Dead & Gone (DARAGON)

take another little piece of my heart now,baby

When I climbed out of my wheely
hospital stretcher and read my chart—
the one they fill out right after you die—I
saw where the doctor had scribbled
down my time of death (8:22 p.m.),
followed by three words I'll never forget.

Acute congestive cardiomyopathy.

Otherwise known as heart failure.

I didn't know it at the time, but that
doctor was wrong. My heart didn't fail.
Someone failed my heart.

At first, I was so mad at myself. I
should've been more careful. I
should've gone to the doctor for more
regular checkups, or taken medicine, or
not pushed myself so hard on the diving
team like I was invincible or something.
Because the moment I sat up and
realized I was gone, I would've done
anything—no, everything—for a second
chance. I felt like I had been lied to.
They had all promised I would live a good, healthy, normal life.
Dad had promised.

But as I watched the group of doctors
and nurses crowd around my chest X-ray
—hung up on the wall and clipped into a
lightbox—I couldn't help feeling confused.

All of the experts were staring.
Whispering. Pointing. Arguing.

"What's going on?" I said.

Nobody answered me, so I made my
way over to the lightbox, peeking around
all their white coats and stethoscopes to
get a better look for myself, at myself.

Now, I've seen plenty of chest X-rays
before (Dad used to bring them home to
quiz me and Jack on the different
sections of the heart), but this was a
first. None of those other hearts on those
other X-rays had ever looked like mine
did right now. Something was definitely
Not Right.

And as the picture of my heart stared
back at me on cold, unfriendly film, I
realized that everyone was wrong. My
heart murmur hadn't killed me.

My heartbreak had.

In an instant, the whole evening came rushing back, slamming into my memory like a thousand pounds of brick.
The force of it sent me backward, and I tried to steady myself by grabbing on to one of the doctors' arms.
But my hand went right through him and I fell onto the floor. Not that he noticed.

Suddenly, I remembered the last thing Jacob
had said from across the table.
The last words I ever heard as a living
girl. The four worst words in the history
of the English language.

I don't love you.

That was right before everything turned a weird, sickly shade of green.
Before the whole room went black. Before that terrible ripping, throbbing,
searing pain shot through my chest like nothing I'd ever felt or could have ever imagined.

I put my hand over my chest and listened. Waited. But there was no beat.
There was no familiar thump-thump, thump-thump. There was nothing.
"A heart doesn't just spontaneously sever," I heard one doctor say.

Um, wanna bet?

I would've sat them all down and explained it,
if there had been time.

Maybe if they had been in my shoes that night and heard what I heard, or felt what I felt, maybe then they would've understood how such a death could be possible. Maybe then they could've put their scientific facts and flashy medical school degrees aside for one hot minute and tried thinking with their hearts for once, instead of their heads.

If they had, maybe I could've skipped
having some expert cut me open to look
inside and prove what was already staring everyone in the face, right there
on my X-ray.

"You're all going to feel really dumb," I said, trailing behind the doctors as they wheeled me into the elevator and hit M for MORGUE. Talk about a place nobody wants to end up. The morgue is creepy enough just by itself, but believe me, it is way creepier when YOU are the one everyone's looking at, all cold and stiff—and oh yeah, naked—on a table.

Not that it was really, truly, actually me.
The real me was sitting on another table across the room,
kicking my feet against the metal frame, biting my nails.

Watching. Waiting. Wishing somebody would listen.

"It's right there in black and white!" I shouted.
"Isn't that enough for you people?"

Guess not.

I didn't like it one bit. The whole thing felt like a giant invasion of privacy.
I didn't want some stranger cutting me up so they could look inside and find out all my secrets.

My broken heart was my business. Not theirs.

But it had all come down to Dad, needing to understand. My dad, the mad scientist. To him, my death was a puzzle.
He couldn't make any sense out of it, so he needed to see with his own eyes.
Even though Mom begged him not to, even though she begged him to leave me in one piece.
But he couldn't bury his daughter without knowing the truth.

Unfortunately for me, there was only one way to find out.
And in the end, I'll admit, I guess it took them slicing me open for me to really,
truly believe it too.

I couldn't watch when the pathologist finally made his incision.
I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath as his blade made its slow, terrible migration down my chest.

They opened me up. All of me. Every last cavernous piece.
They looked in as deep as they could with their prying eyes.
Took all of their measurements. Recorded all of their findings.
Not like any of it could help me. But when they finally broke through my rib cage
and unearthed my nearly sixteen-year-old heart, I think maybe, just maybe,
their own hearts broke a little bit too.

There it was, exactly as the X-ray said it would be. Even though their science couldn't explain it. Even though it was the sort of thing that only happened in sappy love songs. I peered in over my father's shoulder, over my dead body, and stared. There she was.

My heart.

Sleeping. Silent. And severed in perfect,
equal, extraordinary halves.