The Heart Does Not Grow Back Read online

  The FedEx guy stood there with a small box, staring at the remains of the house. I shambled toward him.

  “Dale Sampson?” he said sheepishly.

  “Yeah,” I said, and signed for my new cell phone. I walked to Grayson. I checked in at the Allsop Motel, a cheap and dirty place where the rooms made me think of semen and blood and suicide and moths and Bibles. My gun remained in the ashes of my burned house. I left it there, where it belonged.

  SIXTEEN

  After two nights at the Allsop, the manager told me my check bounced. No surprise there. I drained the account right after I wrote the check, buying a digital camera with a video clip recording function and a pair of bypass loppers, cashing out eighty bucks for food. I didn’t argue with the guy. Turned out another night at the Allsop would not be necessary, so that was one stroke of luck.

  The argument held me up enough to get to Doc Venhaus’s office later than planned, but I still got there on time. It was only day three of my stakeout at Doc’s, and I hit pay dirt. At nine thirty, Harold’s GMC Sierra was one of the few parked vehicles in the lot. The sun was weak that morning, allowing the frost to linger on windshields longer than usual. The black paint of the Sierra appeared icy and dull. I went into Doc’s building through the back door with the key that he had given me for all of our after-hours appointments.

  It was game time with Harold on neutral turf. I went inside, entering into the main hallway that connected the exam-room entrances, and Doc Venhaus was looking at a chart. He looked at me, shook his head, and put the chart back.

  “Get out, Dale.” I’d ignored his calls and never gave him an answer about letting him get me into clinical testing, but it looked like he was expecting me.

  “I need to talk to Harold,” I said. “I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to you, but if you didn’t know, my fucking house burned down. I’ve been busy.”

  “Busy, but you’re here,” he said.

  “I’ve made a decision. I’m not going to sell my organs. I deleted Winston’s messages. I’m out. But I’m not in with you, not yet. One day, though. On my terms and my timeline.”

  “You think it’s your decision?” he said. “It won’t be for much longer.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I said.

  He slotted his chart into one of the exam-room doors. “Follow me.” The door at the end of the hallway was clearly marked as an emergency exit. He pushed the bar on the door and we stepped into the cold. His white coat flapped in the sharp morning wind. Water gathered at the corners of his eyes and blood rushed into the capillaries of his nose, turning the tip cherry red.

  “You’ve obviously been staking me out, waiting for Harold,” he said. “Did you happen to notice a young man in a naval uniform come into the office yesterday?”

  As a matter of fact, I did—he was carrying a briefcase. Something about a uniformed soldier carrying something so uncharacteristic caught my attention.

  “Well, he’s not in the Navy. He’s from the US Public Health Commissioned Corps, under the direction of the CDC.”

  “That’s a real thing? You’re not shitting me?”

  “There’s not many of them. They’re deployed in national emergencies—or by request, depending on the department and situation.”

  “He asked about me?”

  “No. Not yet, anyway. He simply asked if I encountered any patients with particularly unusual symptoms.”

  “That vague?”

  “He was feeling me out. They know, Dale. Make no mistake. I have no idea how, but with the publicity surrounding your original injuries, it’s not surprising you couldn’t hide your regeneration forever. I told him none that came to mind, but I’d have to check my charts.”

  “And he knew that meant you were stalling for time. Deciding whether or not to sell me out.”

  “There’s no leverage here, especially for me,” he said. “They don’t need me. If I’m not complicit, I don’t have a superpower to hold over their heads.”

  “I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? What could they do?”

  “In the interest of national public health? National security? Anything they wanted. Unless you cooperate. Unless I cooperate.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I think that’s a question you should be considering yourself,” he said. “I’m supposed to contact him today. I would imagine they want me to corroborate your ability, give them your records.”

  “And use my trust in you to convince me to cooperate.”

  “Possibly. But if you trust me, Dale—you’ll cooperate if they confront you. There’s no longer an alternative.”

  “There might be,” I said. “But I’m not leaving until I talk to Harold Stillson.”

