Everything I Thought I Knew

by Shannon Takaoka

  The truth is that, until I first connected with Kai, I’d never more than waded into the water north of the Golden Gate. But now . . . now I’d much rather be freezing my butt off and paddling like a madwoman than be safe on solid ground. Even if my arms feel like rubber and my last attempt to stand up on the board left me struggling through the shallows, tossed around like an empty bottle sucked up from the shore. Strangely, my usual cautionary reflex seems to have malfunctioned. I’m not worried that I might drown, or break a limb, or get eaten by a great white. I only want to skim across the top of the water effortlessly, like Kai. And I’m going to keep eating sand until I find the wave that will take me out of my head and make me more at home with this new heart. If only for a minute.

  Kai doesn’t know about my heart transplant, of course. The full wetsuit covers my scar. The only thing he knows about me at all is that I want to learn to surf. And I don’t know a whole lot about him, aside from the fact that he seems like he was born riding a wave. He doesn’t talk much.

  After I catch up to him, we float on our boards and wait.

  And wait. It’s a sunless day. The sky above is milky white, covered by a thick layer of fog, and the water is a hard steel gray. The wind whips at my face, its scent sharp with salt and brine.

  “Heads up,” he says, as a promising wave rolls toward us.

  I position myself on my board — not too far forward, not too far back — and start paddling into the wave like he’s taught me, my arms burning from the effort. It feels like I’m going nowhere. Then I remember how he’s always warning me about beginners wasting energy by paddling too shallow, and with all my strength, I reach into the water as deeply as I can.

  Right, left. Right, left. Right, left. My board rises with the wave. I can’t see where Kai is at the moment, but I hear him yell, “Pop up!” as it starts to break. The heart in my chest is pounding. We’ve practiced pop-ups a bunch of times on the sand, but I haven’t yet managed to stay standing on the water. Will today be the day?

  Kai’s advice echoes in my head. Don’t grab the rails. I place my hands under my chest and push up. Back foot first. I slide my back foot out from under me and then launch my front foot forward. Make sure your knees are bent. I twist sideways as I come up to standing, knees still bent, aaaaannnd . . . pitch forward, headfirst, into the ocean.

  Damn it!

  I surface as the wave rushes past, its momentum roaring in my ears, pulling me and my board with it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Our hour is almost up today. Which means there won’t be time for me to try to catch another wave. About ten seconds later, I see Kai passing by on the next one, riding it all the way in and hopping off with ease. Great. Now I also get to struggle out of the water like a flopping sea lion while he watches.

  He’s standing in the sand with his board planted next to him, his black hair dripping, as I trudge out of the surf.

  “You looked at your feet,” he says.

  I nod, still breathing hard.

  “You need to look ahead, in the direction you want to go,” he explains. “It’ll help you keep your balance. Also —”

  “I was leaning too far forward.”

  “Uh . . . yeah. You were leaning.”

  He only has a lot to say when it’s about technique.

  We make eye contact and my face warms up, which is equal parts embarrassing and annoying. Sometimes I wish I had found an instructor who was less “surfer.” I mean, I know this is kind of a cliché and all, but guys who surf are very, very . . . fit. Kai included. He also has nice lips. It’s a little distracting.

  “Okay,” I say, sighing. “Look ahead, don’t lean forward. Anything else I’m messing up?”

  Kai leans down on one knee and detaches me from the ankle leash.

  “Don’t get so frustrated,” he says as he pulls at the Velcro on the cuff, which I really didn’t need help with because it comes off super easy. “You’re doing great for someone who’s never surfed before. A lot of people quit as soon as they have a bad wipeout.”

  So far, bad wipeouts are my middle name.

  “Well, I’m not going to quit, but I do have sand in places where I never thought I’d have sand,” I say. “How does that even happen if I’m wearing a wetsuit?”

  Kai ignores my question and looks up at me. “Where’d you get this leash?”

  “Same place I bought the board,” I tell him.

  “It’s cheap. If it snaps and you lose your board, you’ll have to swim all the way in,” he says. “I’ll bring a better one for you next week.”

