“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: pumping 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.
These gaps in my memory, or whatever they are, are scaring me. And I haven’t mentioned them to my mom or dad yet because I don’t want to scare them. But I’m wondering: Could my brain somehow have been damaged during those weeks I spent connected to an oxygen tank, never feeling like I had enough? Have I forgotten key moments from my old life?
Then there’s the latest thing: the nightmares. And the headaches that come after.
And it’s not just my memory. It’s my mood that feels off. Shouldn’t I feel happy? Shouldn’t I feel #blessed? This recycled heart, after all, has saved me. There will be more birthdays. College. Travel. A life. If I tell Dr. Ahmadi that I often have an overwhelming desire to reach in and rip it out, pulsing and dripping — a bloody hole in my chest seeming preferable to a piece of someone else pumping away in there — will he think I’m ungrateful? A terrible person? Or will he smile his easy smile and tell me it’s all normal and nothing to worry about?