Life and other Disasters

Ava inhaled, opened her eyes. Her head pounded, her throat was dry and soar. Wearily she stretched herself, rubbed her eyes. Her limbs were stiff, her chest felt as if it was on fire. How long had she had been sleeping?

The tube was still in her throat and she tried to remove it. Something was nagging her - there was someplace where she had to go, where she had been going, but she couldn’t remember exactly what it was. Or where it was.

Standing up from the bed seemed a good idea, but her limbs were so heavy, too heavy, and she gave up in the end. The room was spinning, which reminded her of something she had experienced a long, long time ago.

She closed her eyes again. There was something she had to remember. She was so close, it lay on the tip of her tongue.

“Hello Ava, can you hear me?” An unknown voice pulled her out of her darkness, and when she opened her eyes, an unfamiliar blurry face was hanging over her.

“David?” She had no control over her voice, and it sounded more like she was choking on something. Had she been drinking? She wasn’t even sure where that name was coming from. She once knew a David, vaguely. Didn’t they go to school together? She tried to remember his face, but she had problems picturing it. He loved his motorcycle, that much she knew.

“No, I’m Marcie, your nurse.”

The face became more into focus. It was friendly, with freckles and blue eyes. Her hair was covered by some blue cap, and her mouth was covered as well, which made her voice sound a bit muffled.

’You are on the IC, and you’ve been in a coma for a while,” Marcie continued. “The doctor will fill you later in on the surgery. We’ve got you all tubed up, so that’s why your voice might be a little hoarse. Don’t worry - it will get better as soon as we remove them. I’m going to check if your vitals are still okay. Is that okay?”

Marcie explained what she did, shone with a light in her eyes, checked her heartbeat and lungs, and gave her another shot of painkiller, so she wouldn’t feel the pain from the wound of the surgery.

“What surgery?” Ava asked.

“O sweety, I completely forgot. You were unconscious when they brought you in,” Marcie said, “The doctor will be here any moment now, he will fill you in on what happened to you.”

It didn’t take too long before a doctor walked in, all dressed up, but still recognizable as a human and as a doctor.

’And how is our patient doing Marcie?” the man said.

“She just regained consciousness and she’s curious. Being curious is always a good sign,” Marcie said and gave Ava a wink. “I’ll leave her now to you.”

Marcie walked out the door and Ava could barely contain herself.

“What happened to me? Why am I here? When can I go home?” Her questions were like a hail of bullets, unstoppable. Her voice croaked like a frog was hiding in her throat.

The doctor took a deep breath, clasped to his notebook.

“A couple of weeks ago, you were brought into the emergency room,” he started. “You overdosed on a drug. Can you remember anything that happened that night? Can you remember what drugs you took?”

Ava searched her memory and slowly the images of her last conscious night on earth came back. She remembered Patrick, she remembered not feeling well that day, she remembered the little pill that she had swallowed so carelessly.

And then it was all black.

“Did the drugs accelerate the decay?” she wanted to ask, but she couldn’t control her voice enough yet. She needed to learn how to control her body once again.

Ava nodded.

“There were complications,” the doctor continued. “Your heart couldn’t find its own rhythm, it was going way too fast one time and too slow the other moment. Luckily your mother arrived here quickly and told us about the surgery you had when you were born. You were born with a small hole in your heart and it was easy to fix with that procedure. Still, your heart was vulnerable and the drugs you took did a lot of damage. It could have killed you.”

The doctor looked sternly at her over his face mask.

“We hoped we could fix you again with a comparable surgery, but the damage was too big. We couldn’t get you stable after the first operation and it became apparent that there was only one solution.”

The doctor paused, looked through the room as if he hoped he could find another solution somewhere written on the walls.

“You needed a new heart,” he finally said.

The doctor had a lot more to tell - about never-ending waiting lists, about keeping her in a coma for her own good, about her waking up during the surgery. Ava tried to keep track, but her thoughts were tumbling over each other.

“You’ve been very lucky. It was a miracle we found a heart from a fitting donor in time,” the doctor said.

Ava wasn’t listening anymore. Her thoughts were drifting away.

“You will always have my heart,” someone had told her once.

Who had told her that? She couldn’t remember. It wasn’t Patrick, that much she knew. And was thinking of some love confession a little bit inappropriate?

“Maybe this heart chose me,” Ava thought, but she didn’t say it out loud. The doctor talked on and on, about complications, about recovery, about the meds she had to take, about everything practical and impractical. And then Ava fell asleep again.

When she woke up her mother was at her bedside. Of course not her father, even her death couldn’t keep him away from his precious work. Her mother stroke a strand of hair out of her face.

“I’m so glad you are still here,” she said, tears in her voice. “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

“It’s okay, mum, I am back.” Ava smiled, tried to smile. Her chest hurt like someone had cut her open. She was grateful for the sedative that kept the sharp edges of the pain away.

And then she smelled the faint scent of apples.