Heartbeat

by Elizabeth Scott

  “What did you just say?” he says, and if it wasn’t for the snarl in his voice—plus the fact that he steals cars (and now apparently drives them into lakes as well)—he’d be cute.

  More than cute, even.

  But he does sound angry, and under his hair, blond curls falling all over his face, his eyes are narrowed and very pissed-off looking.

  “Nothing,” I mutter, and he grunts and turns away. I stare at his back and only then start to wonder why he’s here.

  And why does what I said matter to him? Does he really think I would be sitting here, in the waiting room outside the ICU, and somehow be thinking about him? I mean, really? Yes, everyone knows who he is, but it’s not like he’s the kind of guy I’d go for. And besides, what do I have to be afraid of from him anyway? From anyone?

  “Hey,” I say. “Can I have a Women’s One?”

  He turns back around. “What?”

  “A Women’s One magazine,” I say, and he really does think I was sitting here thinking about him, because he’s glaring at me and plucking a magazine off the cart like it’s diseased.

  “What’s your problem?” he says, tossing it to me. It lands on the floor by my feet. “If you have something you want to say to me—”

  “Emma,” Dan says, coming into the room, “you can go in now.”

  “Great,” I say and get up, step on the magazine and then push past Caleb Harrison like he isn’t there.

  8

  Mom is...she’s the same as she’s been since she was put in this room. She’s still, so still, and I sit and look at her closed eyes, at her slightly downturned mouth. At the tube going into it.

  Her skin is strange-colored, almost waxy-looking, and her hand is warm but limp in mine.

  “It wasn’t much of a day,” I tell her, and look around. The unit Mom’s in has huge open windows by every door—I don’t know why—but I can see people in other rooms. Most of them are sitting like I am, hunched by a bedside. A few are weeping. A few are just staring, lost-looking.

  I look away, look back at Mom. “I turned in my paper on the New Deal,” I say. “And we’ve started a new book in English that I like a lot. Oh, and I got an A on my Algebra II quiz.” I talk and talk, spinning a story of a day filled with academic success. Filled with lies.

  Part of it is because I am looking at her and I want her to think everything is okay even though I know she can’t hear me.

  Part of it is because part of me thinks that maybe she can, that despite everything the doctor said she will somehow open her eyes and say, “Emma, I know something’s wrong. I can hear it in your voice. Start talking, okay?”

  Yes.

  Yes, I want to talk about it so much; I love you and I miss you and I wish you were here but not like this, I don’t want you here like this and I know I’m seventeen but I don’t want you to be gone. I want you to open your eyes and tell me everything is going to be okay. I want you to squeeze my hand and tell me something, anything. I want to hear your voice, not the machines that beep all around us.

  “Mom,” I whisper, and kiss her hand, pressing my cheek to it, eyes closed as I imagine.

  I feel movement, a slight shift in her but I know it’s not her.

  It’s the baby.

  “Why did you do it, Mom?” I ask. “Why did you try so hard for this when it was so hard on you? When the risks were so many? When you cried so much? When you ended up—when now you’re here?”

  I hear Dan’s voice as he comes back into the ward. He always says hello to everyone, like he’s so friendly. Like he’s actually thinking about anything other than himself.

  I open my eyes and see a magazine cart in front of the door.

  And I see Caleb Harrison staring at me again.

  “Hey there,” Dan says to him as he comes to the room. “I saw you earlier, right?”

  Caleb nods, looking at him and then my mother. I see him stare at her stomach.

  Dan walks into the room. “Lisa, Emma and I are both here now, and I thought we’d all talk for a little while before we have to go.” He pats Mom’s stomach. “I was thinking today we could talk about names.”

  “No,” I say, and Dan looks at me.

  Caleb, still standing in the doorway, looks at me too, and Dan glances at me, then at him, and says, “We don’t need anything to read now, thanks.”

  Caleb shrugs and moves off, the cart squeaking as he goes.

  “You know him?” Dan says.

  “No, but it’s not every day you see a girl sitting with her dead mother, is it? People would stare at that, don’t you think?”

  “Emma, honey, your voice—”

  “She can’t hear me.”

  “The baby can, though, and I don’t want—”

  I stand up so fast that I’m dizzy for a second. I don’t want to hear more. I can’t hear more.

  “I don’t feel good,” I say. “Can we go?”

  “I really was hoping we could talk about names. I’d like for you and I to...” He sighs. “Your little brother is in there, Emma. He’s in there and he’s fighting to stay alive.”

  I walk out of the room then. I stop at the nurses’ station and ask to use the phone. I hear Dan come out when he realizes I’m not coming back. I hang up the phone.

  “Emma,” he says, but I pretend I can’t hear him and walk out. He follows me, of course.

  “You’re hurting your mother,” he says when we’re waiting for the elevator. “She wanted this baby. She’d want you to be part of this. She’d be so sad to see how you’re acting.”

  I stay silent. I stay silent all the way to the car, all the way to the house. I don’t think of it as home anymore.

