Heart to Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

alarm.”
    When I was thirteen, the call had come from Emory Hospital saying that the national donor service had a heart for me. The heart was being flown to Atlanta from another city in Georgia, and the transplant team was ready and waiting. We got to the hospital fast. I was prepped for the operating room, excited, ready for a new heart, a real life. I could run again! Jump. Go to a regular school. Then the big letdown when the heart had been declared unsuitable and I’d had to go home with my same old-same old.
    “You’re at the top of the list,” my doctor had said, trying to console me.
    I knew the transplant was based first on need, on blood and cell compatibility, and on body size—they couldn’t put a giant’s heart into a small kid. Being at the top of the list didn’t matter if the other things didn’t match. “What a way to be number one,” I said. “No effort on my part. Just luck.”
    Now, a year later, here I was again, all hopeful, longing for the transplant to happen, for it to be over with, for me to finally be well.
    Mom blew through a red light. “What if a cop stops our Batmobile?” I asked.
    “Then he can give us an escort,” she answered.
    At the hospital nurses were waiting for me with a wheelchair. They got me upstairs, put me on a gurney, and began to prep me. A hospital gown, a paper cap on my head, IVs in my arms, electrodes on my chest. Dr. Chastain appeared in the room. “How are we doing, Arabeth?”
    He’s a cardiologist and head of the transplant team. In the OR, there would be an army of people to assist him. “Is it a good heart?” I asked.
    “It is.”
    “Not like last time?”
    “This heart came from a teenage girl, like you. She died from a head trauma.”
    Not like me
, I thought. She’d been normal. “What else?”
    He shrugged. Secrets are kept in the donor program. They won’t tell you much about a donor, claiming privileged information.
    “You remember what I’ve told you about the operation?” he said, changing the subject.
    “Yes.” How could I forget the gory details? I would be cut open like a fish, from my collarbone to my midsection. The transplant team would attach me to a heart-lung machine, cool my blood to protect my body and my brain, remove my old failing heart, and put in the new one. I would be clinically dead until the new heart was sewn in and restarted.
    “A six-hour cakewalk,” Dr. Chastain joked. “Gotto get all those little vessels reattached. I’m pretty good with a needle and thread, if I do say so myself.”
    “Maybe you can make a prom dress for me someday,” I joked. I was getting sleepy from the drugs in my IV.
    Mom took my hand. “Stay strong.”
    “Who do you suppose she was?” I asked. “The girl. I wish I could meet her family … tell them thank you.”
    “We’re all grateful,” Mom said. She leaned over and kissed and hugged me, blinking back tears. “I’ll be waiting, baby. Me and Aunt Vivian and Uncle Theo. We love you.
I
love you.”
    “I love you too, Mom.”
    They wheeled me down the hall. I watched the overhead lights roll past. I’d been wrapped in warm blankets, but my hands were numb and my lips cold. This was it. No dress rehearsal. I thought again about the girl who’d died and her parents donating her heart to me, a stranger. Who was she?
    Machines and people filled the OR. My brain felt fuzzy. Dr. Chastain bent over me. “Ready to sleep, Arabeth?”
    I couldn’t form words, so I nodded.
    The anesthesiologist slipped a mask over my nose and mouth. The room blurred. My last thought was for my daddy. If only he could be with Mom while she waited.
    •    •    •
    An elephant was standing on my chest.
    “Wake up, Arabeth,” a voice kept saying. “It’s all over. You have a new heart.”
    I struggled to obey the voice and open my eyes. The pain was horrible, the weight on my chest almost unbearable. I forced my eyes open, saw a nurse, and next to her, Mom.
    “Hi, baby.” Mom