Home Again

  He winced at the memory of their last meeting, and closed his eyes. He’d make it up to Franco, if only God would give him a second chance. Just a second—a moment of consciousness before death, when Angel could say he was sorry. So damned sorry.

  At exactly 3:15 a masked man came over to Angel, looked at the machines one by one, then finally said, “Hello, Mr. Jones. I’m Dr. Arche.” He reached for one of the clear plastic bags hanging above Angel’s head. “It’s easy to remember—Dr. A. for anesthesia.”

  “Oh, good. Mnemonics.” Angel sighed. “Just don’t put me to sleep until Madelaine gets here.”

  “Don’t worry, she’ll be right beside you.” Dr. Arche swept past Angel in a blur of blue-green and settled with a whining squeak onto a stool. The wheels grated across the linoleum and took the anesthesiologist to his station.

  Angel tried to lift his head off the hard table and couldn’t. Instead, he turned, stared at the closed door. An image shimmered in front of bland steel.

  Francis, he realized suddenly. It was his brother come to hold his hand.

  Heya, Angel.

  Angel started to say something and realized he didn’t know what it was. Dizziness rolled through him. He blinked hard, and when he opened his eyes, Francis was gone.

  Angel’s cheek seemed to hit the table with a loud thunk.

  They’d done it. The assholes had started the anesthesia.

  He could feel the drugs oozing into his veins, crawling through his body in a swaying, intoxicating rhythm. He tried to concentrate … on the bag hanging above his head … the prick of the needle in his wrist…. It was dripping, dripping into his blood, seeping, seeping….

  He swallowed thickly; it felt as if cotton were wadded in his mouth and throat.

  Dr. Arche wheeled back toward him. “Just relax, Mr. Jones. Go with the flow … the flow … the flow …”

  Angel tried to lift his chin and couldn’t. “Fu … fuck you … mother… fucker…”

  Dr. Arche laughed quietly and wheeled back to his station.

  Angel wanted to rip the IV needle from his arm, but he couldn’t lift his hand. The lights overhead bled together and became the sun.

  Panic pressed down on him, made his ragged heartbeat speedup.

  “Whoa, Mr. Jones,” Dr. Arche said in his ear, “calm down, fella, calm down. Go with the flow.”

  Angel’s eyes fluttered shut. He forced them open again, tried to focus on the hot, hot sun.

  Something was different. Noise, he realized groggily.

  And then she was there, peering over him, filling his world like a Madonna. “Angel? Can you hear me?”

  “Mad…” He sighed with relief, wanting—aching—to feel her hand in his; it wasn’t enough to know she was touching him, he wanted to feel it. One last time. He wanted to rip that damned mask from her face and see her smile again. There was so much to say, so much, and the drugs were taking it all away from him. “Loved … you…”

  She stroked his cheek, and it felt good, so good, he felt tears sting his eyes. He fought his way through the layers of fog that separated them.

  She gave him a smile—he could see it above the mask, the way it crinkled her eyes. He remembered that smile, had always remembered it. Christ, so beautiful…

  “Francis,” he wheezed. “Sorry … tell him … loved him… too.”

  Suddenly he saw Francis standing beside her, smiling that cockeyed smile of his, whispering that it was okay, that it had always been okay….

  But Angel knew it wasn’t real.

  Tears glazed Madelaine’s eyes, and he wanted to say, Don’t cry for me, but he couldn’t speak.

  His eyelids fluttered again. He heard Dr. Arche’s lilting voice, talking, talking, talking …

  Then he was out.

  Madelaine stood off to the side, watching the surgery.

  Surgeons and residents and nurses were clustered around the table, working on Angel, poking, prodding, tubing, monitoring every breath he took, every pulse of blood through his heart and veins. He was intubated and catheterized and his body had been washed again with iodine, then he’d been redraped in sterile sheets. His hair was covered by a blue paper cap, and tiny strips of white adhesive tape kept his eyelids shut. The only part of his naked body that was exposed was a narrow strip of chest and upper abdomen, an orange belt of skin covered in taut, clear plastic and surrounded by blue-green sheets. A dehumanizing patch of color that seemed light years away from Angel’s ready smile or swaggering personality or towering temper.

