A Change of Heart {h.s.}

3

Harry

The sound of the house phone scares the shit out of me as it wakes me up in the middle of the night. I sit up, trying to figure out if it was a dream or reality as the sound of my mom's footsteps fly through the house to stop the noise. I try to listen, wondering for a moment if a family member died, but mostly thinking about how weird all of this is.

It's weird for two reasons:

1. Our house phone is basically a fossil. Nobody, I mean nobody, uses it anymore.

2. It's the middle of the fucking night.

Knowing that I'll never be able to go back to sleep until I figure out who called and what it was for, I stand up, pushing my hair away from my eyes and lazily making my way into the kitchen, spotting mom resting her elbows on the counter with the phone to her ear and staring at the wall like it's the most interesting thing in the world.

"Absolutely," she says. "We'll...we'll be there right away. Thank you so much."

She hangs up the phone, still staring at the wall while my dad and I look at her like she's nuts. Just like that, she jumps in the air and starts frantically running around, grabbing her purse and her keys and putting her coat on even though it's still kind of warm out.

"Mom," I say, still looking at her like she's nuts. "Want to tell us what you're doing?"

"We have to go. We have t--" She cuts herself off, completely out of breath as she looks at me, then my dad, then me again. "Oh my god."

She forcefully wraps me in a hug, squeezing so hard that I can feel her shaking.

"What the hell is going--" I try to let out, although her hug is making it even more difficult to breathe than usual. She pulls away, her eyes filling up with tears as she looks at me with a smile.

"They've got a heart for you, Harry," she whispers, catching me off guard.

My dad and my mom hug and I stand completely still, unsure of what to say or do or think while they embrace each other and this moment with all the joy in the fucking world.

I can feel my heart racing in my chest and I wonder if it'll collapse at any moment, which would be really fucking nice so then I wouldn't have to go through with this.

This can't be real.

This isn't part of the plan.

My plan.

My mom ushers me to the car and places me in the passenger seat, crying and sniffling and laughing all at the same time which is sweet, but also kind of annoying. Maybe it's not, I don't know. Maybe I'm just being dramatic because I am on the way to a surgery that I was sure would never happen, a surgery that will change literally everything from here on out. Every single fucking thing.

I need to find a way out of this.

My dad races through town, almost running about ten red lights along the way. I think briefly about jumping out of the car. With dad's speed and my already failing vital organ, there's no way I'd survive. It's a bit messy, and would probably drive at least my mom to the nearest mental institution for the rest of her days, but dammit, I'm fucking desperate here.

We pull into the hospital and mom jumps out of the car and so does my dad, whereas I just sit there, still trying to wrap my head around the past twenty minutes and adjusting to the sudden shift in the earth.

I'm getting a new heart.

This new heart will change my life.

I'll be able to be normal.