The Heart Does Not Grow Back Read online

  I froze on the sidewalk, wondering just what would happen if I approached my door—would I catch another beating? Get pelted with eggs or spit? Or simply endure the endless, throat-ripping screams trumpeting my selfishness and cowardice? All because I had the audacity to die for one person instead of living to yield organs for dozens more.

  “You really are dense as fuck if you thought dying was the hard part.” Mack’s voice again. He had followed me.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  “Where to?”

  “I got a spot.”

  “How do I know you won’t lock me up somewhere so I don’t make it to the surgery? Wait till Harold dies, force me to reconsider?”

  “I’m your goddamn friend, you idiot. You know the saying ‘If your friend jumped off a bridge, does it mean you would too?’ Well, just this once, I’ll watch you jump off a bridge. No promises that I’m going to follow right away.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He hailed a cab.

  “Stop where we can get a twelve-pack first, bubba,” he told the cabbie. Off we went. Our last and least wild night together. The morning would be a different story.

  * * *

  We cracked the tops of slick and cold bottles of Budweiser or, as Mack always called it, “The Diesel.”

  The city unfurled below us, the metal and pavement fading from view as the sun set. Soon there was nothing but fluid lights set in darkness. We sat square-ass in the dirt, surrounded by the dry brush of the Hollywood Hills, but far from the Hollywood sign. “Too popular, too romantic. I just wanna crack a few beers with you, not make out with you,” Mack said as we picked our spot.

  At that moment, the movement of the world was measured by the brake lights crawling down the streets—the measurement of time was the draining of beers, as it had always been. Two bottles evaporated without a word.

  “I always figured I would bring a chick up here. She would say it was just like the movies and get all moist, and I would hit it and that would be that,” he said, finally, but not sounding like Mack, each word glazed with disappointment.

  “I’m not unhappy, you know,” he continued. “I’m lonely. But not unhappy.”

  “We are certainly some kind of fucked up,” I said.

  “I’m wired wrong, dude,” he said. “I’ll do anything to get a girl to like me, and by like me, I mean bang me, and by bang me, I mean just that. After the banging is achieved, then nothing. At first the conversation is normal, and the chick asks me something like, ‘What do you look for in a girl?’ and I tell her, ‘My nine-inch dick,’ and somehow I make it work. But it won’t work forever.”

  “And you’re telling me this because I’ll be dead and I can’t make fun of you for being a whining, sensitive bitch?”

  “So you’re not a virgin anymore?” he asked.

  A simple “no” satisfied him just fine. I didn’t want to tell him it was Raeanna, to hear him scold me for literally getting fucked into giving my heart away—a thought that had nagged me since she left.

  “This is all about us getting shot up,” he said. “Not about Regina, or Rae, or any of it. Like you said, we’re fucked up—probably got PTSD or some shit. But I’m glad I took it in the shoulder. Built-in excuse to fail at baseball, just like you said. So I came out all right in the deal. And you? Man, what I wouldn’t give to be that kind of special.”

  “Get to it, then,” I said. “The Samaritan was your idea, remember. But then you tried to stop me from doing a second season. You’re trying to stop me from doing this. So, one last time, tell me why I shouldn’t do this.”

  “Fine. You’re the only fucking friend I’ve got, the only guy who can put up with my bullshit act. What does that say about me? You cared for Regina, Raeanna, hell, even Hollie. If there’s a shitshow, you’re first in line for admission. I wish I had balls like that. I’m fucking serious, if you’d let me take your place in that surgery, if that was possible, I’d do it.”

  “I know,” I said. “But fuck it. Let’s finish this twelver. And then get another one. And stay in a real expensive hotel room, and charge it. Who gives a shit, right?”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to drink or eat the night before a surgery?”

  “Why? ’Cause it’ll kill me?”

  We had a good laugh, the kind that leaves the stomach muscles weak and sore, a release not just from the grim joke but from everything that had been dammed up before it.