  The patient.

  Madelaine tried to think of him that way, tried to be cold and distant and professional. But when Chris reached for the scalpel, touched its razor-sharp point to the skin at the base of Angel’s throat, she flinched.

  Instinctively she closed her eyes, and when she did, she found herself traveling back in time to another place. A Ferris wheel at a tawdry little carnival, a rocking ride with the boy of her dreams. She felt his arm slip around her, slide down the bare skin of her arm. I love you, Mad.

  She heard the whining buzz of an electric saw and kept her eyes shut. She didn’t want to see them cut open his chest, see his blood spill over the sterile little patch of green, splash on the linoleum floor.

  “Chest spreader,” Allenford barked.

  Madelaine winced and tried to keep thinking about the carnival. That had been their last time together as lovers, and what a magical time it had been. Stars everywhere, the smell of popcorn, the faraway squeal of people on the midway. She remembered the earrings he’d won for her, the solemn way they’d buried the gaudy jewelry as a reminder of their love.

  She thought of Francis, gentle, loving Francis, and the gift he was giving to his brother, the miracle that was unfolding just a few feet away.

  “Get the bypass ready.”

  Madelaine opened her eyes. Reluctant to move and yet unable to remain where she was, she took a few steps toward the table. She saw instantly where they were in the operation—Angel’s chest was a red, gaping hole in the surgical fabric. Cannulas had been inserted and sutured in the heart, and they were busily connecting Angel to the heart-lung bypass machine.

  Everyone drew in a sharp breath as the bypass machine was started. The squat machine started whirring and pounding and pumping. A technician monitored the machine’s function and said, “Everything looks good, Dr. Allenford.”

  “Okay,” Chris said, reaching for his instruments, “let’s go.”

  Madelaine moved toward the table, her gaze riveted on the surgery. She inched forward, mesmerized, watching Chris’s bloody, gloved hands work. He removed Angel’s damaged heart and handed it, still beating, to the pathologist, who put it in a metal bowl and disappeared.

  Then Chris reached over and lifted Francis’s heart in his capable hands. It looked so ordinary, she thought, a pale pink lump that had once held Francis’s soul.

  Chris studied the inert organ, then lowered it deep into Angel’s chest.

  It took almost an hour and a half to secure the new heart in place. Finally Chris looked over to the perfusionist monitoring the bypass machine. “Okay, let’s warm him up.”

  Chris placed the final sutures in the pulmonary artery, and rich, warm blood began pouring into the heart, feeding it, warming it.

  He glanced up suddenly, made eye contact with Madelaine. A single thought leapt between them: This is it.

  Everyone in the room seemed to draw in a sudden, anticipatory breath. Madelaine stepped closer, until she was almost touching the table. She peered past the blue-green-clad bodies on either side of her, staring at the hole in Angel’s chest, at the mass of pinkish tissue that lay there, motionless.

  Beat, she pleaded silently. Don’t make it all for nothing….

  The big old wall clock ticked past a minute, then another.

  “Increase Isuprel,” Allenford said evenly. “Go to four mics.”

  “Come on,” Madelaine whispered, her hands curling into fists at her sides. Come on, Francis.


  “You want the defibrillator?” someone said.

  “Hush,” Chris said.

  The room fell utterly silent, all eyes trained on the new heart. After what felt like hours, it quivered.

  Madelaine felt her own heart lurch in expectation.

  “Come on,” Chris urged the organ. “Come on.”

  Inside Angel’s chest, Francis’s heart jumped. Once, twice, three times, then it began a slow, steady thumping.

  “Houston, we have a heartbeat,” Chris said.

  “Heart rate’s going up,” someone said. “Fifty-four. Sixty-three…”

  A cheer went through the room. Madelaine tried to join in, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even smile. Her whole body was trembling and her eyes were stinging. She felt as if the spirit of God were inside her, filling her to overflowing, making her know—know—that what had just happened in this room was a miracle.

  God had taken a life, and then He’d given one back.

