Heartbeat Away (6 page)

‘What do you mean, seeing things? What sort of things?'

I shrug. ‘It's difficult to explain and I probably am going completely mad so maybe that's why —'

‘Becky, what have you seen?'

‘Places I've never been to but still recognise. A big park and a street, always the same street, and halfway down it a house with green shutters. And this house, I know every single brick, every roof tile, every plant in its garden but I don't understand, because I've never been there before.' I sneak a peek at her puzzled face. ‘And . . . that's not all. I keep seeing someone I've never met before. But it's like I've always known him.'

‘Him?'

‘A boy. About my own age. Maybe a bit older.'

‘So who is he?'

‘I don't know. But he's really angry . . . and I think it's my fault.'

‘How could it be your fault, Becky? You said you don't even know him.'

There's an awkward pause before I manage to say, ‘What if he's my donor . . .'

Leah stares at me. ‘Becky, don't!' she snaps.

‘Don't what?'

‘Don't beat yourself up over getting your new heart.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Whoever your donor was, he or she died. That isn't your fault, OK? They signed a donor card because they wanted someone else to have their heart after their death.'

We sit quietly for a moment.

‘So am I just going crazy?' I ask her finally.

‘Course not, don't be so daft,' she says firmly, but I can't help noticing the uncomfortable look on her face.

I miss school the following day as I have my weekly check- up at the hospital. They're running late at the clinic, and the waiting room's packed. After checking in with the nurse, Mum and I sit down on the last two empty chairs in the corner. Sitting next to me is a girl with honey-coloured hair, cut short in a bob. She looks up, then hands me the glossy magazine on her lap.

‘Here,' she says, ‘it's this month's. Full of incredibly thin models wearing unbelievably expensive clothes.' As she smiles, her green eyes sparkle mischievously. 'Just like last month's actually.'

‘Thanks.'

She's wearing a blue, round-necked top, edged with green lace but I can just see the faint, bumpy white line of a scar starting from the bottom of her neck and running downwards. I quickly avert my eyes but it's too late, she's noticed me looking.

‘Sorry,' I mumble. ‘Didn't mean to stare. My scar's still
quite red,' I add quickly, so she knows I'm not just gawping for the sake of it.

‘Don't worry. If it doesn't fade, ask for your money back,' she says with a grin.

I start flicking through the magazine she's given me, secretly wanting to carry on chatting but not quite knowing what to say.

‘Want to get a drink from the vending machine?' she asks a few minutes later.

‘Yeah, OK.' I glance at Mum who nods. The previous patient, a little boy about six years old, has only just gone in with his parents. They'll be at least twenty minutes, if not more.

We stroll down to the battered old vending machine at the other end of the corridor.

‘OK, you need to know this,' says the girl turning to me with a serious expression on her face. ‘The coffee tastes like tea and the tea tastes of coffee. Both look like dishwater and both smell of old socks. But, as far as I know, there've been no fatalities from the hot chocolate.'

‘Sounds delicious,' I say with a smile.

As we feed our coins into the machine and wait for our drinks the girl tells me her name's Alice, and she's here for her yearly check-up. She's nearly eighteen and had her transplant when she was eight.

‘I was born with a broken heart – literally – so when I had my transplant it was the best day of my life. It meant that I finally had a chance of living.'

‘So was it all OK?'

‘I'm here, aren't I? Drinking this poison?' she says with a laugh. ‘Don't remember the operation, obviously, but it must have worked. I'd been really ill before so it took a while to build up my strength, but now the world is my lobster!' She takes a sip of her hot chocolate and grimaces. ‘Errr yuck!'

‘What do they put in this stuff?' I ask, pulling at the top of my roll-neck jumper, yanking it up so it sits higher on my throat.

‘Best not to know,' she replies, glancing at me. She hesitates for a second or two then says, ‘I also had a bit of a thing about my scar at first. Didn't want anyone to see it. Then I thought, stuff it! It's a part of me, and what I've been through. Call it my battle scar now. If anyone asks or teases me I tell them I got it wrestling a bear. Actually, it's a great conversation starter with boys.'