  “And we wake up,” he said, “and I’ll break the news to Rae and Harold that you pulled out. And we’ll buy a convertible Mustang and drive all the way back to Illinois, man. Fucking Chicago, use that Samaritan cash to buy an apartment by Wrigley and waste the summer days holding out nets for a homer that we’ll never in a million years catch. Just the wind and us, and leave all the shit behind.” A warm gust tore through the hillside, rattling the bushes, teasing a slight whistle from the lips of our open bottles. “Man, that would be just the thing. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I kind of miss home.”

  “We’re home now,” I said. “We just thought we could master this place, when the best we could do was manage. But we haven’t even managed.”

  “And here we are,” Mack said, raising his can.

  “Here we are,” I repeated, completing the toast. I took a long drink, but Mack didn’t stop until his beer was gone.

  “You got my back tomorrow?”

  “A guy could do worse than helping his best friend carry out his final wish,” he said. Mack threw the empty can into the forage below. He immediately grimaced, favoring his shoulder.

  “On the day we met, when those girls blindfolded me … did I ever tell you I could see the whole time?”

  He laughed, which was a relief. I needed to hear him laugh. He grabbed another beer and sheepishly confessed the time he’d cried when he lost his virginity, not knowing why, just knowing that he had something and it was gone and it made him want to cry. Thirteen-year-olds get emotional like that. Sarah Odin was sixteen, he said, one year older than the last time he told me the story. I didn’t mention this—one of the reasons we got along so well. He didn’t need a witness, just a forum through which he could hear his own account.

  He passed out the instant we got back to the hotel room. I left him there, slipping out quietly to go for a long walk, unable to sleep, wondering how the morning would go, whether or not I’d see Raeanna. I walked to the beach, where it’s easy to get mesmerized by the vastness of the ocean at night, but really, it’s a bunch of filthy saltwater slapping against a shore that has seen as many needles and condoms as seashells. The foam has a dirty lip and leaves rotted gunk behind to fossilize under the unrelenting sun.

  Maybe in the morning Rae might actually show and ask me why I was doing this to myself. Maybe she’d say she was only hoping I could pull some strings, that she didn’t want me to die. She might even kiss me and make me recall that night, ask why I was giving up on her right when we were poised to move on from the hell of our current lives, together.

  I would tell her that it’s because my gift is only as good as its next round under the knife, that for my life to truly begin, the damage must be permanent. My body never stopped healing, but I never gave my soul a chance to do the same. And as much as I ached for Rae, we could never truly cauterize the wounds of the past if we were together. Granting her wish was the only way to keep myself from her.

  * * *

  I woke up in our presidential suite to the blare of my cell phone’s alarm, the haze of alcohol rusting my eyelids. Before I could even get out of bed for my morning piss, the phone sounded again—this time it was Doc Venhaus calling.

  “I hope this isn’t bad news,” I said, picking up.

  “Quite the opposite. I’m alarmed at how easily things are going,” he said. “We’re ready. Harold is getting prepped for surgery as we speak.”

  “What about Hayes?”

  “As expected, he’s standing sentry at the hospital. But then again, who isn�
�t? It’s a madhouse.” He laughed.

  I turned on the television. Three news channels were already covering the swelling crowds at many of the dozens of hospitals in L.A. County. Early that morning, word had leaked that we were going to Keck Hospital, so they had the worst of it. Signs poked out above the mass of spectators. A news reporter with one finger in his ear tried to shout an update over the mob. Sources indicated that Dale Sampson had yet to arrive—with no guarantee that he would. Police officers kept the sidewalk, entrance, and emergency-room bays clear. They were geared up with Kevlar and helmets with face shields, presumably expecting a busy day at the office. Other, unarmored officers were busy managing the crowd, trying to keep some semblance of order around the hospital’s entrance.

  “Jesus. We’re fucking chaos personified today,” Mack said. I hadn’t even known he was awake. He still looked half-asleep. He ran his index finger under the kitchenette faucet and rubbed his teeth, the MacGyver way to brush.

  “How in the name of fuck’s potatoes are you up and moving around like a living person?” He pinched his nose and let out a groan. “I feel like a bunch of evil dwarves beat me with hammers all night. And did you shit in my mouth?”

  He seemed off. Nervous, even. I was getting shoved off into the black yonder that morning, and seeing the light peek through the seams of his ego was both rare and heartening.

