The Heart Does Not Grow Back Page 16

  EIGHTEEN

  I got home relatively early and the television lulled me to sleep. Later, the sound of a giggling girl woke me up. I was getting better at sleeping through Mack’s late-night entrances, no matter how loud his conquest for the evening was. But the muted giggling, a hidden-secret giggle, eased me out of slumber. I knew this sound. Tickling and foreplay, soon to be replaced by grunts and heavy breaths that always sound strange if you’re not the one having sex.

  I tried to sleep. The heavy crash of flesh kept me awake, a smacking sound louder than the laugh track of the Cheers rerun on TV. Thankfully for my sanity, Mack’s weakness was his endurance. The noise wouldn’t last much longer, and it didn’t, and I fell asleep to the image of a strange and slender arm draped over his chest, wondering if that was as comforting as television made it out to be, or as annoying as it seemed in my imagination.

  I never heard the girl leave, and woke up to Mack cooking his “I’m guilty of keeping you awake all night with my adulterous banging” waffles with microwaved sausage links, and we ate, squinty-eyed, standing at the countertop, washing them down with Gatorade straight from the bottle.

  “You tell that one you were married?”

  He smiled, his mouth full, and held up his hand, wiggling his platinum wedding band with his thumb.

  “This motherfucker is money. It’s like a filter that wards off all the relationship-wanting chicks. If they see this thing and give you the time of day, you know it’s fuck, suck, and duck the fuck out. I mean, look at this; is this heaven? She didn’t even stay for breakfast.”

  Another huge bite. Loose syrup dripped onto the countertop. “I feel used, I tell you,” he said. “Used! Like the rubber on the nightstand.”

  “I’m eating.”

  “Hey, you know why she didn’t stay for breakfast? She was sick and tired of putting sausage in her mouth.” He punctuated this by taking a bite out of a sausage link.

  As far as I could tell, Mack hadn’t seen his “wife” in months. Everything was fake about Dedications, except for the marriage, which was legally binding in the state of California. He might have even filed for divorce, but kept the ring for “ho-filtering,” as he put it. He never spoke much about it. Could the relationship have actually damaged him? I wondered. Impossible. The pain must have been reserved for something entirely unrelated.

  “You dial Rae last night? Do that stupid shit where you jerk the phone off, wishing you had the balls to call her?”

  “No. I called Hollie.”

  He shook his head. “Hollie? Christ, dude, you need to get laid. You get that? You get sucked into these busted-up chicks. You insist on drinking swill from someone else’s bottle, dude. Plenty of fresh beers in the cooler, ones that don’t have Harold Stillson’s cigarette butt floating at the bottom.”

  “I’m not getting zapped.”

  He picked up the phone. “What’s Rae’s number? I’ll call the goofy bitch. Seriously.”

  “Not happening.”

  “Then, here.” He slid the phone to me. I stopped it with my palm before it went into the sink. “Call her. Tell her to fuck or walk.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. She’s already walked.”

  “You’re one frustrating motherfucker. She’s already walked? That’s what I’ve been telling you for months. I’m telling you to call her finally because then, maybe, you can finally get to moving on. Personally, I’d tell her to walk off a short fucking pier with a hundred-pound bag of meth tied to her ankle.”

  He grabbed a balled-up T-shirt from the top of the couch, put it on, and picked up his wallet. “You’ve got your privacy for a few minutes. I’m going to get condoms and toilet paper.” He stopped at the door. “This show will never work if you’re a mope-ass on TV. I’m shocked they picked it up, the way you were when the cameras were on. You’re saving a life and it looks like your fuckin’ dog died. Move on. For both of us. I wouldn’t be giving you so much shit about it if I didn’t care.”

  He left, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t connect with a sort of twisted sense I understood. Months had passed. No word. The time had come to at least dial that last digit. If I didn’t, in some weird way, I felt like I was cheating on my promise to Rae if I kept talking to Hollie.

  So I dialed, my finger hovering over that final “8,” the tip sticky from syrup, the smell of maple and grease in the air. The apartment was shadows and coolness, the shades drawn, the light falling on the floor in creases. I pressed the number. I listened for the ring without bringing the phone to my ear, contemplating hanging up before anyone could answer, but a voice said “Hello” on the second ring. I brought the phone close, tight against the cove of my ear.

