Things We Know by Heart (3 page)

 

“The heart, [scientists have found], is not just a pump but also an organ of great intelligence, with its own nervous system, decision-making powers, and connections to the brain. They found that the heart actually ‘talks' with the brain, communicating with it in ways that affect how we perceive and react to the world.”

—Dr. Mimi Guarneri,
The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing

COLTON STANDS BETWEEN
the bumper of my car and the blue VW bus's I ran into, taking in the damage. “It's really not that bad,” he says, squatting down between the two bumpers. “I mean,
you
took the brunt of it.” He looks at the clump of napkins I'm holding tight to my bottom lip. “That's gonna need stitches. We should get you to a doctor.”

I try to ignore the “we” part. I need to get out of here even more than I did before, but I've just complicated things exponentially. “I can't just leave,” I say. “I ran into someone's car. I have to make a report or something. Or at
least call my insurance company. And my parents. Oh god.” They were already gone when I left this morning and will probably expect me to be there when they came home for lunch, because I have been there every day for the last few weeks, since graduation.

Colton stands. “You can do all that later—you need to get yourself taken care of first. Just write a note. Leave your number. People are mellow around here. And you barely dented it. It's really not that big of a deal.”

I want to argue with him, but my lip throbs, and the warm stickiness of the napkins I've got pressed to it is making me queasy. “Really?”

“Really,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. “Hang on. I'll be right back.”

He turns and jogs easily across the street to the kayak rental shop, where a small crowd—presumably the family he mentioned in the café—mills around. The adults alternately eye their watches and glance around while a couple of teenagers lean against the window, absorbed in their phones, and the two youngest kids chase each other between the racks of kayaks. I should go right now. Leave a quick note on the bus and get out of here now, before this goes any further.

I hurry back to my car and duck into the driver's seat to grab my purse. The sudden movement causes a whole new wave of pain and stickiness to rush to my mouth, and I have
to take a deep breath before I dig through my purse for a pen and something to write on.

I look across the street, watch as Colton approaches the family of customers. He looks apologetic as he gestures back in my direction, likely explaining what just happened. They nod, and he takes out his phone, makes a brief call, then shakes everyone's hand again before turning to come back. I pretend to be so deeply absorbed in writing my note that I don't look up when his feet stop right in front of me.

“I can take you to the hospital,” he says.

I write my name and phone number at the bottom of the note. “Thank you, really, but it's okay. I can drive myself.”

“I don't know,” he says. “You sure that's a good idea?”

“It's not that bad. I'm fine, I—”

“Here.” He takes the slip of paper from me. Glances down at it. “Why don't I go put this on the car, you switch seats, and I can drive you.”

I don't move. Partly because I know this is a bad idea and partly because I'm a little dizzy.

Colton crouches in front of me so I can't avoid his eyes. “Listen. You need stitches, I just got the day off work, and I can't let you just drive away like that.”

He doesn't wait for me to answer but walks to the windshield of the bus, lifts the wiper, and tucks the note beneath it. Before I can come up with an excuse for him not to take me, he's back at the driver's side of my car, where I'm still sitting.

I look at him a moment longer, long enough to run through all the reasons that letting this go one step further is a mistake.

“Can I?” he asks. And when he looks at me with those eyes, something deep within them makes me say yes.

We don't speak as he drives down the main street, not at first. The sleepy little beach town has come to life now, and beachgoers crowd the sidewalks, heading down to the sand in their flip-flops and cover-ups, stuffed beach bags slung over their shoulders. I can feel him looking over at me every few seconds, and it takes all my focus not to make eye contact. Finally, when it seems like he's drifted into his own thoughts, I glance at him out of the corner of my eye, try to take in the details. Blue board shorts, white T-shirt, flip-flops. No MedicAlert bracelet. All this surprises me, like there should be some outward sign.

He seems comfortable driving my car, and I try to be okay with it, but I'm not. I don't think anyone else has driven it since Trent's been gone, and it feels like if I closed my eyes right now, I could see him there. Sitting in that seat, with one hand on the wheel, the other on my knee, singing loud with the radio and getting the words wrong on purpose to make me laugh. Working my name into every song that came on.

But there is no music on now, and Colton Thomas is
driving my car. A deep river of guilt runs through me, and as we drive, I try to come up with a new set of rules to deal with the situation I've created. I won't ask him any questions, and I'll answer as few as possible. I won't mention where I'm from, or why I was in Shelter Cove, or who I am. Maybe I won't even tell him my real name because—

“So, Quinn,” he says, keeping his eyes on the road. “Let's start over.”

