After You Fell

Chapter 5

3 weeks and 1 day after the fall.

The radio plays from its position at the end of the kitchen work surface; talking and singing to me as I skim through the internet pages, sliding the stories up on the small screen of my phone.

Even little things like this, like being able to concentrate on anything in the world outside my head, was hard in the years that illness stole my life. In the end, all I had the energy to do was sit in a chair and watch television and it was hard to even concentrate on that.

It is impossible for other people to imagine what it’s like to be trapped in a body that can’t do anything. My thoughts were busy controlling my breaths and cluttered with weakness, while pain constantly screamed, even through the fog of painkillers.

I thought about suicide when Dan and I split up. But whilst there was still a chance of being able to live properly with someone else’s heart, I held onto that cliff edge of hope for months. Living for when the time came.

The time is now, and ever since I have come back to Simon’s I’ve been feeling like a sprinter in the starting blocks waiting for the gun to go off. And when it does, I am going to run so hard and fast, just because I can.

Pump-pump. Pump-pump.

The sound of my heart continually talks to me. The blood thrusting through my body, making all my senses alert.

I can read today, I can read and soak up information like a sponge dropped into water, and at the same time I am listening to music.

The pulse of my heartbeat follows the baseline of the song on the radio – expressing its power.

If I could see my own aura, would it have changed? Would I now have some of the aura of the person whose body is muddled up with mine?

I still feel them. If it is them. I feel someone here. Someone who came back from the hospital with me. I think they’re trying to press their emotions into my heart, but it is just a pressure in my bloodstream that I do not understand.

A repeated knock rattles the thin glass in the back door; double glazing is still on Simon and Mim’s to do list in their 1920s terrace.

Before I respond the door handle twists. ‘Hello.’

‘Chloe.’ I stand up. ‘You made me jump.’ But I knew she was coming to make me lunch.

She smiles with the captivating look that made me fall for her friendship when I was sixteen. Before then my friendships had been brief play-dates and playground-mates. The foster homes and hospitals Simon and I had travelled around on a never-ending roller coaster meant I didn’t attach myself to people because in days or weeks we would move on.

I had not let proper friendships form until I had obtained control over my own life. Dan and Chloe came along at the same time; friends arriving like red London buses. They had become as important to me as extra limbs after only a few weeks.

Dan told me I was needy, that I had desperately been waiting for friends, and when I had found them I clung on.

I told him that if he’d had a childhood like mine and Simon’s he would know the value of loyalty and people who care about you.

Dan had not valued me.

Chloe’s dark hair tickles my ear as she holds me and I hold her. She values my friendship as much as I value hers. I have Chloe as well as Simon and the boys.

The scent of the perfume she always wears calms me immediately.

‘You look so well.’ Chloe’s voice is deep, sexy; it draws attention to everything she says. It made me gravitate towards her. It makes men gravitate towards her. When we were younger and I was well enough to go out there was always a pack of men around her by the end of the night.

Chloe’s aura is golden; it is shades of yellow, orange and amber.

Her hands stay on my shoulders. ‘Your skin is a decent colour for the first time in years.’

‘Thank you. I think.’

She laughs as her hands fall away. ‘Tea?’

‘Yes, please.’

A smile tumbles over her shoulder in my direction. ‘I am going to put sugar in it; you need to put some weight on now you’re well.’

‘I hate sugar in tea.’

‘I don’t care what you want. You’re doing what is good for you. What do you want to eat?’

‘There’s a tin of soup in the top of that cupboard.’ I point at the cupboard then grip the table so I can ease into the chair and avoid pulling the stitches in my chest.

‘Are you in pain?’

I didn’t notice her looking at me. ‘A little.’

‘Is it time to take your tablets?’

‘Probably.’ I move to get up but she lifts a hand.

‘Stay seated, I’ll get them, and I’ll heat up the soup after we have drunk the tea.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No need for thanks. I want you better.’ Her voice bounces off the blue tiles behind the sink in the moment before the tap turns on. ‘People say the world can be put right with a cup of tea but I think a new heart wins. What does it feel like?’ The pitch of her voice rises so I can hear her over the water running into the kettle.

‘Life-saving.’ A laugh stutters from my throat. Then I add, ‘Strange. I’m certain no one else is as conscious of their heart beating. It’s as if someone is making a heartbeat sound in my ear all the time, and it feels like it’s jolting me.’

