Revolutions of the Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

might not be half bad. I can just lie around and watch the two of you do everything.”
    “A plot,” said Cory. “This was all a plot to get out of doing your share.”
    Her mother closed her eyes and smiled. “A bit extreme, but that’s what it took.” A new song began on the radio. “Turn it up, Cory. That’s Crosby, Stills, and Nash. ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.’ The best song ever.” Cory turned up the dial. “These guys are old men. I saw them on television last month.”
    “They weren’t when they did this song. Listen to those guitars. Oh, how I wish I had gone to Woodstock.”
    Mike’s laughing drowned out the music for nearly half a mile. “Margaret,” he said finally, “it’s not your heart that’s sick, it’s your brain. I can understand how a brush with death would make you think back and do some wishing, but Woodstock? You wish you had spent three days going naked in the rain and mud?”
    “The music, darling. I wish I had been there for the music.” She turned to Cory. “Be sure you marry a man who doesn’t laugh at you.”
    “In 1969,” Mike said, “you were twenty-two, married, a mother, and still active in the church. Lord, Woodstock.”
    The roads were snow-covered and slippery, and Mike drove slowly. But as they headed home together, their spirits soared, and they could have been flying. They marveled at the beauty of the familiar scenery, Mike told his best stories, and Margaret taught them to sing the “doo-doo-doo” part of The Best Song Ever. The hospital was behind them, and they hadn’t yet reached home, where they would live with the fearful uncertainty of Cory’s mother’s precarious health. For a treasured two hours, Cory sat between her two favorite people, talked, listened, and sang. She had never been so happy.

5
    “Aren’t heart transplants expensive, like thousands?” Cory asked Mike. She glanced at the rollaway bed on the other side of the living room where her mother was sleeping, and would always sleep until a new heart was found, transplanted, and healed. They had been told that climbing stairs was as dangerous as eating salt, or running, or working. Everyone was adjusting.
    “These days a tetanus booster costs thousands. But yes, it is expensive. Bless the union, though; it’s almost all covered.”
    Cory closed her math book. The twenty remaining problems could wait, maybe forever. “Almost covered?”
    “The medical part will be taken care of, but there are plenty of other things that won’t be: our expenses for staying in Minneapolis while she’s hospitalized at the transplant unit; equipment rental, like that bed; some of the prescriptions; and a home health aide for after surgery.”
    “I’ll take care of her, Mike. We won’t need anyone. It’s why I quit my job, so I could be around. And now that you’ve canceled my debt, I feel like I should be doing more.”
    “You’ll be doing plenty, Cory. She and I were talking about that this afternoon, and we don’t want you to be enslaved by her illness. We aren’t going to let that happen.”
    “She’s my mother. It’s not slavery.”
    “Listen to you! Just two weeks ago when we would try to get you to finish a chore list around here, all we heard was moaning about child labor laws.”
    “Helping now is different. Mom wasn’t dying then.” Dying. It was the first time either of them had said the word. And when they heard it—as if it came not from Cory’s lips but somewhere else, a surprise—its effect was not to increase their already immeasurable sadness, but to lay down a bridge between them. They shared the nightmare.
    Cory rifled the pages of a notebook, and a paper slipped out. A large D was visible for a moment before she turned the paper over. “Mike, things haven’t been great at school lately. Maybe it would make sense for me to drop out until after the surgery. I could be around to help.”
    “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard yet. Do you think it would