Another Heartbeat

Pat. Pat. The rain outside tapped on my windshield, falling softly and hitting the glass before rolling down like dazed tearstreaks. Pat. Pat. The hospital is right around the corner now. I flashed my indicator light and the blinker sound started, soft, rhythmic clicks as I turned the corner. I caught a glance at the one who looked back at me in the rearview mirror, imagined this was her heartbeat. My heartbeat.

After today, nothing will be the same.

It stayed with me as I got out of the car, followed me as I stepped through the hospital door. It hovered over the directory map and echoed in the voice of the kind lady who helped me find my room. It loudened as I walked past the corridors of flowing people, pounding through the current, pumping through the building. It haunted me everywhere I went.

It was my heartbeat. Signs of its strangeness have been looming since I was a child, and now that I had grown, the cause made itself apparent. Cardiomyopathy. Chronic disease of the heart muscle. The word became engraved in my mind ever since I heard it from the doctor, replayed with every flutter of my heart. I needed a transplant. But for that I had to wait, for months, or even a year. So I waited, and was afraid to be in silence, for the wretched sound of that ticking bomb stayed, plagued me, and drove me crazy.

But today, everything will change.

What came after that felt like a dream. I had been but half awake when they called my name, sleepwalking down the halls to wherever they took me. When I had finally woken up from this odd trance, I was already laying on the operating table, an IV in my arm. Has it really been that long? I could have sworn it had been but in a heartbeat’s time… Around me, someone spoke, said something, then someone else, but their words all seemed to be slurred together. An erratic beeping started and some innate part of me despised it. I breathed. The sound disgusted me. I breathed harder. The beeping continued and accelerated. I started to panic. Stop. Stop! But it only became louder and faster as my breathing quickened, and then it hit me. That was my heartbeat.

Farewell, then. After I open my eyes again I will never hear your song… That was the last thing I could make do with before I passed out from the anesthesia, as the world danced away into a blurry mess…

I was floating in an abyss with no light and no dark, where something lurked in the shadows, made the air so heavy that even death felt light. Here, a strange calling coursed through my body, telling me to move forward, to just go. I try to protest. It’s dark. I can’t see. But my voice was only drowned in their cries. The ghostly creatures perched like spiders atop their webs and spun out a twisted symphony of heartbreak, their mouths dark voids upturned at uncanny angles, screaming. I searched around for the source of this madness, and was surprised to find the conductor of it all buried deep inside myself, beneath my very bones, thumping so loud I was afraid it would burst. My heart. It begged me, told me, commanded me to go forward, to follow the call. And how could I say no? So I traced my footsteps as they inched forward in sync to its conductor’s baton that beat on, into the darkness that swallowed me whole.

I don’t know how long I walked. Maybe a few minutes. Maybe an hour. By now, strange gusts of wind have begun to pick up, and my beating heart has soothed once more. The winds whispered. A voice I didn’t recognize echoed through the dark.

Hello?

I kept walking.

Hello? Can you hear me?

Footsteps. No stop.

Please! Someone…

A shadowed silhouette emerged from the threads of dark wind. It looked almost human, but featureless, nameless, an apparition. Even so, despite the darkness, despite its emotionless face, I could make out something about it. It was sad.

Slowly, it held out its hand.

Someone help me.

Slowly, I took its hand. It felt like the sweet air of autumn afternoons, warm and rusty with the distinctive coldness right before winter strikes the leaves off the colorful trees. For a moment there was nothing but silence. Then, memories rush into my mind like untamed flood, memories that I don’t recall, that I have never experienced. Memories of another heartbeat, from another soul…

I was him.

I don’t remember entering that building. I only remember the crash. The crash and the darkness that followed. My vision was gone and my whole body was aching, but I was alive. I was breathing. Through all my broken bones and the pure, raw pain that seeped out with my blood, the silent screams that shattered inside me and the darkness around, some miraculous part of me held on: my heart, calling out from the rubble with its feeble, broken cries. Where am I? I could hear, but was powerless to respond. I had been cursed. But I was breathing. However weak, however hopeless.

Creak. The door opened. A pair of shoes tapped against the cold floor. Pat. Pat. Two other pairs shuffled around me like the soft flap of vultures. These must be the surgeons and doctors. I’m saved. Inside, the only sound that echoed to comfort me was the soft, rhythmic beats of my heart, a little bird’s glad chirp that I was still alive, that I was no longer fighting alone. I strained to hear something, anything, over the beeping. His heartbeat. My heartbeat.

After today, nothing will be the same.

Someone finally broke the silence. “He won’t make it.” It was a simple and grave statement. It sounded like a man’s voice, maybe in his mid 40s. Already acquainted with the vicissitudes of life and those who leave it.

Another voice responded. “He’s still breathing. We have to try…” It was a younger voice this time. I could picture a student, fresh out of school. Still filled to the brim with dreams and aspirations, fed into him by those who didn’t even believe in miracles themselves. I wonder how long it will take him to forsake them too…

The third person remained silent. Only walked around the room, tampering with the instruments. Even in my current state of blindness, I could feel his eyes tearing my skin apart like a hawk. An unpleasant feeling rose in my chest and my heart thumped along with it, only to return to its broken state a mere second later.

The first man was getting impatient. “We have to hurry up while it’s still fresh. It’s still beating now. Wait for it to stop completely, and then…” It would wither and spoil.

“At least wait until he stops breathing.” How insistent.

