowing gutter to turn into the neighborhood where I live now.
“Maybe you should wait it out for a little while—make sure there aren’t any flash floods or anything.” I lean forward and glance up at the sky. There’s nothing to see but an expanse of slate gray. No break in the clouds, no indication of how long the downpour might last.
“I have a huge presentation that I have to finish today and get approved by Austin. I’ll have to risk it,” Talia says as she pulls into my driveway.
The edges of the car windows are foggy. Water runs rivulets down the entire car.
I’m already shivering a little bit from our first mad dash through the rain. I don’t really want to do it again.
“Do you remember the day you got out of the hospital?” Talia suddenly asks.
“Which time?”
“The first time—when you were able to walk away from the hospital after six months because you finally had your new heart and had healed enough to go home.” She’s looking at me, but her dark-brown eyes are far, far away. Seven years away, apparently.
“Yeah, I remember,” I say quietly.
“You were so excited to go for a walk in the sun.”
“And it was raining,” I add with a shake of my head and a small smile.
“It was pouring. You were so bummed. But then you suddenly grinned—and made me take your umbrella while you stood in the rain and looked up at the sky and shouted, ‘I’m alive! I get to be outside in the rain because I’m alive!’”
I close my eyes, the memory surging up as if it were yesterday: the feel of the raindrops on my face—the first time I’d felt rain in half a year, the scent of it on the asphalt beneath my feet, the steady, sure beat of my new heart in my chest, and, best of all, being able to spin in circles right there in the middle of the parking lot without feeling faint or on the verge of collapsing.
“It was the most incredible feeling. You grabbed my hands and started spinning with me while Mom recorded us. And my brothers started running from puddle to puddle to see who could make the biggest splash.”
“We were laughing so hard—until Dr. Nielsen started shouting at us from under the awning that if you caught pneumonia in the rain and undid all his hard work, he’d kill us both.”
“You blushed so hard. I guess you were too busy staring at his pretty face to realize he was a huge joker.”
“He was nice to look at.” Talia laughs. “But I thought he was serious, so I made you stop and get in the car and told your mom she had to blast the heat to help you dry off and keep you from getting sick.”
“I was still soaked when we got home—from sweat,” I remember, also laughing.
Talia’s smile falters. “That is one of the happiest memories of my entire life. The day I no longer had to be afraid that my best friend might die at any time.”
I reach out and take her hand. She squeezes my fingers.
“I know you’re upset that it’s his sister. I know I can never understand what you’ve gone through or what you’re going through right now. But I will never be sorry you got this heart. I’ll never be sorry you didn’t come out of that hospital in a casket.”
I clench my teeth, trying to keep the tears from gathering, but Talia is already crying, so I can’t stop my own vision from blurring.
“And . . . I know Hunter is devastated right now, but I think once he gets over the shock of it all, he’ll realize he’s glad you got her heart too. He’ll be grateful such a horrible tragedy led to such an incredible miracle.”
I swipe at my face with my free hand and shake my head.
“I’ll never be the girl he was falling for again—I’ll only be the girl who is alive because Lyla’s dead.
I don’t think it’s possible for us to be happy when I have his sister’s heart.
” The heart that clenches in my chest, even as I speak.
I press the heel of my hand to my sternum.
“Are you okay?” Talia’s expression immediately turns to one of concern.
“Yeah. Heartburn, I think.”
“Do you need me to come in and make sure?”
“That I can find the Tums?” I tease. “No, I’ll be fine. You better go finish that report. But drive safe, okay?”
Talia nods.
I open the door and duck out into the rain, arcing my arms over my head to try to ward off the torrent of water—futilely.
I make it to the porch and fumble in my pocket for my keys when I feel my heart stop beating, then restart with a flip--flop in my chest. A premature ventricular contraction.
I’ve had them many times before, but this one is immediately followed by another and another; increasingly sharp pain stabs through my ribs from my struggling heart.
It’s so intense it makes my breath catch.
I stumble forward and barely catch myself on the brick wall next to the door.
The headache I’ve been fighting intensifies until I see stars.
A wave of dizziness hits me, followed by another painful run of PVCs beneath my rib cage, even longer and more intense. I clutch at my shirt, pressing the heel of my hand into my scarred sternum. My vision swims.
“Liv! Liv, what’s happening?!”
I hear Talia only dimly, as if she’s shouting through a -tunnel.
My heart flops in my chest, the beats are wrong, wrong, wrong, and agonizing—stealing my ability to breathe, driving me to my knees.
Talia skids to the cement next to me, grabbing me just under my shoulders. “Liv! Do I need to call your mom? What’s going on? Is it a panic attack?”
“911,” I gasp, still clutching my chest, where my heart is struggling and failing to beat right. And then with one final flop, followed by a terrible nothingness, I sink forward into Talia’s arms.