Chloe faces me and leans back against the wooden work surface while the kettle heats. ‘I can’t imagine having a piece of someone else inside me. It must be weird. Especially when you know how quickly that heart moved from beating inside someone else to you.’

I glance down at my phone; the screen is black. ‘Yes.’ The rhythm beats harder, and so constantly it is like someone relentlessly banging on a door to obtain my attention.

‘It has someone else’s DNA.’ There’s a teasing note in Chloe’s voice. ‘I wonder if it’s changed your DNA. Then if you did that Ancestry DNA thing they might connect you.’

She doesn’t know I can feel spirits.

I never talk about my sixth sense.

The doctors in the hospital taught me, with electrical shocks to the brain, that people do not believe in a sixth sense. Everyone else thinks it is a symptom of bipolar. Imagined. Not Real.

It is real.

Those of us who have a sixth sense know it is real.

But I have never met anyone who can see and feel the things that I do, because I never tell.

A shiver runs through my spine, a ghost passing through me. The owner of my new heart passing through me?

No. I am sure their spirit is in the heart, inside me.

Steam erupts from the kettle behind Chloe as it clicks off.

She turns and pours the water into the mugs, then fetches the milk from the fridge. ‘I think a heart being transplanted is stranger than a lung or a liver because, okay, everyone knows that there aren’t any thoughts or knowledge in the heart—’ the spoon clinks against the edge of the china cup as she stirs in sugar, moving the spoon round and round ‘—but you feel emotion in your heart, don’t you?’ She looks over her shoulder at me.

I nod. Because of course it’s true. My last year has made that very clear – the pain in my emotionally broken heart has been worse than the pain of illness at times.

I was isolated as a child. Cut off from others by illness and homelessness. Isolated by a mind that did not function like other people’s. Dan isolated me again. He kept our friends, home and possessions.

I arrived at Simon’s with only a few boxes of personal things and my clothes. I have been shut away in a room here ever since, too ill to go out, waiting for another chance to live.

The soul that has given me this heart has given me that chance.

Chloe throws a teabag into the pedal bin; the lid chimes as it drops. ‘My heart feels tighter when I’m angry.’ She returns to fish the teabag out from the other cup and keeps talking as she takes that over to toss it in the bin. ‘And soft and squidgy, like marshmallow, when I’m falling for a man.’

The teaspoon drops in the sink. She picks up the mugs and turns with a handle held in either hand. ‘I wonder what your heart felt before it came to you?’ The mugs clunk down on the wooden table and the tea spills slightly.

The paper towel is in my reach. I pull some off and wipe up the spill as she fetches the bottle and packets of my pills and a small glass of water to wash them down.

‘Thank you.’

She chooses the chair opposite me, sits, and pulls her mug close, embracing it with both hands. Her eyes are glossy with an expression of excitement. She loves a good gossip. ‘What do you think?’

‘I hope it suffered a lot less pain than mine.’ The conversation is sparking more shivers up and down my spine.

I reach for the bottle. The pills rattle. The lid is stiff but after a second it opens and I tip out two small white pills. With those pills cradled in my palm, I pick up one of the packets.

I always lay pills out in a row before I take them.

I have more medication to take than I did before the operation. What does this heart make of all this prescribed poison? Drugs that make the natural defences of my body impotent, drugs that silence the cry of pain, antibiotics that fight the bad bugs and emotion-controlling pills.

‘Hearts spend most of their time in pain in my experience, and I’m not talking about malfunctioning hearts. Although perhaps I am because my pain was mostly caused by Mum’s and Dad’s malfunctioning hearts.’

‘The inability to put you and Simon first was in their heads.’

Simon thinks our mum had bipolar too. ‘Wherever their motivation came from it permanently hurts my heart to remember how they deserted us. A sick child didn’t fit in with their hippy lifestyle. They couldn’t be tied to the proximity of hospitals.’ I pick up a pill and sip the water to wash it down.

The feelings of loss and loneliness are in me again, and, as Chloe said, they grasp the heart and squeeze it until it hurts.

The need for love in humans is a terrible thing. It destroys people. It has tried to destroy me lots of times. I need others. I need to belong. I need to be wanted. I need to be needed.