  “If you insist on complicating all of this even further, I’m not going to stop you,” he said. “But if the police are called, you overpowered me to get into that room, got it? So it would just be best if you said your piece and left. He’s in Room Six.”

  We went inside. He joined Grace in the administrative section of the office. I opened the door to Room Six and found Harold lying on the exam table—tired, gaunt, and stricken, his eyes retreating back into his skull, his fingers skinny, his skin looking as frail as parchment. He saw me and just smiled, absolutely unsurprised. Instead, he looked as if he were perversely amused by my presence.

  I pulled up a chair and tried to act calm.

  “Fancy seeing you here,” he said. “Unarmed, surprisingly. I figured you might have a coffeemaker or a microwave or something.” He laughed weakly, his hands clasped over his belly. They rose and fell with each slow breath. The stitches were gone from his face, but a red trail crept from his ear to his jaw.

  “My armory burned with the rest of my house, but maybe I can find a magic bullet to jam up your ass.”

  “Unfortunate, about your house. Did you have insurance?” He smiled. Of course, the fucker worked in insurance. He knew I didn’t have any, probably checked to make sure when he was looking into me. He knew damn well how catastrophic burning that shithole would be.

  “So why all the pills, Harry?”

  “Chronic bronchitis. Every fucking year. Never fails.” He sat up and coughed. “So what kind of ambush is this? Does Allen know you’re here?”

  Allen. He was on a first-name basis with the good doctor.

  “I just needed to talk to you somewhere neutral, where I didn’t have to look over my shoulder for the next dose of retribution.”

  “So talk.”

  “What will it take to get rid of you?” I asked.

  “What? For me to leave you alone?”

  “No. For you to leave Rae for good.”

  He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “You don’t have a clue, do you?”

  “Seems like everyone feels that way. What is it, Stillson—money? You got a price?” I said—but what if he did? What if it was more than the eighty bucks I had left?

  “I’ve got no use for money,” he said. Then, after a long silence, “She still has nightmares you know. About her sister. I know you were there. You’re in them sometimes. She talks in her sleep.”

  “If you don’t leave her, she’s going to leave you. I promise you that.”

  “Cross your heart?” he said through a fragile smile.

  “Guaranteed.”

  “We should just ask her, then. She’s in the waiting room. Should we call her in to settle this?”

  The thought of her just beyond the walls gave me the first rattle of our mini confrontation. I had built a precarious frame of hope inside, one that depended on Rae having a buried disdain for her husband just waiting to burst out, a fire I could build slowly with logs of money I didn’t have, fame I didn’t want, and affection I didn’t completely understand. It already felt impossible. If she came inside and sided with Harold, all would feel lost.

  “She’s going to get tired of you,” I said in my best hardass tone. “She won’t stay for all your tomorrows, no matt
er what she might say today.”

  “I’m not leaving her,” he said. “She’s not leaving me. She took a vow. You’re going to be disappointed. And for what you’ve done here today, I just might go home and give her a backhand right across her face. Tell her it’s from you.”

  Now, that was certainly designed to get a rise out of me, and it worked, but I had to breathe myself back down. I liked Doc, and a brawl in his office would make things tough on him.

  “I’ll say it slower,” I said. “She’s … going … to … leave … you. I’m giving you a way out. You can keep your pride.”

  “So you give me something to leave. Like what? Money?” he said, and laughed. “What do you have, Dale Sampson? Nothing. I saw your credit score. Or lack of one. You don’t have a house, and that was your only paltry asset. That and a shit car that’s melted in your driveway. Maybe you should have sprung for full coverage on that, huh? And where you going to take her? The homeless shelter? The soup kitchen? You have nothing. You don’t even have a real job. Are you hiding an emergency fund in a Folgers can buried in your backyard? No? Then let me say it slower. You … have … nothing.”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “‘Not yet,’ he says. I’ve got a little piece of marital gossip for you. You’ve earned it after all this—but Rae has nothing either. Sometimes she says she’s leaving me and she’ll go to her good friend’s house for a night or two then return and say she’s sorry, even though she’s got nothing to be sorry for. I let her say it, though. It makes her feel better. That last time, after I saw her with you, she lied to me about you. Eventually I got the truth out of her. I always do. When it turned out you were … you, I admit it, I felt a little jealous. What a relief to see you had nothing. Just total relief. So if you have nothing and she has nothing, that makes me pretty powerful in this little situation we have. Being the only guy with something, and all.”

