Dean Koontz - Your Heart Belongs To Me

Exhaustion nearly immobilized him. He felt weighed down and wrung out.

They had endured a rite of passage in their relationship, the acknowledgment that even as young as they were, Death was a presence at their dance, their life together finite.

Like him, she probably had much she wanted to say but no energy to say it and, at the moment, possessed no words adequate to express her thoughts.

They dozed but did not sleep deeply, changed positions but held fast to each other.

When at last she spoke again, Samantha’s voice was small and lacked her usual spirit. “I’m afraid.”

“Me too. That’s okay. They’ll match me to a donor. I’ll get a heart.”

“I know you will,” she said.

“I will.”

“You will if anyone will. But you’ve got to be careful, Ryan.”

“I’ll do everything the doctors say.”

“You especially. You, being you, have to be careful.”

“I won’t try riding any sharks.”

“You’ve got to let it happen however it will.”

“It’ll happen.”

“I’m afraid.”

“I won’t just fade away,” he said. “That’s not me. You know that’s not me.”

“I’m afraid for you,” she said.

“I’ll handle it, Sam.”

“Don’t handle it. Just let it develop.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m not afraid.”

“Sometimes it’s good to be afraid,” she said. “It keeps you clear and squared away.”

Much later, he said, “Marry me.” She did not reply, but he was sure that she was awake. “I know you’re there.”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“So marry me.”

“It’ll look like I married you because you’re dying.”

“I’m not going to die.”

“Everyone’ll think I married you for your money.”

“I don’t care what they think. I never have. Why should I now?”

“I love you. I’ll stay with you through this if you just let it happen. Every step of the way through all of it, but you have to do what Dr. Gupta says.”

“He’s my doctor. Of course I’ll do what he says.”

“I know you. I know you so well. I so much want you to be right…to be all right at the end of this.”

“Then marry me.”

“I’ll marry you when it’s over, when everything is right.”

“After the transplant, you’ll marry me?”

“If you relax. Just relax and accept and let this thing happen like it should.”

“Then you’re my reward,” he said.

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

He said, “You’re all I want, Sam.”

“It’s got to be right.”

“We are right. We’re perfect together.”

“We are, we really are, day to day,” she agreed.

“So there you go.”

“So if you’ll just let this happen the way it will, just relax and go with it the way it wants to happen, then I’ll know we’ll also be right not just day to day, but year after year.”

“Okay. I can chill out. Is that what you want?”

“You’ve got to be so careful, Dotcom.”

“Just watch me chill.”

“So very careful. I’ll be there all the way, but you have to listen to me.”

“Yes, dear.”

“I’m serious. You listen to me.”

“I will.”

“You listen to me.”

“I’m listening.”

Clinging tightly to him, Samantha said, “Oh, God, I’m so afraid.”

Dozing, they eased apart. Parting, they woke. Waking, they clung again to each other. That was the rhythm of their night.

At dawn, she woke once more to a separation, but felt for him and found him with an urgency that suggested she expected him to be gone. Stirred from sleep by her search and her touch, he held her close, but closeness was no longer quite enough.

Their lovemaking was different from any Ryan had known, rich with desire for a perfect union, yet without lust, giving without taking, receiving without wanting. Tender, selfless, almost innocent, this was a sweet celebration of life, but more than a celebration, it was a commemoration of all they had been to each other to this point in time, to this fulcrum of their lives, and it was a solemnization of a commitment to be two in one henceforth, to be as one, always one, one forever.

Even after Ryan had received a virtual death sentence from his cardiologist, such a moment of beauty and joy was possible, which not only gave him hope but also stropped a sharper edge on his determination to live.

This consummation at dawn was his high tide, his lifetime-best surf, a perfect set of double overhead swells, and it was not in his nature to imagine that what came thereafter would be not more of the same and soon a new life with a new healthy heart, but instead error, disorder, terror, anguish, and loss.

The storm.

Ryan sailed through the psychological testing and was added to the heart-recipient list of the United Network for Organ Sharing.

Following the diagnosis of cardiomyopathy and his revelation of his condition to Samantha, he was spared the dreams that had plagued him for a week. The city in the sea, the lake of black water, and the haunted palace had been deleted from his nightly itinerary.

No other dreams arose to trouble him. He slept well each night and woke rested or at least rested enough.

In lonely moments, he no longer heard the curious rapping that-at windows, at doors, in bathroom plumbing, and from a plasma TV-had insisted upon his attention.

His sense of being watched, of being the object of a sinister conspiracy, blew away with the dreams and with the phantom knocker. A fresh air came into his life, and cleared from his head the stale miasma of unreason as if he had merely been suffering from a pollen allergy.

He experienced no further episodes of deja vu. Indeed, he suspected that if he returned to Denver and located the small park with the aspens, that place-and the church adjacent to it-would not affect him as it had before.

As for knowing, before he saw it, what the crucifix would look like above the altar at St. Gemma’s…

Over the years, he had been inside a few Catholic churches, attending weddings and funerals. He didn’t remember any of those altars, but he assumed that perhaps a crucifix in one Roman church was much like that in another. Uniformity might even be required. He must have known what he would find in St. Gemma’s only because he had seen the identical crucifix-or one nearly like it-at one of those weddings or funerals.

He attributed the calm and clarity that purged his paranoia to the medications that Dr. Gupta prescribed, including a diuretic to control heart failure and an antiarrhythmic drug to correct abnormal heart rhythms. His blood was better oxygenated now than it had been, and toxins once dangerously retained were being flushed from his system more efficiently.

Irrationally, he had feared that a scheming poisoner, a modern-day Medici, might be among his household employees. Ironically, the only poisoner had been the very heart within his breast, which by its diminished function had clouded his mind and fostered his delusions, or so he concluded.

Through October and November, Ryan’s greatest problem proved to be impatience. As others awaiting transplants received their hearts or perished, he moved up the list, but not fast enough.

He remained acutely aware that Samar Gupta had given him at most one year to live. A sixth of that year had passed.

When he saw TV news stories about traffic accidents involving fatalities, he wondered if the deceased had signed organ-donor cards when getting their driver’s licenses. Sometimes the knowledge that most people did not donate would inspire an angry rant. This was not fair to those against whom he railed, because during all the years that he’d been in good health, he never signed such a card, either.