With This Heart

by R.S. Grey

  “ Yeah like a week or two ago. I should have invited you to my graduation.”

  She laughed, a sad little laugh. “You had a graduation?”

  “ My mom and dad made this giant deal of it. They ordered a cake. Oh, and they printed out my certificate and had it placed in this extravagant gold frame.”

  “ Where is it now?”

  “ Behind my door in my bedroom. It’s pretty ugly, but I told them I would hang it up soon.”

  A part of my brain warned me to walk on eggshells, that I was being insensitive to Caroline, complaining of things like ugly framed diplomas, when she would never get one of her own. However, a bigger part of me remembered that she was my best friend and if I couldn’t be honest with her then we had nothing left.

  “ When do you get to come home, Caro?” I asked.

  “ Soon I hope. Maybe this week.”

  “ That’s awesome.” I tried to have genuine hope in my voice, but it was hard when I knew that she was going home with cancer still in tow.

  “ My mom has me going to some career counselor tomorrow,” I began, hoping the situation would make her laugh, “but I’ll stop by after that and if you’re out by Wednesday, let’s get coffee somewhere. We’ve never done that before. Y’know, just sitting somewhere and chatting about real-life guys… not just movie stars.”

  I could hear her smile through the phone when she replied, “We’d have to actually meet them before we did that.”

  “ I’m working on it…” I murmured.

  “ Alright, I’ll see you then.”

  “ Bye, Caroline.”

  …

  Precisely thirty minutes before my counseling session, Mom picked me up in her fancy silver SUV. I slid onto the cool cream leather, and she gave me one of her isn’t-life-grand smiles. My dad made enough at his job so that we never had to worry about medical bills, which in turn allowed my mom to devote every ounce of her spare time in the past nineteen years to making sure I was happy and healthy.

  “ Mom, thanks for picking me up and coming with me today.”

  A smile spread across her face and I knew it was the right thing to say. Sometimes I got so lost in the cynical side of life that remembering to feel extremely freaking lucky about certain things just slipped through the cracks.

  Oh yeah, I should apologize in advance. If you’re reading this because you thought I was inherently selfless, you might want to turn back now. Most of my worldly knowledge comes from quotes from famous books, minimally acclaimed documentaries, and Reddit.

  We drove downtown to a shiny new medical complex. I’d never been to any sort of counseling, but I’d looked Dr. Lucas up last night and she seemed to know her stuff. The little plaque beneath her office read: “Dr. Patricia Lucas: Life Coach, Career Counselor”.

  I was still mulling over that bit of information when we strolled into the waiting room. Above the shiny granite check-in desk, there was a massive stenciled quote: “ Clear your mind of can’t ”. I tried to do just that, but nothing really happened. I shifted in my Keds awkwardly before taking a seat. I wasn’t quite sure what it really meant, because it wasn’t as if I had a dream to be an astronaut and I was sitting around thinking: “Now, Abby, you know you have to have perfect vision for that job and you only have 20/50…so you CAN’T be an astronaut”. Having a career goal in life would have been a luxury for me. Every time I tried to think about the future, I felt an overwhelming pressure in my chest. How could I make a career decision when there were so many people depending on me to do something noble with my second chance at life?

  But that’s why I was at the life coach; I suppose she might illuminate it all for me.

  “ So, Abby, tell me a little bit about yourself,” Dr. Lucas prodded with a gentle smile.

  I wanted to be helpful, but nothing really came to mind other than pre-transplant information that I’m sure mom had already filled her in on. My hobby was being sick. My hobby was waiting. Waiting for the beeper to go off. There wasn’t room for anything else.

  “ I’m not sure there’s much to tell,” I offered genuinely, no hint of teenage-attitude present.

  Dr. Lucas dressed really well: J. Crew pencil skirt and slim-fitting blouse. Her outfit told me I could put my future in her hands. She wouldn’t steer me wrong.

  “ I like your outfit,” I offered, because I felt bad about my lack of personal details to divulge.

  She laughed shyly and then scanned over my outfit. “Thanks, I like yours too, Abby.”

  She was trying to earn my trust and make me feel at ease. I looked down at my clothes. I never strayed from the basics most of the time: Jean cut-offs of various levels of distressing and pretty, summer tops. It was easy and I prided myself on taking 0.5 seconds to get ready in the morning. Brush hair, brush teeth, moisturizer, and hair in a messy bun or side braid— done. Makeup was for the birds (or you know, girls who were actually on guys’ radars).

  “ Thanks…” I dragged it out awkwardly, not sure where the counseling session was going to go from there. Were we just going to compliment each other for 60 minutes?

  “ Your mother told me you earned your GED a few weeks ago?”

  I nodded. “It wasn’t so bad.”

  “ Have you put any thought toward applying to college?” She broached the subject lightly, as if she didn’t want to offend me.

  Of course I had. Everyone thinks about going to college. I had read enough New Adult Romances to know that the moment I stepped on campus, I would surely be noticed by the mysterious loner jock or hot nerd that didn’t get noticed in high school, or maybe the off-limits TA.