  He’s still on one knee and I almost blurt out, “Are you about to propose?”— but I stop myself. Making flirty jokes with a boy I’ve only known for a few weeks is definitely not something I did before. Besides, we don’t really have a joke-cracking relationship. Most of the time, Kai is all business. So what I actually say is, “Okay, thanks. I’ll bring some extra cash.”

  He stands. “No need. You can borrow one of mine. See you next week.”

  I nod. “Next week.” I pick up my board and start walking toward the path that leads to the parking lot, but I pause to call over my shoulder. “I’m catching one next time. Even if I have to stay out there till I can’t feel my toes.”

  “Hmm. If you can’t feel your toes, how are you going to keep your balance?” Kai raises his eyebrows as if he has just imparted some deep wisdom.

  Well, okay. That was kind of a joke, so maybe he’s not all business.

  When we were younger, Emma used to tell me that if you died in your dreams, you’d never wake up. “Think about it,” she said. “If someone is trying to kill you or you’re falling through the sky, you always wake up before.” Before the hunter unleashes his arrow. Before your body slams into the ground.

  Even though I was skeptical of anything superstitious, Emma’s certainty spooked me. “Dream your death, and you’re screwed.”

  But now I know this can’t be true. Because for the last few weeks, I’ve died over and over again in my dreams. Every single night.

  It always starts with me speeding toward the black mouth of a tunnel on a motorcycle. I wear a heavy leather jacket, steel-toed boots, and a helmet. Air rushes through the seams on my face shield and bright yellow lights streak by, blurring into a single fluorescent line. I lean into a curve and, as I’m pulling out of it, I see a Christmas tree, tied with twine, lying across the lane. I swerve, slide, hear the echoing screech of tires behind me. Time slows for a few brief seconds as I am sent flying. There is broken glass. There is the acrid smell of burning rubber. Oil-stained pavement rushes up to meet me, filling my field of vision. The last thing I hear is a loud, sickening crack as blood washes over my eyes.

  And then there is nothing.

  A nothing so complete and empty that I know without a doubt that I am dead.

  Until the phone on my nightstand sounds its alarm, ushering in another day.

  I jolt up in bed, heart hammering, and silence my alarm. It’s okay, I think. You’re okay. You’re in your room. In your bed. Not dead. It’s the “nothing” part of the dream that’s the worst. Worse than the crack as my head hits the pavement. Worse than all the blood. Is that what death is really like? Like nothing? It’s terrifying to think that in one instant you’re seeing and smelling and feeling and hearing and thinking and then in the next you’re just this . . . void. Even though I’m sweating, the thought makes me shiver. And my head hurts like hell. Almost like it really did just slam into the pavement.

  There’s a knock on my door, and a nanosecond later, my mom pops her head into my room. I always used to protest when she wouldn’t wait for my “permission” to enter, but now I cut her more slack. All the heart drama has put her through the wringer.

  “Are you awake in here?” she asks.

  “Yep, I’m up,” I say.

  Mom gives me a closer look and the little worry line between her eyebrows deepens.

  “Everything okay?”

  My pulse is still racing from the dream, so I
take a deep, calming breath. “I’m fine,” I lie, not wanting to get her all worked up over a nightmare.

  She sets a glass of water down on my nightstand and sits at the edge of my bed. “You look a little pale.”

  “Mom, I’m fine.”

  “Okay,” she says, standing back up, giving me “my space.” “Don’t forget your pills.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  Making sure I take my medication has become her number-one mission in life. She pauses in the doorway again on her way out.

  “Dad wants to stop for lunch in the city after your appointment. Any thoughts on where you’d like to go?”

  Oh, boy. I knew they were going to make a big deal out of this.

  “I still don’t understand why you both need to come,” I say, throwing off my covers and swinging my legs out of bed.

  “Don’t be silly, Chloe. Your six-month appointment is a big deal! We should celebrate, don’t you think?”