  “Hello?” the voice said again. A woman, not Rae.

  “Hi, I’m looking for Raeanna Stillson.”

  “You’re not the first one,” she said, and chuckled a little. “This must be their old number.”

  I hung up without another word. She was gone and it hurt like I didn’t expect it to hurt. And I knew The Samaritan would happen then. I finally wanted it. I wanted to be on television and look into the glittering eye of a camera and know she’s out there, and I was here, saving people, and one day I would look into that camera and say her name for millions to hear and she would feel the mistake she had made become hard and sharp inside of her, and she would call, and I would think about not picking up—not picking up would be such an option for that future me, I was sure of it—but I would wait for three rings at least and then pick up and go from there.

  * * *

  “Your hands?” Hollie said. “That’s insane.”

  “Feet, too,” I said. We were finally seated at a real restaurant, some white-tablecloth joint called Providence. You can always tell a restaurant is fancy when the price-to-portion ratio is something completely asinine. I got a piece of salmon the size of a deck of cards with some sauces randomly smeared on the plate, artistically presented next to a haphazard alignment of fruits.

  “Quadruple amputee. Old guy got a blood infection. Sepsis? Something like that. Should be good stuff for TV; he sure knew how to talk to the cameras. Stuff about finally touching his grandkids’ faces.”

  “That’s what I was to the show-running people?” she said. “Stuff?”

  “Sadly, yeah. But not to me. I promise, not to me.”

  “I know, Dale,” she said. “But the joke’s on them. I held the good stuff back.”

  She was eating some chicken contraption with a glass of red wine, and took a long drink.

  “You can tell me,” I said. “But not if you don’t want to. I understand the value of keeping things to yourself.”

  “No, I can tell you. You’re the kind of guy you can just tell things to. But after I tell you, let’s just say fuck it and eat, okay?”

  “Fuck it, indeed,” I said. “Shoot.”

  “I tried to kill myself,” she said. “Pills. Melissa, God bless her—she dialed 911. I have no idea how your people didn’t find out about it, but even if they did, they wouldn’t know that I prayed every day I wouldn’t get a call about a donor. I wanted to die in the worst way because I love that little girl. I’m worth over a half million dollars dead. Young and dead, anyway. Even when I was so broke I had to skip meals, I paid my premiums. I knew it was the only way to protect her. And we drive by this place in actual Los Angeles, a beautiful place on Raymond Avenue, brick with a green roof, green steps. Perfect landscaping. It’s close to everything, including a good school. It’s not a dream home but any home is a dream for me.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “That, I shouldn’t say,” she said. “It seems like I’m trying to play a future celebrity for a handout.”

  “I’m just curious,” I said.

  “Something like four-hundred thousand,” she said, and punctuated it with another gulp of wine.

  “She’d have a mostly empty house and maybe some money left over for college,” I said. She nodded. “But no mother. And that money for college
? It’ll evaporate, Hollie. Life does that to money. She’ll be so young, some handler will drain it off for property taxes and repairs and utilities.”

  “My sister wouldn’t—”

  “She wouldn’t care as much as you,” I said. “But you’re here now. Right?”

  “I’m here now. And I’m calling fuck it,” she said. “So, if you do that amputee guy and your hands and feet grow back, what next?”

  “The one after that should be easier. I’m going to give a pancreas to a diabetic war hero. They say this guy might win the Medal of Honor. His battalion was pinned down for an entire day, one of his comrades dying just out of reach. He was stuck behind the husk of an old truck, his ammo low, radioing every few minutes for permission to extract the injured soldier. He kept getting negatives, and he kept refusing opportunities to pull back to safer ground. When he was down to his last clip, the tide finally started to turn, and he radioed again for permission, getting an exasperated “affirmative.” He didn’t hesitate, and the injured soldier lived. But alas, our hero got diagnosed as diabetic, got discharged, and already had a kidney transplant. He ended up with serious complications and needs a pancreas.”