I look at him now, startled at my own name. Then I remember the note I just signed.

“I'm Colton,” he offers.

“I know.” It slips out before I can stop it.

“You do?” There's a note of disappointment in his voice, one I don't understand.

I nod. Swallow. Wish I were anywhere but here. “Yeah,” I say, too quickly. “I . . . you . . . your friend in the café said your name.”

I glance at him to see if he believes me, then realize he has no reason not to. He has no idea what I know. A wave of nausea—or guilt, it's hard to say which—passes over me. I should just tell him the truth right now. Maybe he'd be so horrified he'd turn around and drive right back to his shop and get out, and that would be the end of it. I could leave and make sure our paths never crossed again. Close the door I shouldn't have opened. I open my mouth to say the words, but they catch and collide in the back of my throat.

“So you were listening?” Colton asks, with a hint of a smile. “Enough to catch my name?”

I look straight out the windshield and tell the truth. “I was.”

“And you're not from here?”

“I'm not.”

“You on vacation?”

I shake my head. “Just here for the day.” I don't say from where.

“Alone?” His voice sounds hopeful.

“Yes.”

We stop at a red light. He's quiet a moment, and I turn the word over in my mind.
Alone
. I've felt that way for so long. For four hundred days. Since the day Trent died, I've been alone
and
lonely. But right now, in this moment, I realize I'm not either one of those things.

I've imagined what it might be like to see Colton Thomas, wondered how it would feel to look from a distance at the person who received such a vital part of who Trent was. To look at a stranger's chest and know what lies deep within it. Trent's mom told me his grandmother was beside herself when she heard they had donated his heart. She didn't take issue with any of the other organs, but the heart was different. The heart was everything that made a person who he was, and she thought he should've been buried with it. I hoped, after meeting the others, that seeing
another person who was alive because of Trent would be a healing thing. The
final
healing thing. But I didn't, at any of those times, imagine that when I did, I would somehow immediately feel less alone.

“That's not a bad start,” Colton says, like he can hear my thoughts.

“Not a bad start for what?”

“A do-over,” he says simply.

 

“The Greeks believed the spirit resided in the heart. In traditional Chinese medicine, the heart is believed to store the spirit,
shen.
The idea of the heart as an inner book, which contains a record of a person's entire life—emotions, ideas, and memories—appears in early Christian theology, but may have ancient roots that go back to Egyptian culture.

“No other part of the human body has been so widely commemorated in poetry, so commonly used as a symbol for love and the soul.”

—Dr. Mimi Guarneri,
The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing

WE BOTH TENSE
when the ER doors swish open, and as soon as we step through the doorway, it brings me back to reality. Colton's reality, which, according to all his sister's posts, was lived in and out of hospitals, with endless medications in constant need of adjustment, extended stays, and emergency trips—scares that drove him and his family through these same doors fearing the worst. The thought of
it makes me want to take his hand in mine as we walk up to the check-in counter.

Behind it, a round woman in mint-green scrubs sits in front of a computer, clacking away at the keys. We stand there for a moment before she looks up and runs her eyes disinterestedly over my face. They land, for a brief second, on the bloodied napkins I've got wadded at my lip; then she grabs a clipboard from her organizer and slides it across the counter for me before turning back to her computer.

“Have a seat and fill those out,” she says without looking back at me. “We'll be with you as soon as we can.”

Her voice is monotone, like she's said those words a million times, and it makes me wonder what would have to come through the doorway for her
not
to sound that way. But I don't have to wonder for long. “Thank you,” I say, and she looks up again, but this time she catches sight of Colton and does a double take.

“
Colton
, honey! I'm so sorry; I didn't see you there!” She bolts up out of her chair and pushes through the door next to the counter, her hand on his arm in an instant. “Is everything okay? You need me to page Dr. Wilde?”

“No, no, I'm fine,” he says. “I'm great, in fact. It's my friend here who needs to be seen. She's got a pretty good cut on her lip. I think it needs a few stitches.”

The nurse puts a hand to her chest, visibly relieved. “Oh good.” She looks at me apologetically. “I'm sorry—I don't
mean good that
you're
hurt, just that Colton here—”

“Used to be kind of a regular,” he cuts in. “I'm sorry; it was rude of me not to make any introductions.” He smiles tightly at me and gestures to the nurse. “Quinn, this is Mary. Mary, my friend Quinn.”

Mary holds his eyes for a moment before she looks at me again. Long enough for something—a question maybe, or an opinion—to pass between them. It makes me straighten my shoulders when she turns her attention back to me. “Well, Quinn, it's a pleasure to meet any friend of Colton's.” She extends a petite but firm hand to me.

