Have a Heart

by Nashina Makhani

  ‘Still though, it’s not nearly half ‘s personal for me ‘s it is for you. I’s your life, your body. And yet, you’re taking it so calmly, so damn calmly,’ I refuted, my accent becoming far more pronounced than usual in my frustration, letters disappearing, bits of words being eaten up as they came out faster than they normally did.

  ‘Yeah, it is. It’s my life and my body and I’m going through it but it’s not like it is for you. For me, this is… I don’t even know what this is. I’m doing the best I can to process it, to understand. Being calm, blunt, accepting the facts, it’s my way of dealing because, the truth is, I don’t know how to deal with it when the problem’s mine. I can deal with everyone else’s shit and not feel any of it. But I don’t think I’ve ever had to deal with my own shit – not like this anyways. I don’t know how to deal with it so I’m just, well, I’m just not. For you, well, for one, you may not show it but you sure as hell let yourself feel it when you’ve got an issue. And besides, this isn’t just about what’s going on with me; I mean, you’ve been through it before with your mum. It was hell on you then and I don’t doubt that it’s going to be hell on you now. On top of that, I’m asking you to keep it quiet, not to tell anyone. Nobody ever asks that of me. And I hate to ask it of you but I don’t have a choice, you know I don’t.’ I nodded, not needing her to give me her reasoning for keeping this all from her family. ‘Honestly Jai, all of this, I feel like I’m asking way too much from you. I– ’

  ‘Don’t even think about finishing that thought,’ I cut her off, fully aware of where she was going.

  ‘I’m just saying- ’

  ‘I know what you’re “just saying” and I don’t want to hear a word of it,’ I interrupted again. ‘I’ve told you already, you’re not going to go through this by yourself. I can get why you won’t tell your parents – even if maybe it’s not the smartest decision in the world, I do get it. But we’re in this together, always; me and you against the world, just like it’s always been.’ I couldn’t help but let a little emotion slip into my voice but, given that it was only Alia I was talking to, I didn’t mind all that much if she noticed, not like I would if it were anyone else. But still, I cleared my throat a little all the same, acting like it was just something in my throat, for my own sake more than anything else.

  ‘Okay, okay. Chal, zyada senti maat ho,’ she chuckled, cutting the tension with the simple sentence. ‘Don’t go all soft on me now, the whole emotional thing doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s always calling me an emotional fool and now you’re telling me not to go getting emotional, that it don’t suit me. How’s that work?’ I questioned with a laugh, wondering about the inner workings of her brain as I did on occasion, despite how well I knew her; after all, you can’t really expect any bloke to be able to figure out how a girl’s mind works, not all the time.

  ‘You are an emotional fool. You act on what your heart says, do what it tells you to without giving it a second thought, only thinking about it once it’s already done. But you’re not and emotional person. You don’t let it show on your face, what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling. That’s why it don’t suit you,’ she explained, her tone so casual it was as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

  ‘Right, okay, if you say so,’ I said, deciding that questioning her any further would likely only serve to confuse me some more.

  Figuring we were due a change of subject at that point anyway, I tried to figure out what more to say, casting about for a subject that might fill the rest of the drive home – a drive made longer than the quarter-hour it’d usually take thanks to some kind of accident.

  Saving me from having to think too long about it, my phone buzzed, the notification light flashing a light blue, telling me I had an email. Slightly relieved, I unlocked it, a relieved sigh escaping as I saw the subject. ‘So, get this, apparently the deadline for our creative writing coursework’s been pushed back a week,’ I told Alia, scanning the email for any more information before locking it and slipping it back into my pocket.

  ‘You’re joking! I’ve nearly finished my final draft, I have. Spent most of half term working on it; didn’t even get to have my movie marathon. And now they’ve gone and pushed the deadline back,’ she whined, hitting the steering wheel with the palm of her hand out of frustration.

  ‘The movie marathon’s the important part then? Not the fact that you completely blanked on revising for maths and chem? You know, the other two subjects we take, the ones we have to sit five exams for in a few months?’ I asked, completely sarcastic.

  ‘Well, no, I wouldn’t say that exactly. But relaxing is important too, you know. Studying is of course but cramming information in when your brain’s already worn out is useless,’ she justified, tone sheepish and, from what I could see of her face, expression ever-so-slightly horrified at the reminder of the two subjects she’d forgotten about.

  ‘I’ll remember that then; tell you the same next time I get a lecture about spending too much time with my nose stuck in a book or my head in the clouds and not enough time revising,’ I teased, earning a brief sideways glare and a huff. ‘Oi what’s that for Little Miss Swot, huh?’

  ‘I’m not a swot Jai. I just value my education is all. You know that,’ she grouched, her face settling into a frown.

  ‘I was only joking Li. I know your studies are important to you; it’s just funny to rib you about it is all. Especially when you’re the one to say that relaxing is just as important,’ I placated, already rather regretting my choice of words.

