J.S. Lark - After You Fell

Her hands stay on my shoulders. ‘Your skin is a decent colour for the first time in years.’

‘Thank you. I think.’

She laughs as her hands fall away. ‘Tea?’

‘Yes, please.’

A smile tumbles over her shoulder in my direction. ‘I am going to put sugar in it; you need to put some weight on now you’re well.’

‘I hate sugar in tea.’

‘I don’t care what you want. You’re doing what is good for you. What do you want to eat?’

‘There’s a tin of soup in the top of that cupboard.’ I point at the cupboard then grip the table so I can ease into the chair and avoid pulling the stitches in my chest.

‘Are you in pain?’

I didn’t notice her looking at me. ‘A little.’

‘Is it time to take your tablets?’

‘Probably.’ I move to get up but she lifts a hand.

‘Stay seated, I’ll get them, and I’ll heat up the soup after we have drunk the tea.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No need for thanks. I want you better.’ Her voice bounces off the blue tiles behind the sink in the moment before the tap turns on. ‘People say the world can be put right with a cup of tea but I think a new heart wins. What does it feel like?’ The pitch of her voice rises so I can hear her over the water running into the kettle.

‘Life-saving.’ A laugh stutters from my throat. Then I add, ‘Strange. I’m certain no one else is as conscious of their heart beating. It’s as if someone is making a heartbeat sound in my ear all the time, and it feels like it’s jolting me.’

Chloe faces me and leans back against the wooden work surface while the kettle heats. ‘I can’t imagine having a piece of someone else inside me. It must be weird. Especially when you know how quickly that heart moved from beating inside someone else to you.’

I glance down at my phone; the screen is black. ‘Yes.’ The rhythm beats harder, and so constantly it is like someone relentlessly banging on a door to obtain my attention.

‘It has someone else’s DNA.’ There’s a teasing note in Chloe’s voice. ‘I wonder if it’s changed your DNA. Then if you did that Ancestry DNA thing they might connect you.’

She doesn’t know I can feel spirits.

I never talk about my sixth sense.

The doctors in the hospital taught me, with electrical shocks to the brain, that people do not believe in a sixth sense. Everyone else thinks it is a symptom of bipolar. Imagined. Not Real.

It is real.

Those of us who have a sixth sense know it is real.

But I have never met anyone who can see and feel the things that I do, because I never tell.

A shiver runs through my spine, a ghost passing through me. The owner of my new heart passing through me?

No. I am sure their spirit is in the heart, inside me.

Steam erupts from the kettle behind Chloe as it clicks off.

She turns and pours the water into the mugs, then fetches the milk from the fridge. ‘I think a heart being transplanted is stranger than a lung or a liver because, okay, everyone knows that there aren’t any thoughts or knowledge in the heart—’ the spoon clinks against the edge of the china cup as she stirs in sugar, moving the spoon round and round ‘—but you feel emotion in your heart, don’t you?’ She looks over her shoulder at me.

I nod. Because of course it’s true. My last year has made that very clear – the pain in my emotionally broken heart has been worse than the pain of illness at times.

I was isolated as a child. Cut off from others by illness and homelessness. Isolated by a mind that did not function like other people’s. Dan isolated me again. He kept our friends, home and possessions.

I arrived at Simon’s with only a few boxes of personal things and my clothes. I have been shut away in a room here ever since, too ill to go out, waiting for another chance to live.

The soul that has given me this heart has given me that chance.

Chloe throws a teabag into the pedal bin; the lid chimes as it drops. ‘My heart feels tighter when I’m angry.’ She returns to fish the teabag out from the other cup and keeps talking as she takes that over to toss it in the bin. ‘And soft and squidgy, like marshmallow, when I’m falling for a man.’

The teaspoon drops in the sink. She picks up the mugs and turns with a handle held in either hand. ‘I wonder what your heart felt before it came to you?’ The mugs clunk down on the wooden table and the tea spills slightly.

The paper towel is in my reach. I pull some off and wipe up the spill as she fetches the bottle and packets of my pills and a small glass of water to wash them down.

‘Thank you.’

She chooses the chair opposite me, sits, and pulls her mug close, embracing it with both hands. Her eyes are glossy with an expression of excitement. She loves a good gossip. ‘What do you think?’

‘I hope it suffered a lot less pain than mine.’ The conversation is sparking more shivers up and down my spine.

I reach for the bottle. The pills rattle. The lid is stiff but after a second it opens and I tip out two small white pills. With those pills cradled in my palm, I pick up one of the packets.

I always lay pills out in a row before I take them.

I have more medication to take than I did before the operation. What does this heart make of all this prescribed poison? Drugs that make the natural defences of my body impotent, drugs that silence the cry of pain, antibiotics that fight the bad bugs and emotion-controlling pills.

‘Hearts spend most of their time in pain in my experience, and I’m not talking about malfunctioning hearts. Although perhaps I am because my pain was mostly caused by Mum’s and Dad’s malfunctioning hearts.’

‘The inability to put you and Simon first was in their heads.’

Simon thinks our mum had bipolar too. ‘Wherever their motivation came from it permanently hurts my heart to remember how they deserted us. A sick child didn’t fit in with their hippy lifestyle. They couldn’t be tied to the proximity of hospitals.’ I pick up a pill and sip the water to wash it down.

The feelings of loss and loneliness are in me again, and, as Chloe said, they grasp the heart and squeeze it until it hurts.

The need for love in humans is a terrible thing. It destroys people. It has tried to destroy me lots of times. I need others. I need to belong. I need to be wanted. I need to be needed.

Chloe’s hand reaches out and brushes the back of mine as I take the next pill. Then there’s a smile that sweeps everything away. ‘And then Dan the bastard …’ she says in a low voice.

We laugh, but my new heart clenches again in response to the memory of the brutal way he betrayed me.

I swallow another pill, sensing the irony of the bitter pills of fate that I have swallowed in my life. I was even too sick to cry over Dan’s disloyalty. If I had cried it would have exhausted my heart and so I had to control my heartbreak to stay alive. Isolated in a room, living from breath to breath, not day to day.

‘Have you heard from him?’ Chloe’s voice has a cautious cadence because she knows I have no desire to hear anything about him. But maybe she thinks he will send some good wishes.

I take more pills without answering for a moment. Then look into her eyes. ‘No.’ My answer is in the flattest tone. I take the last pill and drink the last of the water.

‘Does he know about your operation?’

I wrap my hands around the warm mug, lacing my fingers together on the far side. ‘I should think so. Simon must have mentioned it or, if not him, then someone else.’

Dan and I were us for so long all his friends were mine too. But I haven’t spoken to any of them since we split. It was too embarrassing to face the truth and the truth was being flaunted in front of their faces by Dan. They know the other woman, when the baby is due and how happy the two of them are. I do not want to know any of that. I let him have our mutual friends as part of the separation.