Chapter 28: Part 28 - Heartbreak

Part 28 — Heartbreak

I awoke around midnight in terrible pain. The house was still. The hall was dark. The low drone of snoring rumbled like a distant, ominous thunder. I think I’d been having a dream about something, because I awoke suddenly and covered in so much sweat I thought it was raining in through the window. My sheets were soaked, my pillow was drenched. And my body was gripped with a squeezing paralysis. 

I thought I was going to die. 

I wanted to spring out of bed, jump to my feet and shake the feeling off, but my limbs felt heavy, like there was some invisible force pressing down on my chest. It was all I could do to lift my head and wriggle my body into a semi-upright position. 

I tried to call out, but my voice was hoarse. My shoulders felt like they were being squeezed inwards, pushing all the air out of my lungs. In my head, all I could see was Rafa Couzins and Leierna Scott and Ms Pike. Grinning and leering and lurching at me out of the darkness. I had never felt so frightened of anything in my entire life. 

Somehow, by some miracle of muscular control, I was able to reach out for the bedside table. My phone had been taken by my mom, who didn’t want me going online after everything that had happened today. But my laptop was there. If I could just open it, I might be able to call for help!

I stretched my fingers out and fumbled with the corner of the laptop, spinning it around the edge of the table. I extended my fingers, though it felt like my chest was on fire. If I could just—

Damn it!!

—The laptop clattered to the floor, out of my reach and I let out a raspy howl. A low, crying ululation. A final, bitter defeat. 

I don’t know how long I lay there like that, chest gripped like a vise, breath leaching out of me like a slowly deflating tire. It felt like an age. 

Finally, I heard the door to my room creak open. 

“Ella? Ella?!” 

It was my sister Anna. She looked stricken!

“Ella, what is it?! What’s the matter? Mom!!” she cried. “MOOOOM!!”

My parents dashed into the room. I can only imagine what I looked like, lying on the bed, my whole body paralyzed by some vast, invisible weight. I couldn’t see myself, but I could see myself reflected in the fear that now wore their faces. 

“Gerald, call 911!!” my mom cried out. 

Then she rushed over and took me by the hand. 

“It’s okay, Ella!” she cried. “It’s okay, honey. We’re here now?”

“What’s happening, Mom?” Anna asked. 

My mom shot her eldest a stern look that ordered her to shutthehellup!!

“It’s okay, baby,” Mom cried, looking down at me. 

I hadn’t realized until that point that I was crying. Lone, rebellious tears rolled down the sides of my face. 

“It hurts, mommy!” I managed to gasp. 

“Aw, I know it does—” she replied, fighting to hold onto her own tears. 

“Am I going—” I gasped again, but then another wave of agony took my ribcage, squeezing the last of my energy out of me. And with it, the last of my life. 

And then I died. 

*

The doctors would tell me later that my heart stopped for nearly two minutes. That I was legally dead for at least some of that. That it was a miracle I survived. I don’t believe in miracles. But I do believe in love. 

So I do believe in my mom, pounding down with CPR on my chest. In my sister holding my hand and telling me everything was going to be alright, willing me to come back from whatever cold and lonely midnight place I’d gone to. In my father, running out into the street to flag the ambulance down, to tell them they needed to hurry. I believed in all of those things. Just as much as I believed that I wasn’t ready to go yet, wasn’t ready to be erased from this world. 

Not today, Ella. 

Not today. 

*

I awoke in the hospital, wires attached to my chest, the distant smell of antiseptic in the air. Something was beeping next to me. In my brain-addled state, at first I thought it was my alarm. But it was steady. Rhythmic. Familiar.

“I don’t wanna get up,” I mumbled. Then I opened my eyes. 

My mom was staring down at me. My dad and my sister were right behind her. 

“Hey honey,” she said, reaching for my hand and holding it gently. 

“Wha—?” It was all I could manage. 

“They say it was something wrong with your heart, honey,” my mom explained through tears. “But they’re gonna fix it.” She squeezed my hand. “They’re gonna fix it.”

Behind her, the door opened and one of the doctors came in. She was a dark-skinned lady in her mid-thirties. Her name badge said Raeniri. She might have been Indian, I’m not sure. 

“You’re feeling better?” she proposed. It didn’t feel like a question. 

“What ha—” I got as far as that, trying to speak normally, before the whispers took over my voice. I wasn’t strong enough yet even to speak properly. “What happened?” I croaked. 

“You went into cardiac arrest,” the doctor informed me. “It’s unusual for someone your age, but there’s a good chance we can treat it.” She smiled and sat down next to me. “Tell me, Ella, have you been feeling unwell these past few days?”

I shook my head. I didn’t think I had. 

“Any chest pains?” she asked. “Shortness of breath.”

