Revolutions of the Heart Read Online Free PDF

and weakened heart muscles could go undetected for too long while they grew large, thick, stiff, and incompetent. She knew that complete rest and medications could maintain a diseased heart temporarily. She knew that without a transplant her mother would die.
    “I want some salt,” Margaret Knutson said to her daughter. “It’s the strongest craving I’ve ever had, worse than wanting sex. Cory, you didn’t really hear that.”
    “I did, but I’d rather not talk about it.”
    “I can’t believe I will never again eat a pile of fries loaded with fat and salt.”
    “You never did before and you certainly never will now. Should I pack these hospital slippers?”
    “Gorgeous, aren’t they? Almost as gorgeous as I feel. Pack them. Take everything. We can throw it out when we get home.”
    A nurse entered the room pushing a wheelchair. “Let’s load you up and get you out. They’re predicting another five inches of snow by night and you don’t want to drive through that.”
    Cory couldn’t wait to leave the hospital. She couldn’t wait to get away from the mauves and grays, the indiscernible intercom voices, the cafeteria food and vending-machine coffee. It had been a terrible ten days, but at last she and Mike were taking her mother home.
    They had spent that first awful night in the hospital lounge. At midnight Rob had arrived, bursting into the lounge with pent-up anguish and uncertainty. Cory had watched as Mike soothed his stepson and explained what little they knew. Rob was strung tight and spent most of the night switching chairs, rebinding his ponytail, and buying fresh cups of coffee. His restlessness was comforting to Cory, as it was something she had known in him forever. Hurricane Rob, everyone had called him. Rob had raced to grow up, her mother said: walking at nine months, swimming at two, building forts and rafts before he was in school, first gun at eight, first deer at ten, and, he’d recently confessed to Cory, first sex at fourteen.
    Once she knew her brother was there and worrying, Cory could sleep. And she took the first of many lousy naps curled uncomfortably into a stiff-backed, scratchy waiting-room chair.
    The second night they rented a motel room, but no one wanted to sleep there. Then the next day, reassured that Margaret was no longer in imminent danger, Rob returned home. Later that afternoon, after exchanging a few words with her groggy mother, Cory went home, too, full driving privileges restored. She quit her job, collected missed schoolwork, and called a long list of concerned friends. Then, every day for another week, she drove from Summer to the hospital after school, bringing Mike fresh clothes and delivering cards and letters to her mother.
    It was a rough week. She failed two tests, skipped another, lost some favorite earrings, had a flat on the highway, and gained five pounds.
    Sitting and eating, sitting and eating. That was it. So, as the nurse pushed the wheelchair out of the hospital to where Mike was waiting with the truck, Cory felt like jumping on a table and dancing.
    Instead, she pounded on the engine hood. “Take us home!” she cheered.
    Two miles out of town, Margaret turned on the radio and started singing along. “You can’t imagine how good it feels to be going home. You can’t.” She resumed singing loudly.
    “I know where I get my voice from,” said Cory. “I love you, Mom, but this isn’t pleasant.”
    “Don’t sing,” said Mike. “Don’t sing, don’t dance, don’t whistle, don’t work, don’t carry firewood, don’t eat salt.”
    “Don’t have sex,” whispered Cory.
    “I didn’t hear that,” said her mother. She turned to her husband. “Did they tell us that?”
    “Don’t do anything until they find the right heart and put it in,” Mike said.
    “It will be a good chance for me to catch up on the soaps.”
    “You’ve never watched the soaps, Margaret. You’ve worked your whole life. That stops now.”
    “Being an invalid