“It's nice to meet you too,” I say, shaking it.

“So have you two known each other long?” she asks, my hand still in hers, still shaking.

I look at Colton.

“We just met,” he says with a quick smile.

I nod, and the moment when it seems like he or I should explain further stretches tight between the three of us standing there, with Mary still holding my hand in both of hers.

Colton clears his throat, then gestures at the clipboard in my hand. “Why don't we go sit so you can get those filled out?”

“Yes, yes,” Mary says, finally releasing my hand. “You two go and sit down, and as soon as you're finished, we'll take you back to a room.” She smiles kindly at me, and it feels like an approval of sorts, one I'm sure I don't deserve.

“Thank you,” I say again, and we turn to find a seat, but Mary's voice spins us right back around.

“Colton, honey,” she says, looking at him with moist eyes. “You look so good; you really do.” She shakes her head, and her eyes fill. “I can't believe it's been over a year now. It's just so good to see you so . . .” She steps into him and hugs him tight to her before he can do anything else.

It takes him a second, but he puts his arms around her in a hug that's awkward and tender at the same time. “It's good to see you too,” he says.

Watching this moment feels like an intrusion when he so obviously was trying to avoid the subject. I turn and scan the room for a seat. There are only three other people in the ER waiting room: a guy slumped in his blue plastic chair like he's been there for far too long, cradling his arm in his lap, and an elderly couple sitting quietly side by side, each reading a different section of the paper. The man rests a hand on the woman's knee, a gesture that is so familiar and so clearly second nature for them both that it stops me where I stand. I can't remember the last time Trent rested his hand on my leg like that. But I do remember that every time he did, his fingers drummed like it was impossible for them to be still.

Colton's voice brings me back to the present. “Hey. Sorry about that.”

I pull my eyes away from the couple as he sits down next
to me and exhales roughly.

“It's okay; she was nice—once she saw you.” He looks at me and tries for a smile, but I can feel tension in it. “Anyway,” I add, trying to lighten it, “seems like you might be a good person to know around here.”

It's not a question, but it leaves room for a response. For an answer, if he wants to give one.

He doesn't. Just gives another tight smile and a nod and sits back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. And just like that he's a million miles away next to me in his blue chair, and I am alone again. I search for something else to say, something that will change the subject, maybe even make him laugh, but I don't know what to say because, well, I don't know
him
.

So I don't say anything. I pick up the pen at the end of the little chain and start the forms. It's probably better anyway, this distance. Better that we don't go beyond this. I fill out the forms in silence while Colton sits next to me, feet absently tapping the floor, fingers thrumming on the arm of the chair, and in those moments we exist in separate universes, like we did before I came here and they collided.

“You don't have to stay here with me,” I say when I finish with the last one. “I mean, if you want to go, it's okay. I'll be okay. You've done enough by getting me here, really.”

This snaps him back from wherever he was. “What? No.
Why would I go anywhere?” He shifts in his chair so he's facing me, and his jaw softens. “I'm sorry. I really don't like hospitals, is all. Spent too much time in them already.”

He pauses, like he knows he's left himself open for me to ask why. I can feel how much he doesn't want me to, and it's the last thing I want to talk about right now, so I don't ask. Questions are dangerous territory for us, and somehow we both seem to recognize this.

He offers an explanation anyway. “Accident-prone,” he says. “Like you,” he adds with a smile.

I see the whole sequence of events: me knocking over the coffee, running out of the café, crashing my car. And it makes me laugh—how it all must've looked to him. “I was pretty ridiculous back there, wasn't I?”

“No.” Colton tries to keep a straight face as he shakes his head. “Not at all.” He shrugs. Cracks a smile. “It was nothing. Nobody saw.”

“
You
saw. And I was a total mess.”

Colton laughs now too. “No, you just seemed . . .”

“Crazy. I seemed totally crazy. I'm sorry. This whole thing is really embarrassing.”

“Not crazy,” he says. “A little dangerous, maybe.” He smiles again. “It's okay, though. I've done worse in front of people.”

He looks at his lap, and the smile falters the tiniest bit. “I passed out once, in front of my whole class, in eighth grade.
Traumatized them all when I hit a desk on the way down and ended up having to get twelve stitches in my head. I had to walk around looking like a bald Frankenstein for a while after that.” He laughs again, but it fades quickly.

We're quiet a moment, and it hits me square in the chest. This story is familiar. His sister wrote about it—how nobody realized at first why things like that had started to happen to him. And then those things started to get worse, almost overnight.

“Anyway,” he says, turning to face me, “what you did was much more impressive.”