  ‘You should know better than to joke about shit like that,’ she reprimanded, the joking atmosphere having disintegrated completely, replaced by complete seriousness. ‘You can have a laugh about anything ‘n’ everything else but you know there’s two things that I won’t take you making jokes about: school and family. Of all people, I shouldn’t have to be telling you that.’

  ‘I know. And I’m sorry, really, I am,’ I apologised in what I hoped came out to be earnest tone. ‘But I didn’t mean anything by it and you know it. Can’t help myself from making jokes, you know that better than anyone.’ Of course, I understood where the annoyance came from; Alia’d always taken her education more seriously than most people would. She was the only person I’d ever known not to whine about school at every given opportunity; sure, she complained every now and again – it’s only human nature after all – but not the way the rest of us did, not all the time. I couldn’t blame her really, not when I knew where it came from, that obsession, the need to do well. Coming from a family like hers, a family where there was yet to be a single person who had made it past college, it was only natural that she wanted to change that, be the first one to go. Her dad had done his A-Levels – he’d studied right alongside my parents. But, once they’d been done with sixth form, he’d gone to work alongside his dad while my dad had gone to do an apprenticeship and my mum had gone to work at a bookstore, being like me and not having too much of a head for school. Alia’s mum on the other hand, she hadn’t even managed to do college really; Jaya aunty had been born and raised in India, studied there up until she was nineteen. And then, in the typical story of mutual relations and an arranged marriage, she’d ended up married to Rahul uncle and moving halfway around the world.

  And then there was her siblings. They’d both gone into the family business straight out of school, her brother not even making it as far as college. Alia was the only one who that had the opportunity to go to university, to get out and be something more than just another cog in the family business machine; she’d long since decided that it wasn’t an opportunity she was going to give up. Nothing would get in her way, absolutely nothing, not even something like a heart disease.

  It was inspirational really, the way that she wouldn’t let anything deter her from that goal. Not so inspirational that I’d ever stop procrastinating my work but all the same.

  ‘Hey Lia?’ I called, unable to help myself from breaking the silence a
s my thoughts came to my tongue, ready to spill out.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘You uh,’ I stopped abruptly, holding back the words that were ever so desperate to come out, realising that, if I were to voice them, we’d be going back to the emotional conversation and I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to take more of that just yet.

  ‘What Jai?’ she prompted after a moment of silence.

  I shook my head, clearing my thoughts and settled on asking something that was as far from the topic I’d been planning on broaching as possible. ‘You said you’ve finished your coursework right? Or near enough anyway?’

  ‘Uh yeah, why?’

  ‘Well, you fancy maybe, I dunno, helping me with mine?’ I asked, running a hand over the back of my neck sheepishly.

  ‘What happened to buckling down and getting things done?’ she reprimanded, making me regret making that promise after mocks.

  ‘Well,’ I drawled, stretching out the end. ‘See, I was going to, really, I was. But then there was that Sherlock marathon on and then the movie channels just decided to go and play all my favourite films and I’d promised Zia I’d watch Beauty and the Beast with her,’ I explained, feeling my procrastination was completely justified. She laughed and shook her head, not bothering to refute the point, knowing it’d get her nowhere.

  ‘You’re never gonna change, are you?’

  ‘Nope,’ I answered with a grin, popping the ‘p.’

  ‘Good.’

  I let the silence linger a second before saying, ‘sooo, you’ll help me with my coursework, then?’ I asked again, pulling another laugh from her.

  ‘I guess,’ she agreed with an – obviously fake - long-suffering sigh. ‘Looks like I’ll have to save your ass, like always.’

  ‘Oi! What’s that supposed to mean?’ I demanded, affronted.

  ‘Nothing much,’ she dismissed with a small, secretive smile.

  ‘Uh-huh, I’m sure. Just you wait until you need help with your maths work, see if I’ll help you then.’ My only response was more laughter and an ‘as if.’ Huffing, I turned away from her, looking out of the window, my fake sulking only making her laugh more.

  I stubbornly ignored her, not turning back until the traffic finally started to move and she shifted into gear, disengaging the hand brake and letting the car move.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The funny thing about things that change your life is that they don’t really change it all that much, not at first anyway.

  Logically, I knew that that’s how things work but, somehow, I was still expecting everything to be different. I mean, it’s not like I was expecting the whole world to have changed but it hardly made sense that everything was just so… normal.

  Everything was just the way it always had been; the days still passed in the same way, with school and coursework and revision, books and sketches, paint and canvas and TV shows. Our topics of conversation weren’t all that different from before; Alia still nagged at me to study more, study properly, and I still ignored her.

  As we got closer to exams, classes were filled with past papers instead of textbooks and notes, our teachers gave us daily lectures about the importance of these exams and set up after-school revision sessions that Alia dragged me to. The weather got warmer and we took our study materials out into our back gardens with us, spending the afternoons and weekends that weren’t full of grey clouds and rain spread out on a blanket in the grass instead of sat at a desk or dining table, the LED lights that we usually sat under being replaced by the sun when it was out.