  “If you love her, let her go.”

  “I love her plenty, and you certainly don’t understand the secrets between a man and his wife. You see, Dale, she hasn’t told you half as much as you think she has. You’re filling in the gaps with that hopeful little erection of yours. You’re a boy and you’ll always be a boy, to me and especially to her. But I’ve told you enough. What’s your move, Dale? What next? You going to hit me and force me to burn your nothing down?”

  I walked out and made a straight line into the waiting room. Rae was reading a magazine, glanced up, saw me, and damn near turned to stone.

  “I’m asking you to come with me right now,” I said. “Right now, because I’m leaving and I’m never coming back.”

  Her face was painted with a hurt I didn’t understand. “Dale, I’m so sorry,” she said. “What he did to you. What I did to you.” And that was all she said about that. “Certainly, don’t come back. It’s best for everyone.” She couldn’t look me in the eyes.

  “You’ll look for me one day,” I said. “It may be tomorrow, it may be a year from now, but just call me or show up and I’ll be there for you. I’ll get you out of Grayson, for good, and we can leave him behind to rot. So when you’re ready to take a stand, I’ll be there.”

  “I am taking a stand, Dale,” she said. “Good-bye.”

  * * *

  I went back to the motel and set up the camera. I switched it on and took my place on the bed, where the brand-new bypass loppers rested, those big-ass garden shears that can effortlessly cut through a two-inch tree limb with disturbing ease. The sticker was still on the handle, the jaw of blades still oiled and tight.

  Reluctantly, Doc had given me a syringe full of lidocaine. I jabbed the needle in the flesh between my metatarsal bones on the top of my foot. A cool, sufficient numbness spilled into my toes. I pressed Record.

  “Mack … I’m not sure how your Dedications experience is going, but tell your producers you have an idea for a show. One man gives his organs away to needy families. The same guy. Because his organs keep growing back. I know you believe me…” I held up my right hand. “Tell them about what happened to my hand, and what it looks like now. What my ear looks like. But just in case, I figured I’d show you this.”

  I took the bypass loppers and raised my foot into the frame. I put the jaws snugly against my second toe and snapped the loppers shut. My toe popped into the air, then fell onto the dirt-smudged motel carpet.

  Thanks to the lidocaine, I didn’t even wince.

  “I’m on my way to Los Angeles,” I continued. “This tape will beat me there in the mail. But the next time you see me, this toe will have already grown back, and you’ll know it’s real because I don’t have a special-effects budget. And if you don’t believe it, I can do it again and again and again, until you or anyone else has no choice but to believe it.”

  I turned off the camera, then jotted Watch this as soon as you can on a piece of paper, signed it, and dropped it into an envelope along with the camera’s memory card. I addressed it to Mack Tucker, care of the Dedications production company. I threw the envelope into a mailbox slot on my way out of town. I walked west with my eighty dollars in my pocket and no intention of ever coming back.

  SEVENTEEN

  The temperature was perfect because Los Angeles has subtropical weather patterns. According to the Internet, there is an average of thirty-five days per year where there is a recorded amount of precipitation. The immediate connection I make is to the movie Chinatown, to water shortages, to old movies on an old couch with a gun stuffed under the cushions.

  Inside Tracy Pike’s office, it was a perfect seventy-two degrees. The chairs were leather. Mack wore jeans that cost more than a month at the Allsop Motel, along with his wedding ring. I wore one of the five decent shirts in my closet rotation, a gray polo.