“That's one way to put it.” I look down, try to focus on the forms in my lap instead of how close we're sitting, but my eyes find their way back up to his. “Thank you for bringing me here. I'm pretty sure most people would've been scared off by that.”

“I'm not most people,” he says with a shrug. “And like I said, I was impressed.” He clears his throat and glances at the counter. “So go ahead, give those to Mary. I'm not going anywhere.”

As soon as I hand Mary the clipboard, another nurse in mint-green scrubs with wild, curly hair dyed bright red escorts me down the hall to an examination room. I sit on the thin, crinkly paper that covers the table and lower the hand that's been holding the napkins to my lip for what
feels like forever. It seems like a good sign that I don't feel anything warm or sticky when I take them away, but I feel nervous all of a sudden. Exposed.

The nurse peers at my lip from where she stands, then puts a hand on either side of my head and tilts it back gingerly into the light to get a better view. “So you're a new friend of Colton's?” she asks, almost matter-of-factly. There's that same thing in her voice that was in Mary's. Interest. A trace of protectiveness.

“Um . . . yes.” I don't know what answer is the right one, or if there is a right one at all. I open my mouth to explain, but the movement pulls at the cut on my lip and I wince a little instead.

She tilts my head back down so our eyes are level. “He is such a sweet boy. We just love him around here.” She stands, moves to the counter, and comes back with a small stack of gauze pads and a bottle of rust-colored solution. “Lie right back there on the table for me, honey.”

I obey, and she squirts some of the liquid onto the gauze, dabs gently at the skin around the cut. “He's been through so much, but he's a fighter, that one. Took it all on with more grace and courage than most people, you know?”

I nod like I do know, and she pushes off the floor with one foot, sending her stool to the trash can, steps on the pedal to flip open the top, and tosses in the soiled gauze pad. Then she slides back and squirts more solution onto
a fresh piece of gauze, again dabbing at my lip, only now, closer to the actual cut. I flinch when she touches it directly.

“Sorry. It's tender, I know.” She goes back to dabbing the edges. “The good news is it's small. Two or three stitches should do it. We'll get you fixed up and out of here in no time.”

“Okay.” I nod again, trying to stay calm, even though a quiet panic starts to rise in me. I've never had stitches before. Never broken a bone, never had anything more involved than a shot. I feel shaky all of a sudden, weak at the thought of a needle threading in and out of my lip.

She must see the fear on my face, because she puts her hand on mine and squeezes. “It's okay, sweetie. You won't feel anything after we numb it up. And it's right on the edge of your lip, so you'll barely be able to see the scar, if there even is one.” I feel my eyes start to water, and she sees that too. “You want me to go get him for you? Colton? Sometimes it helps to have someone in here with you, and he's an old pro at well . . . everything.”

It surprises me how much I want to say yes despite the fact that he's almost as much of a stranger to me as she is. But after seeing how uncomfortable he was out in the waiting room, I shake my head and lie for what feels like the hundredth time today. “No thanks, I'm okay.”

“You sure?”

I take a deep breath, nodding on the exhale.

“All right then.” She stands and peels off her gloves, folding them into themselves and then each other. “Someone will be in shortly to get you ready, and then we'll get you all patched up and on your way back out.”

“Thank you.”

“You bet.” She smiles at me again and pats my hand. “You just promise me one thing.”

I sit up on my elbows. “What's that?”

I'm expecting that she'll say that I need to be brave, or that I need to be more careful, but she doesn't. She looks at me with eyes that are kind but firm, and she says, “You promise me that as Colton's . . . friend, you'll be careful with that heart of his. It's strong, but it's fragile too.” She purses her lips together for a second. “Just be good to him, okay?”

A lump rises in the back of my throat, and I bite the inside of my cheek.

“I will. I promise,” I manage. Barely. My voice sounds small, scared, but she doesn't seem to notice. Or maybe she thinks it's still nerves about the stitches. She has no idea how careless I've already been, or that I know that heart of his maybe even better than he does.

She nods like we've got an agreement and pulls the curtain shut, and I lie there alone on the table, staring up at the holes in the ceiling tiles. They go blurry in an instant. I think of Colton, of how much time he spent sick. Waiting
for a heart. Wondering if it would ever come, and knowing what would happen if it didn't. Knowing he would die before he really got to live.

When Trent died, I thought the worst part was that I never saw it coming. That I had no way to know we'd already had our last kiss, or that we'd said our final words, or touched each other for the very last time. I spent the first few months under the full weight of those regrets, thinking of a thousand different things I would've done differently had I known they were going to be the last.