  “ Yes. I’ve put some thought into it,” I offered plainly.

  “ And?”

  “ And that’s all. I’ve thought about it.”

  She nodded for what felt like an eternity after that, scanning my face and acting as if she was reading between the lines. Could she discern something in my sage green eyes that had eluded me in the mirror that morning? Maybe my future career path was tattooed around my irises in plain view of everyone but me.

  “ Abby, I’m going to have you take a career aptitude assessment. I always give this to individuals like yourself; those who find themselves unsure of what they would enjoy doing in life.” She didn’t wait for my response. She stood to retrieve the test and a pencil from her desk.

  I blurted out, “Can anyone be a Life Coach? I’ve never heard of it before.”

  She cleared her throat, obviously surprised by my question. I didn’t want to be disrespectful of her in her own office, but it just seemed silly to me in a way. Counseling is counseling and I’m sure people genuinely benefit from it, but life seemed to be quite a strange thing and to think that any of us knows enough to not only coach ourselves in it, but to coach others as well… it just made me think of that quote from Socrates that said: “true wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us” or something.

  Weren’t we all just faking it anyway?

  “ There’s no real regulation of it, but I also have a master’s degree in family counseling and have had twenty years of experience in helping people meet their life goals.”

  She had me there. She had twenty years of experience and I had only been alive nineteen years, so surely she knew more about what I should do than I did.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I was lying awake that Tuesday night, tossing and turning. Nothing seemed to lull me to sleep. I tried turning on white noise (it was supposed to sound like beluga whales under water, but it skewed more toward creepy and I turned it off), rereading a boring book, and suffocating my face a little bit with a pillow in hopes that I would pass out. I finally caved and texted Beck.

  Abby : Are you awake?

  I didn’t think to check the time until after I sent the message. It was two-thirty in the morning. Whoops. My phone vibrated in my hand a
nd I thought he had texted back, but when I looked down my eyes practically bulged out of my face. He was calling me, like a real person would do. I played with the idea of ignoring it, but curiosity won out.

  “ Hello?” I croaked, apparently my vocal cords weren’t aware that they were still needed for the day.

  “ Abby.” I could hear his smile through the phone. I had forgotten the way my name sounded on his lips.

  “ Hi,” I chirped for lack of any better conversational skills.

  “ Hi.”

  “ What are you doing up so late?” I asked.

  He cleared his throat and then I heard rustling in the background. Was he on his bed? An image of him in boxers instantly flitted through my mind.

  “ Watching The Walking Dead .”

  Ten points for Beckindor. I loved that show. “Isn’t it a little late for that?” I asked, trying to sound aloof.

  “ I usually have a hard time getting to sleep.”

  “ Maybe it’s because you’re watching zombies,” I suggested.

  He chuckled. “Correction: people killing zombies.”

  “ I used to watch that show, but the medical inaccuracies pissed me off.” This aloof thing wasn’t really working. I just sounded bitchy and constipated.

  “ Yeah, I watch zombie shows because of their strict adherence to reality, too.”

  Even I had to laugh at that.

  “ I get your point, but c’mon. Not even in a TV show can you have zombie guts spread all over your face and NOT get the virus. If someone coughs two apartments down from me, I catch a cold.”

  He laughed then, and I smiled wide into the darkness of my room. It felt important that he thought I was funny, or at least interesting. He seemed like the coolest person ever to grace my life and I didn’t want to be a disappointment to him.

  “ Why are you awake, Abby?”

  “ For reasons unexplained. My brain doesn’t want to shut off,” I said.

  “ I wish I could help you,” he said, and my heart leapt.

  “ You are…sort of,” I admitted, only because his voice sounded so sincere.

  “ Did you know that no one knows why our bodies demand sleep?” he offered, and I sat up against my pillows.

  “ What? I thought that was decided ages ago?”

  “ Nope. There’s a ton of stuff that happens while we sleep, but there’s not one main reason.”

  “ What if it’s for some really strange reason?”

  “ Like what?” he asked with amusement.

  Silence hung on the phone line, amplifying each of our shallow breaths until I finally cut it off.

  “ Like… I don’t know.” I tried really hard to come up with a reason, but I couldn’t because I was already wondering about something else. “What if you could pick what would happen to you while you slept? Like if you had a really bad day, you could erase it. Or if you had cancer, you could ask your body to get rid of it. Or if you were really fat, you could wake up skinny.”

  Beck was quiet after that, and I thought for a moment he had fallen asleep.

  “ I don’t think we should erase the bad days,” he finally announced.

  “ Hmm.”

  “ What if the only way it worked is if you transferred those things— your shitty day or cancer— to other people while you slept?” he asked.

  “ Conservation of energy. Or maybe collectivism in practice,” I said.

  “ Exactly,” he said.

  I rolled over to face my window so I could look out into the wild nature surrounding me. No, that’s not true. I stared outside and my view was cut off by the apartment building that sat three feet from mine. I could see a sloping brown roof and layers of white siding.