  “A pancreas sounds easier than hands and feet,” she said, and giggled a little. “Sorry, I don’t mean to laugh, but you treat it like a long day at work.”

  “That’s sort of what it is,” I said, and took a sip of water. The waiters had actual fucking assistants, one of whom immediately refilled it.

  Hollie watched, fascinated. “How hard you think it is to drink this water to the bottom?” she said. “Do I have to chug it?”

  “Easy now, you’re driving,” I said.

  The rest of the conversation was relaxed and full of laughter. The only time we returned to anything resembling heavy conversation was at the end of the night, on the sidewalk, as I tried to hail a taxi.

  “Can I come see you?” she asked. “In the hospital?”

  I wanted Hollie with me, of course, but I didn’t want her cast as Regina in my head. It was too much.

  “I don’t want you to see me like that,” I said. It didn’t work out so well for the last girl, I almost said, but didn’t.

  “You’re going to be ‘like that’ for quite a while, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But it doesn’t mean I won’t call you or that I won’t be excited as hell to see you when the taping is done.”

  A cab finally pulled up to the curb.

  “So it may be a while,” I said. I started to say something else, but she interrupted me with a kiss—a real one, her lips alive on mine, her mouth aggressive and warm, tasting like wine and, somehow, honey. I felt the wedge of her slender hips pushing against her black cotton dress and I was too scared to pull her any closer. I just enjoyed the feel of a woman in my arms, kissing me.

  When the kiss was over, I was too stunned and amazed to say anything. “Can’t have you forgetting about me while you’re working,” she said. I watched the sway of her body as she walked away. When she looked back, I thought of Regina leaving me at the hospital. I should have been overwhelmed by the joy and excitement of the kiss but instead, waves of dread lapped at me until the cabbie finally honked.

  I got in the cab. I was the Samaritan. I could make people complete, save them, and be no worse for wear. Tissue returned. Bones mended. Organs rebuilt themselves. But for all my powers, a single kiss could crush and bewilder me. One look from Rae could move the rudder on my life’s entire course. A note in a locker, a phone number hand-scrawled on a piece of paper, a “Get Well Soon” balloon, blood on a truck’s dome light—my memories, like my flesh, could never be destroyed. If they never formed scar tissue, I would always be myself. I would never be the person who could benefit from the electricity of that kiss—the man Hollie deserved.

  * * *

  I meant to call her. I truly did. But after the surgery took my hands and feet, I woke up and Mack visited. He didn’t say much. I kept expecting Regina to walk into the room and check on me. I kept imagining that my missing right hand was due to gunshots and not the careful blade of a surgeon.

  He sat there and read sports news on his new smartphone and kept asking if I felt any healing coming on yet. I didn’t. My eyes kept flicking toward the phone on my nightstand.

  “Jesus, you call Rae yet, or what?” he said.

  “I actually did,” I said. “She’s not at that number anymore.”

  “Thank the fucking gods,” he said without looking up from his phone. “Look at this shit. Like, seven NFL coaches got fired. You’re still a Bears fan, right? Who you got for their next coach?”

  I used to love watching football. I think ignoring it was part of the self-flagellation I’d made a habit of since my hand grew back.

  “Ditka,” I said jokingly. “Mack, I think I’m into Hollie. Quite a bit.”

  He still didn’t look up.

  “I know. We sort of had this talk. My concern is that you’re both having a little pity party. She’s going to fuck you because you saved her life; you’re going to fuck her to forget about Rae. I give it two months.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He was wrong. It didn’t even really start. It didn’t last a moment after that conversation.

  * * *

  After the operation, once my hands grew back, I looked at Hollie’s number a few times but I couldn’t call. Phones and I got along just about as well as me and luck, or me and women. Regina’s spirit was so heavy as I cycled through those hospital rooms—from pre-op to post-op to recovery, I could almost hear Regina telling me to not inhale the helium in the balloon. And when I saw Regina’s face, I saw Rae’s. That was the worst part—that my adolescent love was controlling my adult desires. I needed Regina, even if the relationship made zero sense and was destructive and dysfunctional. My desire for her was suspended, and Rae woke it up. I couldn’t control it. Only Rae could fulfill it now. I wasn’t strong enough to let it rot and finally move on.