Chloe’s hand reaches out and brushes the back of mine as I take the next pill. Then there’s a smile that sweeps everything away. ‘And then Dan the bastard …’ she says in a low voice.

We laugh, but my new heart clenches again in response to the memory of the brutal way he betrayed me.

I swallow another pill, sensing the irony of the bitter pills of fate that I have swallowed in my life. I was even too sick to cry over Dan’s disloyalty. If I had cried it would have exhausted my heart and so I had to control my heartbreak to stay alive. Isolated in a room, living from breath to breath, not day to day.

‘Have you heard from him?’ Chloe’s voice has a cautious cadence because she knows I have no desire to hear anything about him. But maybe she thinks he will send some good wishes.

I take more pills without answering for a moment. Then look into her eyes. ‘No.’ My answer is in the flattest tone. I take the last pill and drink the last of the water.

‘Does he know about your operation?’

I wrap my hands around the warm mug, lacing my fingers together on the far side. ‘I should think so. Simon must have mentioned it or, if not him, then someone else.’

Dan and I were us for so long all his friends were mine too. But I haven’t spoken to any of them since we split. It was too embarrassing to face the truth and the truth was being flaunted in front of their faces by Dan. They know the other woman, when the baby is due and how happy the two of them are. I do not want to know any of that. I let him have our mutual friends as part of the separation.

‘How are you going to spend your time while you are recovering? You need to do something different.’

‘I might order a jigsaw puzzle.’

‘You party animal.’

‘Maybe I’ll take up Tai Chi. There are YouTube videos.’

She nods, smiling, because she knows I am not considering anything.

My thoughts spin. I see Dan in the days I was convinced I was loved by him. So many moments when I believed we were happy. Those days have all been burned to a pile of ashes.

This heart felt the same before it was put inside me. I can sense it. As if the previous owner is sitting where I am. Sitting inside me.

I hear children laughing, then children crying. My future children or this soul’s?

‘We can go for a short walk every day next week. Then the week after we can walk farther and so on, until you are well on the mend. It won’t be long …’

‘I know it won’t.’ Before I can be me.

I push the ghost aside and smile.

Chloe reaches out. I reach out too and we clasp hands.

Her hand is warm from the heat of the hot tea in her mug.

‘The NHS will send letters for people who have received donated organs, so you can say thank you to the family. Did you know that?’

‘No.’

‘The nurses will probably tell you. But I looked it up.’ She lets go of my hand and twists to take the phone out from the back pocket of her jeans, then concentrates on that as I sip my tea.

Every sensation seems to be more intense; even drinking tea is improved by a healthy heart.

She looks up. ‘Here.’ She holds out her phone, tilting it to show me the screen. I take the phone and look at the NHS leaflet. It says what she has just told me – I can write to the person’s family and say thank you. It encourages me to do that. But I can’t tell them my name.

‘Do you think you’ll do that?’ Chloe asks.

I hand back the phone and sense someone else reaching out with me. I can’t explain the feeling. If I could describe it better perhaps others might believe in a sixth sense. ‘Probably. I would like to say thank you.’

If I write, I will tell the family that I can have children now. The soul inside my heart has given me that chance.

When I hold the front door open just under an hour later, standing on the doorstep and waving to Chloe, before she turns the corner at the end of the street, the spirit is whispering. I can’t understand the words but the sound surrounds me.

Perhaps the spirit wants me to contact their family before they pass on?

I shut the door. The silence in the house is deafening – as though silence is the loudest noise.

Chloe turned the radio off when we were talking. I like sound.

I smile as I turn the radio on, because I recognise how quickly I walked along the hall.

A dance song is playing, the bass beat stirs my shoulders into a little shake. The zip of stitches in my chest shoots a sharp pain through my torso that makes me wince. But I smile at the same time. ‘Enough of that for now, but soon I’ll be able to do everything.’ That is what I’ll write about in my thank you card, about the chance of children and dancing.

A buzz hums in my blood, drowning out the beat of the heart. Excitement is a dance rhythm of its own.

I sit at the kitchen table and pull over my laptop. Then open my phone and look at the list of links in my search of obituaries.

Who did this heart come from?

What has it felt before?

What life has it known?

The whispering intensifies, but it is still too muffled to work out any words.

The soul wants me to know who it is. I know that.

Chapter 6

3 weeks and 2 days after the fall.

