Page 106 of Poetry By Dead Men
My heart rate slows as I push and glide.
Push, glide.
Push, glide.
A rhythm I force my breaths to match until my pulse has lowered, and I’m lost. The phone in my lap remains silent, and I wonder if Bobby’s chest has been opened yet. If they’ve removed his heart and allowed a machine to take over. If maybe he’s dreaming of me, of us. If he’s fighting and clawing his way back. If he knows just how dangerous a procedure like this is.
My stomach rolls, and the hallway spins, forcing me to close my eyes. I take several deep breaths. He has to be okay.
Push, glide.
In, out.
Minutes pass. Maybe hours. I’ve lost all sense of time. It’s not until I’m rolling past a familiar doorway that I realize where I am.
Room 824.
Harrison’s room.
Except, it’s not Harrison I see inside, but a small woman with a mop. The bed is gone, as are the ventilator and IV pole.
There are moments in our lives that will forever stand out like a snapshot.
Events that change our very being, marked by questions we wish we’d never had to ask.
Before I can process the many emotions making my hands shake and my stomach churn—foolishness that I hadn’t considered this possibility before, guilt that I begged the universe for a heart for Bobby, gratitude that he’s getting another chance at life—I wheel myself inside the room, glancing at the whiteboard where the date and nurse’s name are written just below the space for patient’s name: Harrison Rouchester.
“Excuse me?” I ask, my voice choked. “The man who was in this room. Do you know where he went?”
The woman cleaning turns, pulling an earbud out of her ear. “I’m sorry?”
I repeat myself, the nausea in my stomach growing with every word.
“I don’t get that information. Sometimes it’s a room transfer. Sometimes they’re discharged,” she says, shrugging.
I focus on breathing in and out, on calming my racing heart as I consider what she didn’t say.
A third option. The most likely option.
Sometimes the room is empty because the person who’d been occupying it is gone.
I turn around, suddenly wishing I wasn’t alone.
That I’d never left Molly’s side.
It doesn’t mean anything,I tell myself as I push my way out of the hallway and toward the elevators. The donor might not have even been from this hospital. It’s far more likely they’re not. The surgeon said any heart within a three-hour helicopter ride would be diverted here. Not to mention I don’t even know if Harrison is an organ donor.
Wasan organ donor.
It’s all too coincidental, too overwhelming, so I force the possibilities buzzing through my mind down, burying it deep beneath layers and layers of excuses and reasons it can’t be him.
I press the down button on the elevator, desperate to get back to the waiting room. A large group of people make their way down the hall as I wait for the doors to open. A family, it looks like.
A happy one.
I wonder why they’re here as I take in their smiles and soft laughs. It’s certainly not the death of their abusive ex-fiancé, or the potentially life-saving heart transplant for the love of their life. Maybe the birth of a baby. Or maybe, someone they love was just saved. A small white card flutters to the ground behind them as they turn a corner.
“Hey! You dropped this!” I say, but they’re moving too fast, too caught up in their joy to hear me.