  “ When you point it out like that, I don’t have an answer. But I do know that we do things everyday that affect people almost as implicitly as what you’re suggesting. I’ve caused people to have bad days. I’m a bitchy teenager to my parents 50% of the time. Companies that make junk-food aid in America’s quest to be the fattest-country-ever, while their CEOs stay skinny and rich.” I was sort of rambling. The topic was interesting and Beck was easy to talk to.

  “ Nah, I bet they’re fat, too,” he laughed.

  I smiled. “Me too.”

  “ Fat cats ,” he quipped.

  “ Fat cats ,” I repeated for emphasis.

  “ So, what about when you cause people to have good days?” Beck mentioned.

  I nodded into the darkness and thought about that idea for a little while.

  “ One time, when I was young, I was in the hospital for some check-up or something. I was walking down the hallway with a teddy bear in my arm that was pretty much my best friend and sole confidant at that age.”

  I made sure to leave out any details about my old disease while describing my visit.

  “ Seems like a respectable type of bear,” he said.

  “ He was. The best kind,” I said. “Anyway, I was in the hospital and a little girl was being carted down the hallway next to me on a hospital bed that swallowed her up— it was so big. I thought she was the same age as me because she looked about my size. I didn’t know where they were taking her, but for this really long expanse of hallway, our eyes locked and we just stared at each other. I can’t remember what I saw in her eyes, but even as a kid I knew she had it worse than I did. I was walking, holding onto my teddy bear and my mom’s hand, and she was being carted by some nurse to god knows where.”

  “ You gave her that bear didn’t you?”

  “ Yes. Right before she was pushed into the elevator. I remember sort of half tossing, half tripping in my journey to get to her.”

  “ Were you sad that you gave up your best friend? Or just happy that you made someone’s day less worse?”

  “ Probably neither. I was too young to even realize what I was actually doing.”

  “ I wonder what that bear is doing now...”

  “ He’s probably a fat cat,” I quipped.

  He laughed a deep rumbling laugh that was too good for this earth.

  “ What’s your full name, Abby?” he asked out of the blue.

  “ Abby Mae McAllister.”

  “ Well Abby Mae… it’s now 3:08 in the morning.”

  “ That’s late,” I said.

  “ Early,” he corrected.

  “ What’s yours?”

  “ Beckham Dilan Prescott.”

  What a fancy name. Much better than Abby Mae.

  “ Well Beck ham , we should go to bed,” I declared, because it seemed like he wanted to hang up. I could’ve talked for the rest of my life.

  “ You’re right. Morning, Abby.”

  I smiled at his joke. “Morning, Beck.”

  After I’d hung up, I stared at the phone screen in a daze. Beckham Dilan Prescott , I repeated out loud.

  …

  Caroline was still in the hospital on Wednesday, which rendered our coffee shop idea null and void. Instead, I picked up two hot chocolates and a piece of lemon pound cake from Starbucks on my way to the hospital. It seemed like a shitty alternative, but at least it was something .

  Caroline deserved a freaking normal Starbucks experience.

  On a whim, I drove past the hospital and headed toward the mall to find one of those candle stores. I hadn’t actually been to the mall in years, it always seemed like too much of an undertaking, but there I was, meandering through housewives and pushy sales people. No, I don’t want to try your hand cream or hair straightener, I just want to get my cancerific friend a candle.

  I could only find one candle that was even remotely close to the trademark coffee scent. It was called Donut Shop. Donut Shop actually smelled nothing like coffee, but I was betting on the fact that maybe Caroline was too hopped up on drugs to notice.

  You should know that I also stopped to get her an actu
al donut after that. I realized that if she could in fact still smell, and I arrived with a donut candle sans donut, then it would make me the shittiest friend ever.

  She didn’t quite understand any of this by the time I got to the hospital and explained it to her.

  “ Thanks for the donut,” she said smiling as I stuffed the candle back into my purse. Note to anyone that cares: they don’t actually let you light candles in hospitals due to the whole fire hazard thing… not even if you promise to be really careful.

  “ How has life in prison been?”

  “ Can we not talk about it? Don’t you have any juicy stories yet? You’ve been living on your own for a while now… I need to hear about something other than my illness for like five minutes. The other day you mentioned you were working on meeting guys? Any luck?”

  I nodded and broke off a piece of the lemon pound cake. I hadn’t actually told anyone about Beck yet. To be honest, at that point I still wondered if maybe I had a brain tumor like that doctor did on Grey’s Anatomy and Beck wasn’t actually real at all. Wait, was Denny real? I couldn’t remember.

  I went out on a limb and told her about Beck anyway.

  “ He just walked up to you at a funeral home?” she asked, thoroughly confused.

  “ Yeah, it was really weird.”

  The sunlight streaming in through the window highlighted her dark brown hair and hollowed cheekbones. I hadn’t remembered her looking so pale the week before.

  “ But you said he was really hot?” She arched her eyebrows suspiciously.

  “ Yes, much too good-looking for normal girls.”

  “ Maybe he’s a prostitute,” she offered.

  “ Maybe he’s a Russian spy,” I said, my eyes growing wide with wonder.

  “ Maybe he’s a neo-Nazi,” she replied with a grin.