  She watched, mesmerized, as the healthy heart kept up its slow, rhythmic dance. Grinning, crying, she covered her masked mouth with her hands and looked up at the ceiling, as if, in that magical instant, she could see God.

  Love him, Maddy-girl. She jumped at the sound and spun around, half expecting to see Francis standing beside her.

  But there was no one there at all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lina couldn’t stand being in the house. Everywhere she looked, there were memories of Francis.

  She stood on the porch, staring out at the first pink strands of dawn that crept along the shadowy street. Her lungs ached from the cigarettes she’d smoked, and her eyes stung from crying. She felt rubbery and hollow and sad…. Oh, God, how could there be such sadness?

  She bit her lower lip and felt the burning glaze her eyes again. Turning, she saw the porch swing—the one he’d given them for Christmas last year—and suddenly she was crying again.

  Come back, Francis. I’m sorry. Oh, God, I’m so sorry….

  In some dim part of her mind, she heard the whine of a car engine. Dully she looked up and saw her mother’s car pull into the driveway. She walked to the edge of the railing and stood there.

  Mom killed the engine and got out of the car. The whack of the Volvo’s door shutting seemed obscenely loud in the predawn quiet. She was halfway up the walkway when she saw Lina standing on the shadowy porch.

  Mom climbed the creaking steps and stopped, leaning against the wisteria-entwined white railing. Her gaze flicked over the ashtray on the floor, on the butts that were strewn everywhere. But when she looked at Lina, she didn’t say a word.

  Tears sprang to her mother’s eyes, and she moved forward, opening her arms.

  Woodenly Lina moved into the circle of her mother’s embrace, felt the warm, loving arms enfold her, and suddenly she was a child again. Six years old, and she wanted to believe that her mother could make everything better.

  She waited for her mother to say something, to give Lina some magical, miraculous words that would turn back the clock.

  But her mother didn’t speak, just held her.

  And Lina knew. It would never be all right again.

  He sits on the porch swing, trying to make it sway beneath him, but the wooden slats remain utterly motionless. The air is thick and heavy and smells of nothing. Before, he wouldn’t have known what that was, nothingness, but now he does. He tries to remember the million smells that used to linger around her front porch. Roses and fresh-cut grass, the fecund humidity of muddy earth when the rains came, the smell of the wind itself as it blew leaves across the sidewalk. Even the dead brown wisteria vines that curl around her white railing used to have their own wintery smell.

  Now there is nothing. The wind moves past him. He can see it touching the fallen leaves, swirling in minute whirlpools on the brown grass, but none of it touches him where he sits in the porch swing that can’t be made to move.

  He is waiting for something to happen, that’s all he knows. There is a moment out there, hovering beyond his grasp; he feels it the way he used to feel rain on his cheeks or the wind at his back. He has something left to do.

  He has learned that if he concentrates very, very hard, he can find himself inside her house, wandering among her things, reaching out for bits and pieces—mementos of a past he is rapidly forgetting. But it makes him tired, all that thinking, and it makes him feel things that hurt, and when he’s done, he wishes he hadn’t moved, had just sat here on this swing where he feels so at home.

  Last night Lina was beside him, and when she first sat down, he felt the swing rustle and move beneath him. So much so, he could almost feel the movement of the wind, almost hear the creaking of the wooden slats. But he thinks, in the end, it was just a memory, that he couldn’t hear those things at all.

  She had cried, his precious baby, and in some pocket of his soul, he’d known that she was crying for him. He’d ached to touch her, comfort her, but he couldn’t concentrate with the hacking sound of her sobs washing over him. So he’d done what he could, used the power that seemed to lie curled in the emptiness of his belly. He’d squeezed his eyes shut and spoken to her in his mind. Words, remnants of words he could barely remember.

  I’m here, Lina. I’m here….

  He’d thought the words over and over and over, and still her tears had gone on, wrenching through him, making him ache.

  Finally she’d gone into the house, and he’d followed her, drifting from room to room, wanting desperately to feel that he belonged in this place, the only real home he’d ever known. But with each passing bit of time, he’d felt himself getting weaker and weaker. Once, when he looked down, he couldn’t see his feet, and in the next second, his legs were beginning to fade. Finally he’d curled up on the end of her bed like a cat and closed his eyes.