  I should want to, right? Today is my six-month postoperative checkup. Six months since my original model heart was removed and replaced by another. Now that I have reached this milestone, and provided that the heart biopsy that I must submit to this morning looks good, I will no longer have to see my cardiac surgeon every few weeks. It also means that I’m supposed to be able to get back to most “normal activities,” whatever that means.

  The thing is, taking a gazillion pills a day doesn’t exactly feel normal. Neither does going to school in the summer or my constant compulsion to just get in my car and drive fast, fast, fast, or the weird memory issues I’ve been having — for how long now? weeks? months? — or my now-nightly death dream. And the least normal thing of all? The constant, ever-present, can’t-get-away-from-it-not-even-for-a-second awareness of someone else’s original model heart beating inside my chest. Thump. Does it sound different? Thump, thump. Does it speed up faster? Does it skip in a way that’s unlike the one that used to be mine?

  I wish I could tell my mom and dad that it feels strange to celebrate. That everything feels strange.

  After showering, I pull on a pair of jeans and find a sweater to wear over my T-shirt. It’s always so cold in the hospital. Before heading out to the kitchen, I take a quick look at myself in the mirror on my closet door, just to make sure it’s still me looking back. Same brown eyes. Same constellation of freckles on my cheeks. Same not-quite-manageable hair. Still me.

  At least, it appears to be. Aside from the thump.

  Thump, thump.

  From the moment that I could talk, I wanted to know why about everything.

  Why do people need to eat?

  Why do my fingers wrinkle in the bath?

  Why don’t we get burnt up by the sun?

  Mostly because I was curious. It was fun to ask questions and learn the answers. But a part of me also really needed to know. Explanations were comforting, especially when delivered by my science-teacher dad:

  “Your fingers wrinkle in the bath to help you grip things in the water. The water tells your brain that things might get slippery, so your brain sends a message back to your fingers that makes the skin on them shrivel up a bit, so that it’s easier to hold things that are wet. They’ll go back to normal in a little while, after you dry off. No worries.”

  My five-year-old self had been studying the puckered skin on my fingers and was relieved to hear that it wouldn’t stay that way.

  “Or maybe you are actually an old woman named Gertrude disguised as my daughter,” he couldn’t help adding, looking into my eyes and squinting as he wrapped me in my pink butterfly towel. “What have you done with my Chloe?”

  “Stop it, Daddy.” I giggled. “It’s me, it’s me!”

  “Gertrude” became our little joke for the next couple of days — Gertrude, could you please pass the salt? How was school today, Gertrude? — until I moved on to another why, and another, and another.

  By age ten, the questions I asked didn’t always have simple explanations.

  Why are we here?

  What happens to you when you die?

  How big is the universe, anyway?

  I remember folding myself into the three-way mirror at Macy’s while my mom was busy with zippers and hangers, watching my reflection repeat and repeat and repeat into what seemed like an infinite number of Chloes in an infinite number of dressing rooms. I wondered: Would we all leave the dressing room and go home to the same house, the same parents, the same life? Or would some Chloes take a left when they stepped out of the frame while the rest of us took a right? And then what? How many combinations of lefts, rights, ups, and downs could there possibly be? Was there a Chloe headed to a fancy restaurant for dinner? One about to get hit by a bus while crossing the street?

  “Do you think other versions of us exist?” I’d asked my mom. “Like in other realities or something?”

  “I think you watch way too much Doctor Who,” my mom had answered. “I can’t see the mirror, Chloe. This is the last dress, I promise.”

  Reluctantly, I moved out of her way, still daydreaming about what all the other Chloes were doing. It had to be something more exciting than watching their moms try on fifteen black dresses that all looked the same.

  I don’t know exactly when I stopped asking so many questions. But by high school, I was convinced that right answers are what really matter. You can’t get bogged down questioning everything or risk being wrong when every test, homework assignment, and pop quiz has the power to add or shave a fraction of a percentage from that all-important GPA. So I made sure that I studied hard enough to earn As on all my tests. I selected AP courses and after-school activities based on which ones would look best on my college application submissions. I went to the library. I volunteered. I signed up. This rigorous attention to detail had a singular purpose, of course: a résumé competitive enough to earn me a spot at a great school. By the fall of my senior year, high school graduation seemed like it would be a formality — I just needed to show up, follow through on my final assignments, and claim my place near the top of the class.

