Second Hand Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

more before they come prep me. But I always leave it at the nurse’s station unless I’m awake and using it, because I don’t want my mother to read it. And I think she would, too, if I gave her half a chance. So just leave it back at the nurse’s station when you’re done, OK?”
    There was a silence at that point. And she scratched her head once.
    “It’s a bit of an unusual request,” she said. “Can’t say I’ve had one like it before. But I guess I can manage something.”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    Then she wished me the best, and all the usual stuff you say to someone in my position, and as soon as she left, I scribbled down everything I could remember about my talk with her in this journal. In a big hurry.

Dreaming About the Heart, Unless I Wasn’t Dreaming
    S o, here’s another thing that was maybe a dream and maybe not. I’m not even sure how I’m supposed to tell things like that apart.
    I thought I’d written everything I wanted to write, so I drifted off into a little short nap, maybe just ten or fifteen minutes. The kind where you’re only about three-quarters asleep.
    And I kept having these dreams where I saw the heart.
    I mean, not the actual heart. Not the bare, finely-veined muscle of it.
    More like the movement of it. The journey.
    I kept dreaming I saw this medical cooler. Dangling at the end of someone’s hand. Moving fast across a parking lot. Sitting in a helicopter, holding perfectly still while the copter lifted off and sped in this direction. It was bright orange. The cooler, I mean. Sort of that highway-safety orange. And it had the words “Transplant” and “Organ” stenciled on it. It might’ve said “Organ Transplant” or it might’ve said “Organ for Transplantation.” I’m not sure because I couldn’t really see the whole side of the cooler because of the way they had it strapped in. But other than that I could see it really well. I could even see a little wisp of steam from the dry ice.
    Then I woke up, and my mother was still gone, and I wondered if what just happened to me had been all dream or partly real. Maybe part of my spirit was so involved with the journey of the heart to this hospital, to me, that I got to meet it and travel along.
    Only, I don’t think there would be a wisp of steam from the dry ice. I think there would be nothing until they opened it, which I guess they wouldn’t do until it was in the operating room with me, and then I guess it would be a big cloud of steam. But while they’re closed, I think those medical coolers are too perfectly sealed for that.
    But I was asleep, mostly, and maybe my dreaming self could have been partly dreaming and added that little part in a dreamy sort of way.
    And maybe the rest of it was some form of real.
    I wish I’d had that dream before Dr. Vasquez came in and talked to me, and then I could have asked her about the medical cooler, what color it is and all, but maybe she wouldn’t know anyway, because it isn’t even here yet.
    Besides, maybe the whole thing was just a dream and nothing else.
    But, really, I don’t think so. I’m pretty good at feeling things. And that’s not the way it felt.

A Secret About Me and the Heart
    Y ou know that thing I keep talking about? About changing form? Changing locations? Just flickering off here and flickering on somewhere else?
    So, on the one hand, it’s dying. So, really not preferable.
    On the other hand, even though it’s not the kind of outcome you purposely choose, it was starting to sound kind of … peaceful. Compared to the alternative.
    Pretty much the polar opposite of having your cardiac surgeon cut you open from your collarbone to the bottom of your ribs, power-saw through your sternum, pry open your ribcage with this big metal separator (until your thoracic cavity is open so wide a surgeon can get two gloved hands in there, and everybody else in the OR can see your weak, defective heart doing its best but failing miserably), cut out this poor