Page 105 of Heart Sick

Oh my motherfucking god.

Alanna has said this before. In her office. I remember.

“You were unlike anyone I’ve ever heard before,” she says in a faraway voice, her fingers continuing to explore my skin. “La Campanella is one of my favorites.”

I arch a brow, confused. “I didn’t play Liszt at that recital. It was Bach. Are you sure it was me?”

My question snaps her from wherever she just went.

She shakes her head and removes her hand from my chest so abruptly, she almost falls on her ass. “Oh, sorry. I got the names mixed up. Sometimes, I like to think I’m a classical music expert.”

Her fingers tremble when she brushes a piece of hair behind her ear. A surgeon’s hand should never tremble and the perfect scar down my chest is proof of that.

Something is wrong…but I don’t know what that is.

I didn’t know what was wrong, but now I do.

“Alanna! Fucking turn around and look at me! What the fuck is going on?”

I am done with her games. Something is rotten—fucking literally.

“I knew you’d be a perfect fit,” she says, her back still turned. “The moment I read over your file, I knew you would be perfect.”

“Perfect for what?” I scream, straining my neck to see who lies in that bed.

She reaches into the pocket of her white doctor’s coat and when Moonlight Sonata starts playing, I know things are about to take a macabre turn. She steps away, allowing me to see Jonathan…

I don’t even know if what I’m seeing is real. Maybe Ihavelost my fucking mind because this is something out of a horror movie. I am robbed of words and music is once again my savior, filling in the silence.

Alanna walks over to a partition while I divide my attention between her and Jonathan. “We were supposed to be married. But my Jonathan, he loved me with his entire heart, so much so, it stopped working. But unlike you, Dutch, there wasn’t a donor who could give him his heart. But I’m a doctor. It’s my job to make people better. And I refused to allow my Jonathan to die. No.”

She wheels away the partition, and what I see just adds to this fucking morbid show. “This is my wedding dress. I got it made especially for me. I know they say it’s bad luck for the groom to see the dress before the big day, but—”

“But your groom is fucking dead, Alanna! So I think you’re good.”

Jonathan smells like a corpse because he is, in fact, one.

I don’t know how she’s preserved his body, maybe a fuckload of formaldehyde because this motherfucker is embalmed like a mummy. Tufts of stiff hair stick up in all different directions, and his skin is a wrinkled, sickly yellow.

His cheeks are gaunt, and his teeth are exposed, twisted into a ghoulish smile. The rest of his body resembles a prune, but Alanna looks at him like he is the most handsome man in the world.

Love is really fucking blind.

“Why am I here?”

Alanna giggles, and if hell had a doorbell, this would be its sound. “Because, silly, you’re going to make my Jonathan live again.”

“How the fuck do you propose that because, in case you missed the memo, he’s fucking dead!”

She storms over and slaps my cheek. “Don’t you say that! He’s not dead.”

“Sweetheart, he’s not sleeping. He is D-E-A-D!” I spell it out for her in case she needs further confirmation that she is treating the corpse of her dead fiancé like he’s on a sabbatical.

Alanna pulls back her shoulders and takes a breath, composing herself. “I really didn’t want things to turn out this way, but you are so similar. You look the same. You play piano.”

“That’s hardly the same. That’s two out of a billion things. We are not the same. You’re the fucking crazy one!”

She ignores my outburst and strokes over her white wedding dress on the mannequin with love. The face looks like a five-year-old had access to her mother’s makeup. A spotlight beams over the top of it, like it’s the answer to her prayers. She then walks toward a small silver cabinet and reaches for the key she wears around her neck.

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