  Tracy, the producer who championed our idea, had a towering wit that gave her hustler approach an intelligent gloss. She wore black-framed glasses and I had a sneaking suspicion they were vanity frames and her eyes worked just fine. She never seemed to have them on; rather she used them as a prop, as punctuation to her too-polished gestures when she talked. Her black hair was always perfectly shaped, straight from a shampoo commercial. She would have been a skinny girl in Grayson, but in L.A., some would say she had ten pounds to lose. She dressed for business at all times, wasn’t much for pleasantries, and barely ever smiled. But she had a nice smile when it escaped, and I imagined her to be some hayseed from the Midwest who came to L.A. to prove she could be better than everyone else. But what the fuck did I know? To me, the Midwest was the only real place and L.A. was a distant solar system, the type of place where light and screams and dignity could not escape.

  “Sit,” she said.

  We obeyed. She was a perfect match for the pitch, because like everyone else in that town, she wasn’t happy with her own role, her own success. Everyone wanted to be something else. Writers wanted to direct, music stars wanted to be in movies, movie stars wanted to release albums. Producers like Tracy were still grunts. She wanted more clout, a production company of her own—autonomy, creative control. For those dreams to come true, I needed to be real, and to prove I was real, that I was useful, I had to regenerate a kidney.

  Getting the surgery covered was actually pretty easy. She found a transplant center that would cover the expenses on the extremely rare “non-directed” donation I was making. I simply went in, got evaluated, and let them take a kidney and give it to whomever I wanted. When the surgery was over, I ditched the transplant center’s follow-up care to meet with Tracy’s handpicked physicians. I had a feeling getting all of those advanced medical tests without much in the way of paperwork had cost a shitload of money, cash that she might have even put up herself. Not easy to do, considering that all logical signs pointed to me being an incredibly persuasive fraudster. Hell, I wasn’t even sure myself that an organ would regenerate. Life and death and scar tissue. Cash that might be gone forever, an organ transplant that might not take, a kidney that might not grow back and fuck everything up.

&nb
sp; But the kidney had grown back. Dr. Reynolds, the great-looking, fame-hungry lead doctor of Tracy’s little team had already confirmed that, but the big chiefs wouldn’t order more episodes without making me sing and dance for their own medical team. They verified my records with the transplant center, and more doctors tested me, only these fuckers were less Hollywood—old and skeptical and completely annoyed they had to mess around with the bullshit they were absolutely sure I was slinging.

  The results were in. Tracy threw an envelope into my lap, a stiff manila one that must have contained medical films. “Full medical workup. This one is from their doctors,” she said. “You’ve got two kidneys again. They still didn’t believe it. Hell, I don’t believe it. It’s like they want to open you up and see for themselves, and I wouldn’t mind a peek myself.”

  Mack pumped his fist. She smiled, a rare artifact dusting off before my very eyes.

  “They picked it up?” he asked.

  “They picked it up.” She confirmed. “I still think the network thinks it’s a ruse, but they can’t seem to uncover any evidence that proves it. And if it’s real, they just can’t say no.” She took a long, deep breath. “This is the world we live in now,” she said. “An honest-to-goodness superpower, and instead of putting a mask on, you’re taking it to reality TV.”

  “It is my mask,” I said. I’d already explained it to her, the true importance of the show. Of course, I said nothing of Raeanna; I said nothing about hoping for the money and the platform to lure her from an abusive relationship. But I did tell Tracy that I needed the show—if I was famous, if I was known, if I was helping people, then the CDC and DHS and DOD and whoever else couldn’t make me disappear. I had the leverage back, as long as I could duck them while the show was getting off the ground. So far so good in that regard: Doc Venhaus hadn’t agreed with my plan, but he had no other alternatives, so he agreed to cover for me. He handed over all the charts and files related to my treatment to the USPHS officer in charge, Capt. Lyle Hayes, and he gave an honest statement—all except the part where he knew my whereabouts. The transplant center eventually gave away my location, but by the time they found me, I was ready.