  I still had Venhaus on the line. “Does your friend know?” he asked. “No,” I said.

  “Good, one less loose end to worry about. How do you intend on getting here?”

  “I’ll call a cab,” I said, and hung up.

  “I’m way ahead of you, actually,” Mack said. “I booked us a chauffeur for your last ride into the sunset. Class all the way for my best bro.”

  Mack was dead set on seeing me to the hospital. He intended to be at my side until the moment they wheeled me away. Outside, we waited for the car with complimentary coffees from the hotel’s breakfast buffet, watching the ebb and flow of traffic.

  A black Lincoln with tinted windows pulled up to the curb.

  “There,” Mack said. “All aboard.”

  The driver stepped out, sharply dressed, a neatly trimmed goatee. “Mr. Sampson?”

  I nodded and got in.

  As the outside would suggest, the interior was quiet and cool. Fine, clean leather squeaked with every move. A man was in the passenger seat. I caught a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror—brown eyes, a tuft of thin hair arranged fruitlessly on a balding scalp. Since when does a chauffeur need a partner? I thought.

  “How long to get to Keck?” I asked.

  “Depends on traffic,” the driver said.

  We drove. Classic rock on the radio—Boston. “More Than a Feeling.” Curiously, no news. When we got closer to the hospital, I’d have to tell Mack the truth—that the surgery wasn’t at Keck; that although Hayes and my medical team were waiting on me to get to Keck, it was all part of the ruse.

  I should have considered that Mack would insist on escorting me to the hospital if given the chance. Only Venhaus knew my true intentions for the surgery’s outcome, a truth that I couldn’t tell Mack under any circumstances. Still, I needed to clue Mack into the surgery’s true location and he’d have to digest the news real quick. Soon, it was all going to depend on him to get out of the car a couple blocks away from Keck, and sell it as if he were awaiting my arrival there. He would play the grief-stricken best friend for the crowd, and sacrifice our final good-bye to create a diversion.

  The rented Lincoln sped through the city. I leaned against the window, tired and dehydrated, my dirty hair leaving a spot of oil melting on the glass. The long shadows of an early downtown morning stretched out on the pavement.

  I looked over at Mack. He was staring up front into the rearview mirror. Again, I caught the passenger’s eyes snapping away from me.

  “So who’s this guy?” I asked the driver.

  “Just a helping hand,” he said with a smile.

  “Mack,” I said, waiting until he looked at me. “Who is this guy?”

  He just shook his head once, as if to say, Don’t.

  I didn’t. We kept driving. Soon the shadows of downtown were behind us. Onto the freeway. I didn’t know the city that well. I knew my apartment and how to get to the airport, or Tracy’s office, or Hollie’s place or the grocery market. That was it.

  I waited for an exit. It never came. The clock said it was a quarter to eight.

  “How long?” I asked.

  “Not long. Fifteen minutes?” The driver didn’t miss a beat. He was lying.

  “Where the fuck are we?” No answer. He jerked the wheel, peeling us off the freeway and into a rundown neighborhood with tiny, fenced-in houses with brown lawns and ramshackle porches. Soon, we turned onto an access road with far less traffic, careening through the empty streets until we found ourselves puttering down a shitty two-laner, joining the rat race to get a spot on the freeway.

  I tried the door. It was locked.

  “Now, settle down,” the passenger said. “This will be a lot easier if you just remain calm.”

  I looked at Mack.

  “What is this?” But I didn’t need to ask. I knew that Hayes was doubling down on his effort to keep me from going through with my sacrificial surgery. He didn’t trust Venhaus, so he appealed to Mack. I could hear him smugly bargaining with my friend: Are you really going to let your friend die?

  “We’re just trying—” the passenger started.

  “Shut the fuck up! What is this?” I repeated.

  “These are the big dogs, Sampsonite. Best deal I could cut for us, man.”

  “All-expenses-paid trip to the Research Triangle on the East Coast?”

  “Better than dying.”

  “That’s not your call to make,” I said. “You can’t do this to me. You can’t stick me with this bullshit forever.”

