After Jennie's girlfriend,Jisoo, dies in an accident during their junior year, she reaches out to the recipients of the donated organs in hopes of picking up the fragments of her now-unrecognizable life. But whoever received Jisoo's heart has chosen...
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"The electromagnetic current of the heart is sixty times higher in amplitude than the field of the brain. It also emits an energy field five thousand times stronger than the brain's, one that can be measured more than ten feet from the body."
— Dr. Mimi Guarneri, The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing.
"The data [from a study entitled 'The Electricity of Touch'] showed 'when people touch or are in proximity, a transference of the electromagnetic energy produced by the heart occurs.'"
— Institute of HeartMath.
I woke up so slowly I could feel the layers of my dream slipping away, and I fought to keep it because I knew as soon as I opened my eyes, Jisoo would be gone, and I would be alone. Again.
Four hundred and one.
The house is so still I know I'm alone, and then I realize it's Saturday, and my parents are probably already out for their weekend walk to the coffee shop in town, followed by their lap around the farmer's market, before they head home for a Mom-mandated day without phones or email, working in the yard or cooking or reading together. It's part of the campaign she'd started to overhaul their whole lifestyle after my dad had stumbled into the kitchen on a Sunday afternoon sounding confused, his speech garbled. She'd raced him to the hospital fearing the worst. After hours of tests, the doctors determined that he hadn't had a true stroke but something called a transient ischemic attack, or TIA for short. They told us it meant there had been a brief blockage of blood flow to the brain, and though there was no permanent damage, it was a major warning sign. A precursor to the real thing.
From a chair in the corner of my dad's hospital room, I'd watched as my mom stood next to his bed, holding his hand while the doctor listed all the risk factors: his blood pressure, cholesterol, poor eating habits, stress level, and on and on. It wasn't anything my mom hadn't already tried to tell him, but I guess it was different coming from the doctor after his attack. Changing all these things was no longer a smart recommendation, but a matter of life and death.
When we'd gotten home, Dad was still shaken, but Mom had a purpose and a plan. Along with the medications the doctors prescribed, she was going to change every risk factor that could be changed. Around me, she tried to focus less on the health benefits of this "lifestyle change," but I knew what she was doing. She was fighting for my dad's life. Both of my grandpas had died before they were sixty — one from a heart attack, the other from a stroke — and she wasn't about to let history repeat itself and become a widow like her own mother. Or her daughter.
First, she hired an assistant at their accounting office and took on most of his workload herself. Next, she insisted he be home each night by dinner, a healthy dinner that she cooked, rather than stay late at work and grab something on the way home like he always had. I'd expected him to resist and say there was too much work to be done for him to make that change, but he didn't, and that's how I knew he must've been scared too. We all were. It had been nine months since Jisoo's death, and I think even my parents were still reeling from the realization that life could be gone in an instant, without any warning at all. In a heartbeat.
