Hole in My Heart//Michael Clifford

"Only Option Left"-1

"Denise! We have to go to the hospital! Get ready!" My mom called from her usual place at the bottom of the stairs. I sat up in my bed and looked at the time. 9:20. My appointment is at 9:45 and it takes 15 minutes to get there, oh crap. I threw on a hoodie, some jeans, my sneakers and whatnot. The dark circles from my lack of sleep lately that were prominent under my light blue-green eyes, my hair laid on my back as a ratty brunette ocean, and my both vein-y and bone-y body; that's all I saw as I looked in the mirror. My friends used to say it was weird that my veins were so visible, my parents just assumed it was because I was "skin and bones", as they said, but we found out later why. My sister, Christina, leaned on the door frame as I brushed my teeth.

"You alright?" She asked. I guess that it's as good as it gets. I nodded.

"Yep, never better," I replied as I dried my hands and rushed downstairs, Christina following closely behind. Mom was sitting at the table talking on the phone.

"I will... Okay, well I have to go, Denise has an appointment today... Bye." She hung up and looked up at us.

We all got in the car, mom driving, Christina in the back, and me shotgun.

Eisenmenger Syndrome. That's what I have, or as I like to say, a hole in my heart. Something about the chamber in my heart that holds oxygen-poor blood has a hole in it to where it lets oxygen-rich blood in and they mix. My doctor, Dr. Jenkins, said that if they would've caught it sooner, I wouldn't have so much damage to my heart and lungs and have a better chance of living. The operation that they did was just a quick fix until they get something else. It's usually is only in babies and most of the time it resolves itself, but mine didn't. It's pretty rare in adults. My parents were devastated when they found out that their little girl had some awful thing wrong with her. We found out about a year and a half ago when I was 16 (I'm 17 now), I was in gym class running. Coach just wanted me to go a little farther, but for the life of me I couldn't. That's about where I fell over on the ground and felt like my chest was on fire. Luckily Chris was home from work that day and was able to take me to the hospital after my visit with the school nurse. That's was the first day of many to come.

I'm the youngest of my three siblings,Christina, who turns 24 in three months, Donna, who's 22, and Ryan, who's 20. We are all pretty close, I'm closer to Chris than I am with Ryan and Donna. Though, Ryan took the news of my heart harder than Chris did, in my opinion. I guess you could say that Chris has a little more hope than he does. Donna just moved to New York almost 3 years ago now, but she said she wanted to move back to California because of everything going on. Me? It was hard the first few months, I thought if I even got tapped on the chest it was the end, but after a while I just decided to make the best of what's left. If I die today, I'm dead and that's really going to suck, wasting my life on hospital visits and remembering to take my meds. My last day could be thrown away, reading books or talking to myself.

We entered the hospital parking-lot and found a spot. My mom turned off the car and sighed.

"Well are you ready?" She asked with concern in her voice. I gave her the best smile I could muster up and clicked my seat belt off. The hospital smell always got to Ryan, he used to come to appointments when he wasn't at college or his job. He passed out once, so after that, he stayed in the car. I don't blame him, I would too. I think hospitals smell weird because they try to hide the smell of death from everyone. I hope to God that I don't die in this hospital. I hope that I'm doing something crazy or stupid. But I might just be in this boring old hospital. Maybe my blood pressure will start going down and they'll call a code blue, but not get to me in time to 'save my life'.

The receptionist talked to my mom, asked her about her day or whatever, then we went to see Dr. Jenkins. He's supposedly the best in the business, but to tell you the truth I bet I could tell you more about my problem than he could. Not that he's not smart, it's just there's not a lot that they know about it.