  The next thing he knows, he’s here again, stationed on the porch swing. Sunlight is all around him, streaming from billowy clouds perched high in a clear blue sky. A last yellow-green leaf rustles on the wisteria vine and floats to the lawn.

  He looks down and his feet are still gone, his legs are inconstant shimmerings of shadow against the white paint of the porch floorboards. He wonders how long it will go on, this slow vanishing, and what will become of him when it is over.

  And so he waits.

  Angel was lying very still. Everything was dark. He could hear sounds, noises that were a confusing, frightening din. He blinked, tried to open his eyes. Failed.

  “Angel?”

  He heard her voice, coming at him from beyond the darkness. He needed her suddenly, needed her so much…. He tried again to open his eyes. His lashes flickered. It took so much energy….

  He heard her voice again, coaxing him, whispering his name. He fought to push aside the layers of cotton and fog that pressed around him. Finally one eye cracked open, and light stabbed him, sent him scurrying again for the comforting shadows.

  “Come on, Angel, open your eyes.”

  Slowly, hesitantly, he tried again. And found her sitting beside him, her masked face inches from his. For a split second he was seventeen again, and she was his Madelaine, waiting for him.

  He tried to remember where he was, why she was here.

  Then he noticed his heartbeat, strong and even. Ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and all he could hear was his—someone else’s—heart hammering away in his chest, thudding beneath his skin. He wanted to reach for the needles and tubes and rip them all out, but his hands were weak and shaking.

  He’d never experienced such a devastating sense of violation, of loss. He felt invaded; the stranger’s heart didn’t belong in him. He felt it with every breath, thumping too loudly, aching in his damaged chest. Where was his own heart? Weak and useless as it was, it was his, and now it was gone. Lying in the trash somewhere …

  His heart, the storehouse of his soul, his dreams, his ideas…

  “Oh, Christ…” he whispered in a scratchy, broken voice that
he didn’t even recognize. Panic swooped in.

  God, it wasn’t even his voice anymore. There was nothing left of him, nothing….

  Then a word stopped his fall, left him breathless and shaking and more afraid than he’d ever been in his life. DONOR.

  He forced his eyes open again and stared up at Madelaine. He knew he was crying, he could feel the tears coursing down his cheeks, and he didn’t care. “Who?”

  She flinched as if she’d been struck. “Angel,” she said in a voice so calm that for a second, he was swayed. All he wanted to do was fall into that voice, that look in her eyes. “Don’t think about those things now, just relax. The surgery went well. You’re doing fine. Fine.”

  The surgery. He thought again of his heart, his own worthless heart, and the tears kept coming and coming. It felt as if he were grieving, but he didn’t know for whom, for what. He just knew that this heart wasn’t his and it was inside him, thumping too loudly, pumping too efficiently. His hands and feet were uncomfortably warm, and suddenly the cold numbness he’d had before was preferable to this … thing beating inside him.

  The question came back to him, weighing on his thudding heart. Whose heart is it? He wanted to ask the question again, to demand an answer, but he couldn’t do it, couldn’t form the words or force them up his raw, burning throat. He wondered suddenly if he wanted to know. Sweet Jesus, did he want to know who was inside him, keeping him alive, warming his hands and toes?

  Madelaine stroked the side of his face and it felt good, so good. He closed his eyes again and shook his head. He wanted to say something to her, but what? What?

  The darkness came back for him, crooking its silent finger, drawing him back to the black cocoon where he didn’t remember, didn’t care.

  “Angel, you’re going to be okay,” came her voice again, soothing, calming. “You’ll feel better when the anesthesia wears off completely. Trust me. You’re experiencing disorientation, it’s normal. To be expected. Don’t worry.”

  He turned his head a little, felt the pillow sink beneath his cheek. Beside him, the cardiac monitor spat out reams of paper, showing its bright pink heart-line graph across the black screen. For a second he couldn’t focus, couldn’t make out what he was seeing. Then it struck him. There were two blurry pink lines running side by side on the computerized screen, where before there had only been one.