Ticker

Ticker - Part 2

Doc pushes my wheelchair through the hospital hallways, pretending like he’s going to run over Nickerson, the orderly.  Gunning right for him.  Nickerson bolts out of the way while Doc and I burst into hysterical laughter.  Lucky for me, I’ll be seeing just as much of Doc in the next year as I have in the past. 

He’ll do my biopsies, one every few weeks, to make sure it’s all tick-tock-tick-tock.  Doc has already done one of them and it’s a total blast.  First, he makes an incision in my neck, then he runs a small wire through a vein all the way to my heart where he cuts a tiny bit out to run tests.  Doc says he’s collecting all the pieces in a pickle jar with my name on it. 

“Tell me the first thing you’re going to do with your new heart,” he says as we ride down in the elevator.

“You want funny or serious.”

“Let’s try serious for a change.”

“I want to learn how to swim.  And I want to be fast.  Really really fast.”

Doc glances at me for a moment and then says, “I can totally see that.”

We move out of the elevator into the first floor lobby.

Through the double glass doors leading to the outside world, I see my parents waiting to take me home.   Dad behind the wheel and Mom adjusting a pillow and blanket in the backseat for me.  

Panic starts to rise.

I don’t want to go home.

But I don’t want to be here either.

I’m a confused, raw bundle of emotions.  

“Doc?” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Hold up a sec.  I gotta ask you something.”

The chair slows to a stop.  I try to gather the courage to ask Doc about what Kat said last night, if it’s scientifically possible that a heart of someone can hold memories and if those memories can then be transferred into another person.  

When he crouches down next to me and I see his beautiful eyes, I lose my nerve.  Instead I ask, “Big boobs or little boobs?” 

Doc smiles.  There are crinkles around his eyes and a two day stubble on his face.  He’s looking at me like he never has before.  He reaches out and gently pushes the hair from my cheek and says, “Call me old-fashioned, but I care more about what’s on the inside.”

Back home, I discover with delight that I can now move up and down the stairs with ease.  I no longer have that suffocating feeling I got with my old rotten heart.  I’m so thrilled by my new energy that I do the dinner dishes.  I even step out on the back patio and water the plants. 

But there’s something else going on that I don’t tell anyone about.  

I’ve been drawing a picture. 

Over and over.

This freaks me out more than my new love of coffee because it’s always the same thing.

A triangle.  

A straight line.  

Two curves underneath.  

Then I fill the whole area in with a blue marker I found in the kitchen drawer.  Every time I find myself drawing, I rip up the paper and throw it away.

I’m in my room, sitting at my desk.  And I’m at it again, drawing that damn triangle.  I press down so hard the tip of the pencil snaps.