  And when we weren’t trying to cram information into our heads, we were trying our best to stop Zia from making mischief – something that became all the more difficult as she became more and more creative and found even better ways to get herself out of trouble.

  It was all the same as it’d always been, just regular life, nothing out of the ordinary.

  Except…

  There were the things that weren’t normal, the things that only I noticed, like the fact that Alia didn’t walk to school anymore because it wore her out. Or that she’d become so much more careful about the things she did, wasn’t as quick to jump into action because she was scared of the dizzy spells that kept creeping up on her. That sometimes she could go for days without eating anything but cereal and sandwiches, that she didn’t have the appetite for anything else.

  To anybody else, even these things might’ve seemed normal, just things to be put down to the stress from the exams that were fast approaching. Even her family could brush it off; despite the fact that Alia had always been confident enough in her ability to revise, to understand what she was reading and so never suffered from the same super-stress that I always did, second year of A-levels was enough to make even the calmest person stress.

  Of course, nobody else knew what I did. Nobody else knew that, while all of these things could very easily be put down to exam stress, they were also symptoms that could very easily indicate a heart disease progressing, possibly even heart failure.

  I was the only one who knew that that was even something to be concerned about, something to be looking for.

  I was looking, always looking, and, unfortunately, I saw what it was looking for. After the first few times though, I stopped bothering to mention it, knowing she’d just continue to brush me off like she’d been doing. The girl could be too damn stubborn for her own good and I was worried that her stubbornness might just end up being the death of her. But I knew better than to try and tell her that, knew that nothing would come of it except an argument – one I didn’t want to have.

  As we got closer to the beginning of May, the beginning of exam season, her condition continued to deteriorate; maybe she wasn’t one to stress overly much about exams but this year was different from any of the rest of them. These were the exams that decided the rest of our lives after all. You’d have to be some kind of robot to not feel even the slightest bit of apprehension. Add in all the goals Alia had set for herself, the pressure that came with them… well, carrying around that kind of weight might just have been enough to give anyone a heart attack, let alone a heart patient.

  As the symptoms got to be more worrying than ever, I went back on my decision to stop trying to reason with her, telling her that she needed to be careful, slow down and take a break. But all it ever led to was a lecture about how we were in year 13, at the end of year 13, it was no time to be taking a break. She kept promising she’d take a break once the exams were done with, never listening when I told her that, if she continued on the way she was there was every chance she wouldn’t ruddy make it to the holidays.

  But, as was typical of her, she didn’t listen to even that, acting as though it were no big thing.

  The medications Dr. Smithson had prescribed weren’t doing all that much either. There was only so much the drugs could do when they were used on their own, the doctor’d said as much when we’d been leaving after that first appointment. You had to make changes to your lifestyle, try not to do too much, limit your sodium intake – something that was more than a little difficult when you lived in an Indian household and wouldn’t tell your parents why you’d all of a sudden decided on eating less salt. Tane nimak na jotuhoi kawanu ma toh pota nu banow, Jaya aunty had said when Alia’d mentioned it, going on tell her how she had enough to do without making two separate dishes for dinner. Of course, given that she wouldn’t take time away from revision for anything aside from baby duties, she didn’t really have the time to be finding recipes and making them so she continued on eating the same food as everyone else. She was supposed to be keeping track of fluid intake as well, making sure that she wasn’t drinking too little – especially with her history of dehydration – but also that she wasn’t drinking too much so that water retention didn’t become an issue.

  She didn’t do any of it.

  Even after her second cardiologist appointment when the doctor increased the dosage on the medications and told her that all the changes she’d been told to
make weren’t without reason, that she needed to be taking better care of herself if she wanted to be able to make it past the end of the summer. My idiot best friend was far too stubborn to listen to anyone though, even the doctor.

  My concern for her grew by the day; she was doing the exact opposite of what she’d been told to do and it was clear that it wasn’t doing her any favours. It wasn’t long before I lost count of how many times I tried to get her to take a break, never directly saying it of course, but being sneaky about it. Without ever telling her the real reason behind it, I tried to persuade her to come into the city with me or take a trip to the next city over, telling her it was for no other reason than wanting to get away from it all for a little while. Unfortunately, I could lie to her about as well as she could lie to me – that is to say, not at all. And, while a lie of omission wasn’t being entirely dishonest, it was still a lie all the same so, of course, she saw right through me every damn time.

  ‘I’m fine Jai, honestly,’ she told me or sometimes, ‘stop worrying about me and start worrying about your grades,’ brushing me off time and again.

  Had things been even the slightest bit different, I’d have gone to her parents or even bhaiya and didi, told them that she was overworking herself and ask them to make her listen to reason. They’d find it more than a little weird for me to go to them without anything more than that; they’d tell me that it was normal, her throwing her time into work, especially at this point. And I couldn’t tell them why, it just wasn’t an option.