  “You say what she wants. What she thinks, what she feels,” I say when we get there. “She can’t do anything now, and it’s all because of you and what you want. So don’t tell me how she feels, because she can’t feel. She’s dead. She died trying to have your baby, and if you want to think about feelings and Mom, how do you think she feels about that? How do you think being dead makes her feel?”

  “Emma,” Dan says, and then “Emma!” but I’m out of the car and heading down the driveway, heading toward the car I know is waiting there.

  The lights turn on as I reach it, and I open the passenger door and get in.

  “Thank you,” I say, and Olivia nods, squeezing my hand before we drive off.

  9

  The phone at Olivia’s house is blinking when we get in but she ignores it, sits me down in her parents’ gleaming steel kitchen and puts a peanut butter sandwich in front of me.

  “Just don’t let me see you destroy it,” she says, putting a bag of corn chips next to me, and then goes over to the phone.

  I hear her talking while I’m opening the sandwich and putting corn chips on top of the peanut butter.

  “No, she called me from the hospital, and I said I’d come get her. I—look, Dan, I think she just needs some decompression time. You know?”

  I love Olivia. Not just for talking to Dan for me, but for a million little things. Like, she was okay that my mom loved peanut butter and corn chip sandwiches even before I was. I thought the idea was disgusting until I found myself wandering around the house three nights after she reached for toast and then broke. I was thinking about her, the things she did, like how she always had to put her wallet in her purse before she’d put anything else in or how much she hated peas.

  I was wandering, remembering, and I was alone. Dan was sleeping peacefully, no doubt dreaming of his baby.

  I thought about those sandwiches.

  I made one the way she always did, first pressing the slices of bread and peanut butter together, and then taking them apart to put the chips on before smooshing it back together, and it was good. As I ate it, for a moment I s
wear I could almost see her. Picture her smiling at me.

  “Sure, she’ll call later,” Olivia says. “Okay. Bye.”

  She comes back to the table, one arm extended. I hand her the chips and smile as she heads toward the pantry, eyes averted from my sandwich.

  “It’s not that bad. I’ve seen those gel things your parents eat.”

  “True,” she says, coming back to the table and sitting down.

  “You can see the sandwich now since you’re sitting here, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. What happened?”

  I tell her.

  “Oh,” she says when I’m done. “Names, huh? He must really think the baby’s going to make it.”

  “I guess. All it has to do is lie there and suck everything out of Mom that’s pumped in until it can survive long enough to live in an incubator.”

  “Emma,” Olivia says, picking up my plate and walking over to the shiny steel sink. “You know the baby’s not a bug or anything. It’s your brother.”

  “Half. And it’s—Mom is dead and it’s not and I try not to see it but sometimes it moves and Mom’s—she’s just lying there, you know? Her body is only there for the baby and Dan chose that. He said he loved her, that he’d do anything for her. What kind of love is that, Olivia? Would you want someone to keep your dead body breathing with tubes and machines because they wanted something from you?”

  I’m yelling by the end and Olivia has come back to the table and puts her arms around me.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t—my parents—our family’s not like it was for you and your mom. And the baby, it’ll never even know her. That’s so strange and awful.”

  “When Dan finally gets around to thinking about that, he’ll probably just say it’s proof that science can work miracles and it’s how Mom would have wanted it.” By the time I’m done talking, I’m shaking so hard my teeth are chattering.

  “I want to fix it for you, you know?” Olivia says. “You’re so angry, Emma. And I don’t know if it’s with Dan or your mom.”

  “Dan. Definitely Dan.”

  “And the baby.”

  “I—look, I do get that it didn’t choose for Mom to die. But she did, you know? And the doctors say the embolism didn’t happen because she was pregnant but it’s just...” I swallow. “There was that clot and everything else—she was so scared, you know, so scared, and now I see her every day and try not to wonder if she’ll wake up even though I know she can’t. That she won’t.”

  “Maybe you should talk to someone.”

  “Dan said that too,” I say. “What’s a shrink going to tell me that I don’t already know? My mother’s dead and I miss her. I’m angry at Dan for keeping her body alive so the baby he wants so badly can maybe survive. Mom would hate being trapped like she is and I can’t—won’t—forgive him for it. I can’t forgive the baby either, and maybe that makes me awful, but I don’t care.”

  “You really are angry. Like, I’m worried about you angry.”

  I shrug and stare at the table again. Olivia knows me and she’s right. I am angry. I am so angry I feel like it’s all I am.

  “At least I’m angry for a reason. At least I’m not running around stealing cars for fun like Caleb Harrison. I saw him at the hospital today. Twice, actually.”

  “Wow, so it is true,” Olivia says.

  “What?”

  “I heard his parents got him some emergency hearing and he got assigned community service for the thing with his dad’s car,” she says. “You know, picking up trash and stuff. But I guess he’s at the hospital instead. What did he say?”

  “Nothing,” I say, thinking of his, What’s your problem? and his stares. The second one was the worst. The way he was just looking at me and Mom, and how he must have seen me lying there, resting my head on her hand.

  “Nothing? You sure?”