  If it weren’t for that desire, happiness might have been a phone call away. I knew Hollie liked me, and not in a pity-party sort of way. I knew she was waiting. Finally, after a month went by, she called. I let it go to voice mail and she didn’t leave a message. She did it again a few days later and that was it.

  The next few months were a haze of drugs and blood, of Mack hovering over everything, of Tracy’s stern advice and relentless energy.

  My meals were shit glopped on trays from hospital cafeterias. I thought of Regina, of Rae, of Hollie, of what my life would be like if only I had the guts to be happy. One after the other, I was smothered with affection from recipients, compressed in hugs, drenched in tears, showered with proclamations of my generosity, feeling like shit the entire time, always in pain, always wondering, wondering, wondering. I had no doubt they were thankful, but on those days, I was usually weak from recovery, feeling constrained while wearing normal clothes like jeans instead of blue, assless hospital gowns, thinking all the time of Hollie fake-smiling during her double shift, putting on a show at a table to assure a solid tip. I thought of Rae and wondered if her eyes were black, considering where her heart finally settled. Maybe she’d left him for good, but needed a fresh start without me. Maybe she was still there, dodging punches.

  Then, just as I told Hollie I would, I gave away my pancreas to a guy who was also named Dale, only this one had guts and balls. He had a limp from shrapnel that was unrelated to his latest act of heroism, the one that did, in fact, lead to the Medal of Honor. He was one of the few living recipients of the award, and Tracy was psyched. Nothing like free publicity, I guess. He mentioned me in all the press related to the medal, like if he deserved one, I deserved ten of them. He was wrong—he only had one leg to give. He was capable of sacrifice. I was not. In any case, I didn’t get to know the guy that well during shooting. I didn’t like to get emotionally involved with recipients after Hollie, and it showed on television—the only part of the show that focus groups keyed in on as a negative.

>   I was inaccessible, but that was by design. Capt. Lyle Hayes was the Commissioned Corps officer who shadowed our medical team. The corps, as Doc had told me, was under the umbrella of the United States Public Health Service, but Hayes made it clear he represented interests in the CDC and the Department of Defense. The rules were simple: any footage with his likeness in it couldn’t appear in any public forum. My exposure was limited to the show, filtered, controlled, and edited, and he personally approved all footage that appeared on television. Typically, Tracy would be fighting like a pit bull to get me on the Today show or a sit-down with Oprah, but she didn’t fight the blackout. “You? In an unfiltered interview? It’d kill the show.” She didn’t elaborate, but I could tell she was taking an order from Hayes and shaping it into her own decision. Our communications mostly consisted of him glaring at me, pissed that he had to be out of uniform so much on my detail. He was a post-op fixture, though, hovering over me, clinging to his charts, riddling me with a barrage of questions, his pencil smoking as he spoke.

  I gave away four organs—five if you include bone marrow—to Kimmy Higgins, a nine-year-old who had a myofibroblastic tumor that encircled her entire blood supply. She got the platinum maintenance plan—liver, two kidneys, pancreas, marrow—all at once. She lived, and somehow, so did I. It was simpler than it sounds—I just let machines do the work for me until I regenerated enough to wake up. Sometimes I’d spend time in comas—black and dreamless, just days and sometimes weeks flicking by as if I’d just blinked them away.

  Dr. Reynolds stayed on as the leader of my medical team, but he never did come to grips with my ability. He seemed constantly amazed. “If this didn’t kill you, nothing’s going to kill you,” he said before almost every surgery.

  I did a double-lung transplant next—two Dale lungs, two different recipients. A double feature. Tracy kept saying it smelled like a season finale. My last surgery of the taping schedule was pretty basic. I gave a college athlete a liver and some bone marrow. He had severe aplastic anemia, and had endured a year of chemotherapy, infections, blood transfusions, a bout with pneumonia, and was almost always in the hospital. Greg Moseley was the guy’s name, just a few years younger than me. We had a long talk off-camera about hospital stays. For once, a “contestant” I had something in common with.