I laugh. ‘So did you feel different after the transplant?'

‘Too right I did! For the first time ever in my whole life, I could play sports, dance, ride a horse – do all the things I'd never been able to do before.' She grins from ear to ear. ‘I'm going to train as a riding instructor next year. Can't wait. I could never even have dreamt about doing that before my transplant.' She looks at me inquisitively. ‘So how about you?'

‘A virus attacked my heart a couple of years ago. They finally put me on the urgent list and I had my transplant last October. But since then . . . I've changed.'

‘Who hasn't?' says Alice, nodding then taking a sip of her hot chocolate.

‘Alice, after you got your new heart did you . . .' I stop,
unsure whether to continue or not. I take the plunge. ‘Did you . . . Do you ever . . . see stuff . . . or have memories of places or people that you don't know and haven't met?'

‘Nope,' she replies, ‘not at all. Why?'

I start to explain what has been happening to me over the last couple of months since my operation.

‘Wow,' she says when I finish. ‘I've never heard of that before. And I've met tons of people who've also had transplants. They've never said anything either.'

‘I wonder if I'm just imagining it all.'

‘Well, having a heart transplant isn't exactly like getting your hair cut. I guess it could mess your mind up big time, if you let it. And all those drugs we have to take can make you feel pretty spaced out sometimes.'

‘Becky!' A voice I know well calls from down the corridor. ‘Becky! You're next for bloods!'

It's Natalie, one of my favourite nurses. I quickly turn to Alice. ‘See you later,' I say before hurrying off down the corridor.

We're a long time at the hospital. As usual, I have to have loads of blood taken, together with all the other tests and Sahasra wants to check my fitness level, which means walking and jogging on her treadmill while breathing into a mask, on and off for half an hour. I'm totally worn out by the time I've finished. When we get back to the waiting room, it's empty. There's no sign of Alice. I guess she's had all her tests too and gone home.

Mum and I head back to the car, but from the moment we drive out of the car park, the traffic's terrible. We get stuck in a jam for ten minutes, then find ourselves being diverted from our normal route.

‘Oh great!' sighs Mum as we're forced to slowly follow the long queue of cars in front of us down a series of narrow side roads, which seem to be taking us further and further away from the direction we need to go. ‘At this rate we'll be lucky if we get home by midnight,' she groans. ‘Take my phone, Becky, and give Gran a quick ring. Ask
her if she'll please pick up Danny from school.'

I do as she asks and I'm halfway through my conversation with Gran when I glance through the car window. I stop mid- sentence, open-mouthed. There, across the road, are the entrance gates to the park I keep seeing. That same park I've never been to but know like the back of my hand. It's exactly how I've been seeing it, with a wide tarmac path leading up to the bandstand and another path which I know winds its way down to a skateboard area and the boating lake over the far side. Stunned, I stare out of the window in total disbelief.

‘Becky . . . Becky, are you still there?' I can hear Gran asking through Mum's mobile as we drive slowly past the park railings. I try to say something but the words won't come out. My palms are sweating.

‘Sorry, Gran. Yes . . . everything's OK. But we're going to be late home . . .' I look frantically round for other landmarks – I need to know exactly where we are.

‘I'll collect Danny, shall I? From school?' Gran is asking.

Opposite the park, a large old church with a long, dusty stained-glass window squats between two smart office blocks. I strain to read its name on the weather-beaten noticeboard fixed outside. Saint Bar-something.

‘Becky? I said, shall I pick Danny up from school?'

‘Sorry. Yes please, Gran.'

‘See you later, dear, mind how you go.'

I manage to say goodbye then catch a last glimpse of the park before we turn down a side street and it disappears from view.

* * *

When we finally get home, Gran has cooked sausages and mash for Danny.

‘There's plenty left, Becky,' she says.

‘I still don't eat meat, but thanks anyway, Gran,' I reply, trying not to pull a face as the smell of cooked sausages hits my nostrils.