  “How do you know what happened to him, anyway? It’s not like you’d have found out by going anywhere near a computer, so that means you talked to someone and that means...”

  “Yes, I saw Roger,” she says, and blushes. “But it’s not what you think. I was getting gas and when I went to pay for it, he was inside getting a soda and we talked for a minute.”

  “Uh-huh. So you were getting gas.”

  “Yep.”

  “Even though you got it two days ago and you’ve only driven to school and back since.”

  “All right, fine,” she says, mock-slapping my arm. “I saw his car in the parking lot and I might have wanted to see him, and I did but it was no big deal. Okay?”

  “How long did you talk to him?”

  “Awhile.”

  I grin at her. She stares at me for a moment and then grins back. “I know! We talked! Do you think he likes me? I really want him to like me.”

  “What’s not to like?”

  “The fact that most people think I’m a freak because I don’t use computers or any of that stuff.”

  “Olivia, we go to school with people who steal buses. And their father’s car. Oh, and that guy who always wears the same brown shirt. You’re not a freak.”

  “Well, not compared to Caleb Harrison. Or Dennis and his shirt thing,” she says. “But neither of them have social lives and I’d like one.”

  “You have one. You talk to people in your classes. You dragged me to parties after the horrorfest that was Anthony. You went out with Pete last year. If you ever started using technology, you’d rule the school in a week.”

  “Nice try,” she says, and grins at me. “Roger said I have nice hair, but what does that mean? It just lies there.”

  “Olivia, you do have nice hair.”

  “It’s flat.”

  “You’d like Caleb’s hair,” I say, and she blinks at me.

  “What?”

  “I just—it’s wavy and stuff. Like how you’re always saying you want yours to be.”

  “I thought you didn’t talk to him.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But you noticed his hair.”

  “We were in the same room, Olivia. He was about two feet away from me. It was hard not to see him.”

  “He’s cute,” she says, and now I stare at her.

  “No, not I think he’s cute cute,” she says. “Scary druggies don’t do it for me. But a lot of girls think he’s hot.”

  “Not the ones in my classes!”

  “No, you all think guys like Anthony are hot. Caleb’s got that whole quiet loner thing going, plus he has the cheekbone/eye/hair trifecta.”

  When I stare at her she says, “Awesome face, great eyes, amazing hair. A trifecta. What are you learning in your classes?”

  “Not that.”

  “Oh, right. How’s the New Deal paper coming anyway?”

  “It’s not.”

  She looks at me and then says, “For real?”

  I shrug.

  “I know you haven’t been buried in books like usual but I thought you wanted to go to one of those top ten schools. I thought you and Anthony were neck and neck to see who could have the best ranking and SAT score and all that stuff.”

  “Yeah, we were.”

  Olivia frowns and starts to say something else, but her parents come in. They are both blond, like she is, but that’s pretty much where any similarity stops. They work in IT support and their life—their world, in fact—is computers. I have never seen one of them without something that isn’t electronic in one hand. It reminds me of how Olivia and I started the whole hanging out on my roof thing.

  A few years ago, they gave her some sort of “does everything and can organize everything” gadget for her birthday and she came over, climbed up the trellis on the side of our house onto our roof, knocked on my window (and scared the crap out of me), and when I
came out onto the roof, she cried and we talked. And then I threw her gift off the roof.

  Mom calmed Olivia’s parents down, then calmed Olivia down, and then gave her a birthday gift from “me and Emma” and put foot rungs on the trellis so she could get up onto the roof easier. Since then, it was something we did once in a while for fun, but since Mom died, it’s the only way she comes to see me.

  Her mother closes the door while typing out a message on some impossibly tiny thing, never looking up. Her father, who entered first, is using a strange-looking square, holding it in one hand and touching it with a plastic stylus, frowning as images flicker in and out.

  “This cube isn’t maximizing its storage capability or its potential speed,” he says. “It feels like more of a design idea than an actual product.”

  Olivia rolls her eyes at me, gets up and gets two energy drinks out of the fridge. “Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.”

  “How are you?” her dad says as her mother smoothes a hand over Olivia’s shoulder. “You have a good day?”

  “Yeah,” Olivia says, and her Mom’s device starts to beep.

  “Have you eaten?” her mother says, and Olivia rolls her eyes again.

  “Yes. You?”

  Her mother nods, and Olivia looks at her dad, who flushes. “I’m going to,” he says. “But the cube came in and I wanted to see it. I’ll eat later.”

  “Something without caffeine or the word Energy! in it?”

  Her dad grins at her. “Yes. And hey, we have a little more work to do, but then we’re going to watch a movie.”

  “By yourselves?” Olivia says. “Without anything electronic in hand? Will you be all right?”

  “You,” Olivia’s mother says, and kisses her cheek. “Want to join us?” She looks at me. “How about you, Emma? You in for a movie?”

  I shake my head. Olivia’s parents drive her crazy and they aren’t around that much but they’re here, truly here, even if it’s not the way Olivia wishes they were, and I’m like a kid with her face pressed against the window, all the things I want and can’t have right in front of me.