Then it hit me. I had felt chest pains. I had experienced shortness of breath. The way my heart had hammered in my chest when I found the necklace from Bobby. How paralyzed and panic-stricken I’d been when Ms Pike found me with Jessie. The little flutter when I thought about being with Bobby; the sharp stabbing pain when I thought I’d hurt him. I’d been experiencing pain and breathlessness my entire life. Was this– Was this not just the normal stuff every kid goes through? Was I somehow broken?

“Will it—” I asked, fighting to keep my voice steady? “Will it come back?”

“Easy, El,” Anna reassured, seeing the physical effort involved in summoning up those words. 

“We’ve got you on Lanoxin,” said the doctor. “We’ve run a few tests, and it looks like you have cardiomegaly, probably as the result of some congenital heart disease.”

“That sounds bad,” I replied. 

“Not too bad,” the doctor replied. “It just means you have an enlarged heart. And you were born this way. With proper medication, we can treat it and you shouldn’t end up in a place like this again.”

She smiled at me. It was that same kind of warm, fill-your-face-with-happiness smile that Jessie had. And that made me feel like I was going to be okay. 

“Rest now, honey,” my mom hushed. I fell asleep almost before she had finished the sentence. 

*

When I awoke, it was getting dark. The sun had long ago dipped down into the lower portion of the sky and the grayness of the evening was slowly taking over. My mom was still there at my bedside; Dad and Anna were gone. 

“How do you feel, honey?” Mom asked. 

“Hungry,” I replied, shuffling to sit up. 

My mom smiled. 

“Hungry is good,” she replied. “What would you like?”

I asked her for a sandwich and when she returned from the cafeteria down the hall, she sat and watched as I ate it. It was a bell pepper crunch and I’ve never tasted anything so good in my entire life. 

She waited until I’d finished before speaking. 

“Why didn’t you tell us, Ella?” she asked. “Why didn’t you say things had gotten this bad?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. I was looking straight ahead; I couldn’t meet her gaze. 

She was about to go on, when I summoned up the courage and said, “I didn’t know what was happening to me. I thought—”

“What did you think?” she asked reassuringly. 

“I thought this was just normal teenage angst stuff. I was thinking a lot about Hillman’s. And then about Leierna Scott. I guess this Ms Pike stuff just threw me over the edge.”

“Ms Puke, you mean?” my mom joked. I smiled. I’d never seen her bad-mouth a teacher before. 

“Did she—?” I began. I didn’t know how to ask what I wanted. 

“Don’t you worry about her,” my mom reassured. Your father and I are going to have a long talk with the principal. A loooong talk. She won’t be back at that school again,” she said. 

“Good,” I replied. It was involuntary. But sincere. I didn’t want to think about the number of girls she’d bullied and harassed down the years. Even if she was getting kicked out on a lie, there were a thousand, silent truths that she’d survived before. This was fair. This was justice. Maybe the only kind of justice people like her ever have to face. 

“There was something else I wanted to talk to you about,” my mom went on. 

“Oh?” I prompted, fidgeting around the mass of wires still hooked up to me. 

“I didn’t want to say anything until I got the confirmation email,” she explained. “But it came through this morning. I managed to get you into a program. Out of state. If you still want?”

“A program?” I asked, daring to hope. 

“A gender affirmation program. The hormones, Ella. If it’s what you want.”

“Of course it’s what I want!” I screamed, throwing myself towards her with joy and tangling myself up in cables in the process. “Oh thank you, thank you, mommy!”

“Calm down, Ella!” she instructed. “We don’t want you getting sick again.”

I smiled and let her go. 

I didn’t feel sick. 

I didn’t feel anything except elation. 

“There is one more thing,” my mom said after she’d let me drink my fill of the moment. “And I didn’t want to mention this if you weren’t feeling well—”

I could taste a ‘But’ coming. Sweet and delicious and worth savoring; and knew that look in her eye. 

“So I got talking to Jessie’s mom and she reminded me that Jessie was having a sleepover tonight.”

She couldn't mean? Was I going? Like this?!

“Now you're obviously not well enough to go in person—” I sank back into the bed a little. “—But we all agreed you could FaceTime your friends there for a little while. Everyone’s been so very worried about you,” she added. 

“I can?” I asked, my face lighting up. 

“Uh-huh,” she replied, dipping into her purse to take out her iPad. “If you want to.”

“I want to,” I cried. “I want to!” 

There were tears in my eyes again. 

“All right,” she said, passing me the tablet. “I’ll be getting a coffee and reading my book in the waiting room down the hall. I’ll be back in a half hour or so. If you need anything, you push that nurse’s call button over there.”

I nodded and she left the room. 

I held the iPad in my hands, thinking about all the things I wanted to say. All the things I wanted to know. Who was there? What had happened at school today? What was blowing up online (hopefully not me)? But mostly, it just wanted to know how Jessie was doing. I scrolled through the numbers until I found the one for ‘Jessie’s Mom’. Then I pressed dial and waited for them to pick up.