  I knew Hayes and the government interests he represented coveted my life, and that there was obvious value to studying my gift, but I never thought to probe for details. Who exactly benefited from their research? Government agencies, private universities, biotech startups? My death was unacceptable to the scores of researchers who jerked off over my tissue in some sterile lab somewhere, rehearsing their Nobel Prize speech.

  “Turn the car around,” I said.

  Silence. Stares.

  “Turn the fuck around!” I screamed, and started yanking at the door. I punched the glass once, but it didn’t break. My finger did, though—a pop sounded in my hand, and my knuckle started to swell. A boxer’s break. No matter. Not today, anyway.

  I looked up into the barrel of a gun.

  “Stay calm and I won’t have to see if your head grows back,” the passenger said.

  “Fuck you,” I said. “You’re really going to try to kill me when you’re obviously here to preserve me?”

  He fired a slug into the top of my leg.

  “Christ!” the driver screamed, the shot rattling him into a sudden swerve. “What the fuck you doing?”

  “Relax, that shit’ll be healed before we get to the airport,” Passenger said, laughing. “At least he can’t run now, huh?”

  Blood bubbled from the wound, hot and familiar. I leaned back hard into my seat, and concentrated on my breathing. Oxygen always helped blunt the pain—that and pressing on it real good while closing my eyes so tight fluid leaked from the corners.

  Mack was not pleased with this particular development. Through my agony, I heard the long-dormant sound of him flexing his hate gland, screaming at my captors, but at the time it was all just white noise. Then everything was quiet, as if the captain had flipped on a No Talking sign. I looked over at Mack.

  For one of the few times in his life, he was raw. Stripped down to the wires and studs: confused, wanting desperately to keep me alive, but realizing that a life of being harvested for samples wasn’t quite living. Too bad for us both he hadn’t realized sooner.

  “Well, it sounded like a good deal a
t the time, the way that dickhole put it,” he said.

  His fists were clenched. Veins protruded everywhere, dark-blue ropes snaking across the striated muscles in his neck and forearms. I saw the dent in his lower jaw where he was sucking his lip in, biting it, his eyes glossy with the threat of tears, and I knew what he was going to do.

  “Swing for the fences, right?” he rasped. “You better not miss.” He smiled. I followed Mack’s eyes to the front seat. He nodded once, and I understood.

  Passenger continued to point the gun squarely into the backseat.

  “You two just need to shut the—”

  Mack moved with a fast-twitch burst I hadn’t seen since high school, deflecting the gun up into the roof with one hand as the other grabbed the strap of seat belt above Passenger’s shoulder. With one quick jerk, Mack had the belt around the man’s neck, ratcheting his throat so tight I heard a pop. Passenger fired blindly into the backseat, but missed us both—barely. My eardrums erupted with the bass of the shots. The driver didn’t know what to do, but he instinctively slowed—which was exactly what I was hoping for.

  I leaned back and pistoned my feet through the window glass. The whole pane broke off in one spiderwebbed piece and skidded onto the road. I reached through and opened the door from the outside, intent on jumping out on the fly. As the door swung open, another shot rang. I saw a mist of red splatter against the driver’s side window as the driver’s ruptured skull lolled to the side. From the corner of my eye, Mack and Passenger were struggling, four hands on the gun now, its barrel waving back and forth between them, a barometer of who was winning. Glancing back at the inert form in the driver’s seat, it was clear who that round went to. The bullet had tunneled into his temple neatly on one side, leaving a soup-can-sized hole on the other.

  With a carcass now behind the wheel, the car began gradually veering off the road. Glancing over to Mack, still grappling wildly with Passenger, I leapt out and rolled onto the concrete, flailing crash-dummy style, leaving behind layers of epidermis and dislocating my shoulder. I don’t know if my hand got caught in the car’s frame or if I landed on it, but when I came to rest in the hot and itchy grass on the other side of the roadway, I noticed three fingers were gone and all I had left was a mangled stump. I looked up right as the Lincoln eased into the drainage ditch across the road, toppling over onto its side. I listened to the crunch and squeal of metal as it gained momentum down the slope and continued flipping.