‘Tea.’ The shout comes through the glossy white bedroom door.

‘Come in,’ I shout to Simon as I click to close the laptop’s browser window. The laptop’s lid snaps down like a crocodile’s bite as the door opens. I put the laptop aside on the bed next to me and adjust the pillows I am leaning on, as he puts a mug of tea down on the bedside chest.

The smell of hot tea says good morning and stirs up a déjà vu moment that makes a feeling of safety clasp at my heart.

‘Has Chloe confirmed she’s coming in to make you lunch today?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I know we can make you a sandwich ahead of time, but I’ll worry if you are here all day on your own.’

‘I’m fine. I managed before the operation.’

‘With difficulty.’

‘I know, but I’m getting better every day.’

A smile pulls at his lips and his hand lifts and runs over my hair. It’s a gesture that’s most common when he’s with the boys now. But it’s a gesture I have known for as long as I can remember. I think Simon has always felt like a father to me and I have always looked up to him. We are not a normal brother and sister. But who would be normal after our childhood?

The bed dips as he sits on the edge. He holds my hand. ‘Your eyes have dark circles. Did you sleep?’

‘Not much. I’m too excited.’ I smile. ‘And thank you for pointing out I have bags under my eyes.’

His eyes open wider and his eyebrows lift as he squeezes my hand but he doesn’t answer my comment. ‘Where are your tablets?’

‘Downstairs in the cupboard. But it’s not because of that. Everything has changed – anyone would be excited.’ It is not a bipolar episode.

‘I know. But you can take your tablets with the tea.’ He squeezes my hand again then lets go and stands up. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Okay.’

I rest back on the pillows, looking at the plain ceiling, remembering the bumpy or swirly Artex ceilings I stared at when I was younger. Patterns on the ceiling or in the curtains became mythical creatures. Fairies. Trolls. Unicorns. Dragons. There is no fictional image in Simon’s smooth replastered ceiling.

‘Pills.’ He walks into the room rattling the bottle like a maraca. His other hand holds out the packets. ‘Here.’

‘Thank you.’

He’s left the door open and the noise of the boys talking to Mim at the breakfast table downstairs flows in.

‘What will you do today?’

A shrug lifts my shoulders.

He sits on the edge of the bed again. Many hours of our relationship have been spent in this position on hospital, hostel, foster or children’s homes’ beds.

‘What were you looking at on the laptop?’

‘Nothing really.’

A smile. He knows me too well. ‘Binge watch a boxset to stop yourself from becoming impatient with the immobility. It will stop you getting obsessed with something unhealthy.’

‘I’ll be mobile soon, so I have a reason to be impatient.’ I lean forward and hold his hand. ‘And as soon as I am mobile I won’t have time to become unhealthily obsessed with anything. I’ll be too busy being healthy.’

A deep-pitched laugh rumbles low in his throat. ‘The boys have some video games you could play?’

‘For four-year-olds. No, thank you.’

His hand slides out of mine. ‘I’d better get off to work.’ He stands.

I reach up, encouraging him to lean down for a hug.

He kisses my cheek as I kiss his. ‘Have a good day.’

‘You too.’

‘Oh, I will.’ I smile.

He strokes my cheek.

When the door shuts behind him, I open the laptop again. All the pages I have been looking at are open browser tabs: obituaries posted by local and national papers.

I click on the picture of a middle-aged, middle-weight man with a receding hairline at his temples.

I am reading the obituaries of the people who died on the day of my operation, or the day before it.

The man lived in a small town in Wales, not far from Cardiff.

How far would they move a heart around the country?

I click the back arrow and return to the column of names and faces, then click on the next picture. It is a younger man with thick short ginger hair and a beard. Rory Smith. He’d died after a motorcycle accident. I click the back arrow.

It is surprising how many people die in one day.

The mug of tea and the tablets are still beside me.

I click on the story of another dead person and read as I pick up the bottle and tip two little white pills onto the plain powder-blue duvet cover. I swap that bottle for a packet and push out a pill from the foil. I keep popping out different tablets until there is a line of pills in front of me.

I take the tablets one by one with my tea and click on another dead face.

Chapter 7

4 weeks and 5 days after the fall.

A tap hits the glass in the back door. It’s Chloe.

‘Come in.’ I touch the screen to close the notes on my phone and minimise the browser on the laptop.