‘I have to cook Becky all veggie stuff now,' Mum adds with a small sigh as she starts to tell Gran about our long detour home.

‘That's up near where I was born,' Gran tells us. ‘Over the butcher's shop in the High Street.'

As I make myself a peanut butter sandwich, I pluck up courage to ask Gran about the park.

‘I know the one,' she says with a nod. ‘Opposite St Bartholomew's Church. Your Auntie Vi, Auntie Ruby and I used to go there every week for Sunday school when we were little. And in the summer, if the weather was fine and we'd been good, the vicar let us all carry rugs and cushions over the road to the park and we'd sing our hearts out up near the bandstand. There wasn't one of them newfangled skateboard places though. But we used to rollerskate up and down all the paths and Ruby was always making little boats out of paper to float on the lake.'

‘Does it have an island shaped like a horseshoe?'

‘It does. With ducks nesting on it, and a couple of herons, if I remember rightly. Great big things they were.' She gives me a confused glance. ‘You can't see the lake from the entrance. So have you been there before, then?'

My heart's racing but I manage a shrug and force myself to sound calm. ‘Only in my dreams, Gran,' I tell her.

Sunday morning. I wake early feeling relieved it's not a school day. After that traumatic first day back, I survived the rest of the week. By Thursday morning Masher and Shannon lost interest in teasing me, and despite discovering I'm behind in every subject, it was good to be with my friends again.

Although I don't see that boy again, he's constantly on my mind. Even now, as I peek reluctantly out of my bedroom window, I can't stop wondering who he is.

It looks chilly outside, but it's sunny with just a few wispy clouds scudding across a bright blue sky. It would be so easy just to get back into my nice warm bed and drift off to sleep again but I know I can't. I've been planning what I'm going to do today ever since we drove past those park gates, and as much as I really want to, there's no way I'm going to bottle out now. I'm determined to pluck up courage from somewhere and see it through.

I pull on my old running tracksuit. I haven't worn it for
over two years now but, being so ill, I've not grown much and it still fits. The elastic around the waistband's tighter than I remember, but it's the closest thing to a psychological suit of armour I can rustle up. The cuffs of the blue top are plenty long enough to stretch over my hands and scrunch reassuringly into my fists; it zips up snugly to my chin and the hood's warm. I push my feet into my old comfy trainers, tie the frayed laces and hurry downstairs, scraping my hair back into a short ponytail to keep it out of my face.

I glance in the hall mirror and do a double take. For a brief moment I almost fool myself. I could be three years younger, getting ready to go out cross-country training. It was just Mum and me in those days, but somehow she never missed a race. Looking closer at my reflection, I feel a faint sense of disappointment. The expression on my face is so wary, so unconfident. The stuffing's been knocked out of me and the old Becky's long gone. I've been changed by something undetectable to the human eye – a microscopic virus – just a few nasty germs which cause nothing but a runny nose and sneezes in most people. I turn away. I don't want to look any more.

‘Going for a run, Becky?' asks Joe in surprise as I go into the kitchen. He gave up nagging me to go out jogging long ago.

‘Probably just a walk,' I reply as casually as I can, as I help myself to some cereal and lay out all my tablets. ‘But maybe . . . quite a long walk. I might be out for a while.'

‘Great – it's a lovely day today.'

Danny looks up. ‘I'll come with you —'

‘No you won't . . .'

‘It might be nice if your brother came.'

‘No, it would definitely not be nice. You're not coming, Squirt.'

‘I was only joking,' Danny mumbles, as he carries on spooning in his cereal. ‘I don't really want to come anyway.'

‘Well, that's OK then,' I reply, glancing at his head bent so far over his cereal bowl that I can't see his face. ‘Maybe we could play a game or something when I get back . . .' I mutter guiltily.

He looks up at me, and beams, which immediately makes me feel one hundred times worse.

After breakfast, I slip into the sitting room, take the old A to Z street map from the shelf and slide it into my rucksack with my purse. I give a nervous shiver. This is the first time I've been out alone since my transplant – Mum's still driving me to school and back.