The footsteps stopped. The third person spoke. Hammer to nail, nail to coffin. His voice was calm, soothing, like the snake that wraps around the wading bird, slowly, gently coiling tighter, sinking its fangs in deep to inject the venom that paralyzes and kills… “We can’t wait that long. We cut him open now, or never. Put your emotions aside. Did you forget the woman from three months ago who came to us? Did you see her face? Imagine that. Think of what this could bring us.”

The middle aged man was sitting quietly, no longer restless. “A fortune.”

For a second the room was filled with silence. Calculations running in their minds? Luckily I did not have to wait so long to find out the answer. Whatever number it was, my life was not worth. Shuffling. They were getting the tools ready. I wanted to run, to scream. But what could I do? I couldn’t even open my eyes. I know what they want. My heart. They wanted my heart. The only part of me that was miraculously untouched by that fatal crash.

I stared down the dark path of the world I am now trapped in, my new limbo. Here, only the bright lights of the operation room glower down at me and leave their faint echo’s mark on my retina. The lights flickered, and with it, the darkness seemed to pulsate. I counted the rhythm. Thump. Thump. Thump. The air was too cool and too quiet and the sound too loud, and its eeriness left me frightened, my legs angled, ready to bolt. Only then did I hear it for what it was. My heartbeat. Somewhere in that chamber, the grotesque instrument was pumping my blood through my veins, massive and breathing like a leviathan that sleeps within me.

Was this what they wanted? The only part of my broken self with some worth? I try to imagine their faces when they promise the host it’s voluntary and I was dead. Try to see their expressions as they place the heart, my heart, into her body. Try to look for a trace of remorse, of guilt, even just one. But I saw nothing. I peered into their eyes and only cold greed stared back at me. Then I’ll give it to them. They’ll have what they want. I’ll dig up its grave with my broken fingers, pull it out by its rooted veins, smear its blood and its cursed sound right in their face, all over the walls of this room…

“Someone turn off the stupid beeping. It bothers me.” I heard the first doctor say. The student scrambled over and did as told. That beeping, the only thread that connected me to this world, that marked the fact that I was still alive, stopped. No one can hear your song now, little bird.

And at the end of my life, I could only laugh at myself. Who are we but the bloody cash stowed in our body? What a fool I was to think of myself as anything more. Take a knife and cut the wallet open. Toss that away. Black on white, ink on paper. Sell the parts for money to the dying and the desperate. It’s donated. No one knows. Everyone is happy. The dead don’t have feelings.

Silence. All three of them have left me. Getting ready, perhaps? From the cold shadows of the room’s corners, buried where no light could touch, something dark and condemned seeps out. All eyes on me. They reached out with their withered fingers toward my bed, staining the white sheets, leaving behind patches of viscous, half-dried crimson where they grabbed my ankles. And then I realized. I wasn’t alone in this building. Maybe not even alone in this room. And definitely not alone in this lonely world. I wondered how much was taken away from them, if they knew what happened deep, deep down, like I did. Their ghostly arms cradled my broken body and held my dying heart as they hovered over me, flapping their wings like a black tribe of crows. I imagine reaching out and holding their hands as we descend into the abyss below. As one. I could feel myself falling, the last life inside slipping away…

Wake up.

I was again in the soulless darkness, holding the figure’s hand. Only silence elapsed, and not even the occasional gust of cold wind blew by. I stand there, like a lost child, motionless like he is and afraid to let go, before he drops my hand.

Wake up. You have to go.

I can’t. I can’t live with this. I mouth, I scream. But just like before, my words are swallowed up in this gaping chasm of hurt, of hatred, of wrong. It takes my cries, chews on them, ruminates, before spitting the garbled words back out to mock me, to insult me, to haunt me forever. You can’t live with this. You can’t live with this. You can’t…

I was me again.

I am on the operating table, my eyes fluttering open to the surgeons sweaty and smiling with relief, huddled around me beneath that blinding light. A numbing, rigid sensation buzzed through my bones like an electric current and pulled them tight like puppet limbs. My eyes could do little more but hold still and not close, my body utterly useless. I try to recover from the anesthesia. Take in the white and yellow surroundings. Repeat my name. Slowly, it all came back to me. I have a failing heart. I came here for a transplant. The donor was… 

Then I remembered everything. My heartbeat. The void. The figure. His heartbeat. Those seconds before death, alone and hopeless in the dark…And as the last puzzle piece clicked back into place, a chill settled into me, swam through my veins, drowning, kicking, fighting. Dragged along by the blood until it reaches my heart. No, his heart. And that thought stayed, plagued me, and drove me crazy. Put me to sleep once more. Please. Put me to sleep…

Silence. All the surgeons have left the room now. I tried to forget, to let all of it go, but my fear was so raw and wild that it did not allow for my mind to contain anything else, clawing and screeching at me like a feral animal. Put me to sleep once more. Please. Put me to sleep… I struggled to reach over, for the IV, for that lifeline that can take me away from all this. But my heart would not let me. My body would not let me. Before my fingertips could even touch the ice-cold needle, I fainted.

As I hung my head and drifted away, a thumping loudens in my ears. I closed my eyes but the darkness palpitated with it, brought it into my mind and left it there like a forlorn child. A strange song sung by a stranger bird. It climbed from its slumbering cocoon to spread its wings, to take flight and flutter within me, every flap beating in my heart before it shook through me, became me. Then I remembered.

Somewhere, buried deep in my chest, beneath the seams, beneath the broken skin, the flesh, the blood, barred behind my ribcage, beats a stranger’s heart. At night, it crawls out and haunts me.

After today, nothing will be the same.