  And yet, there was a small part of me that still wondered . . . Why? Why had my childhood curiosity given way to caution? Why did I worry so much about saying the wrong thing or making a mistake? And, despite my successes, why did I sometimes feel like my life was not entirely my own?

  But I pushed those questions aside. Because everything was on track. Everything was going according to plan. Until the thing happened that was definitely not on my to-do list: a failing heart.

  And now here I am. Instead of having lunch with my fellow summer interns or shopping for dorm room supplies with my mom, I’m sitting on an exam table at the UCSF cardiothoracic surgery center, freezing in a crinkling paper gown. It figures that in the one circumstance that my actual life depends on acing a test, no amount of studying will make a difference. Instead, all I can do is wait for Dr. Ahmadi to appear so he can tell me if my latest circulatory grade makes the cut.

  I’ve banished my mom and dad to the front lobby, mainly because I can’t stand it when my dad gets anxious and starts to pace. But also, I’d like a little time to absorb the news if the report isn’t good. I have no reason to believe that it won’t be, but if recent experience has taught me anything, it’s that the absolute shittiest worst-case scenario can happen when you least expect it. I hear footsteps in the hall outside and sit up straighter, adjusting the plastic tie on the gown.

  When Dr. Ahmadi walks in the room, he looks as happy as my parents did when I got a near-perfect score on my SATs. “Looking good, Chloe!” he says, as he holds up my most recent heart biopsy and EKG results. He hands me a piece of graph paper that maps the electrical activity of my transplanted heart. To most people, it probably looks like a bunch of squiggly lines, but I’ve viewed enough EKGs by now to understand what I’m seeing. I trace my finger over the pattern of low peaks interspersed with steep upside-down Vs. It’s showing a “normal sinus rhythm,” which means this heart is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do: p
umping blood into my lungs and out to the rest of my body without making a fuss. Zero drama is pretty much the best you can ask for when it comes to a heart.

  “All functioning appears to be normal and there are no signs of rejection, although you’ll need to continue on the immunosuppressants indefinitely, of course,” says Dr. Ahmadi. “But for now, things really look good. How do you feel about that?”

  I feel relieved, of course, but maybe not as relieved as my parents will be — especially my dad, who, if he were in the room right now, would probably crush Dr. Ahmadi with one of his bear hugs.

  But weird is the word that comes to mind first. I feel weird. Physically, things are getting back on track. My body feels stronger every day. I notice it for sure when I’m out paddling in the waves with Kai, although I’m not going to tell Dr. Ahmadi or my parents about that. I don’t have any chest pain. This is all objectively very good news, yet I can’t shake the feeling that something is not right.

  I study Dr. Ahmadi’s kind face, still young-looking despite the fact that his hair is flecked with gray. His calm manner has often reassured me, especially on the night when I was whisked into the operating room for my transplant, an entire team of doctors and nurses jogging along beside me. Maybe he will have a simple explanation if I tell him what’s going on with me now. Because sometimes my head seems even more messed up than my old, defective heart.

  There’s something wrong with my memory, for one thing. In the last few weeks — or maybe longer — I’ve been feeling like I’ve lost places, events, even people, from my life before. I keep seeing these fragments that my mind can’t seem to fully download and piece together. Didn’t I once fall out of a tree? Why can’t I remember when? Or where? There are faces that I recall, but not names. Scenes that appear in my brain without any other context that I’m unable to anchor to a fixed place or time: a windswept hillside blanketed with wild lavender. A blue house. A thin woman wearing a knit cap. I can tell you that the woman’s eyes are beautiful — a tropical water color that’s somewhere between green and blue; that her cap is charcoal gray; that she wears tiny, delicate gold hoops in her ears, but I don’t remember who she is.