Wicked Restless (Harper Boys #2)(47)
I don’t know why, but when I step to the podium, that thought rushes through me. That word—hazards. And then all I can think of is that day with Andrew, of skating, and the time I let go of his hand and stood on my own. The day I laughed at hazards, and begged my parents to let me just have this one thing—a day to be young on the ice with him. When I look back out over the crowd, my nerves feel in check. I place the cards flat in front of me, no longer feeling the urge to have to look at them. I know my story. I know it well.
“My name is Emma Burke, and I was born with a congenital heart defect. Usually,” I pause, smiling at the thought I just had, “I have to really dumb it down for people when I explain it to them. But this isn’t that kind of room, is it?”
I wait for a few seconds as the crowd gives in and laughs, a sense of comfort settling into my chest. I glance back at Miranda, who smiles in support, nodding—acknowledging all she and I have been through together.
“I was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. For those of you who are here with your medical-jargon-loving dates and aren’t quite sure what that means—basically, I was born with half a heart. One side worked…and the other was more than just lazy.”
I get a few more chuckles from making fun of my stupid infant diagnosis. It owes me a few laughs—it’s stolen enough over the years.
“By the time I was eight, I had three surgeries. Yep…” I say, pausing, lips pulled together in an accepting smile. “All the big ones. You know…Norwood, Glenn, Fontan…Larry, Moe, Curley…”
The audience gives in completely now, their laughter the kind that people passing by outside could hear. I glance up and into the eyes of my new friend, the one with the sexy tie and touchable beard. He’s smiling and laughing, too. For some reason, that makes me feel even more comfortable.
“Things were going well. I had a forever-good excuse to get out of running laps in PE. I had to get some exercise, but never anything like running. I could do less vigorous things, like simple tumbling or dancing. I’m horribly uncoordinated, so trust me—dancing was not too much for my young heart to handle.”
Out of nowhere, my arm chills at the memory of Andrew’s elbow looped through mine; my mind hums the sound of the fiddle that played over and over for that glorious week we had square dancing. Even as I stare back into the smiling eyes of my new friendly face across the room, my memory is pulling up the dimples and messy hair of the boy I met when I needed someone most. I don’t think of the him I know now, but rather then—when he was…everything.
“For a long time, I was surviving and beating odds. Then the fatigue got worse,” I say to a nodding audience. They don’t know my story personally, but they all know how my story goes. Stories like mine—they have fuzzy endings, no spoilers that tell me exactly how my life’s going to play out. I’ve always been of the mindset that my life is what I make of it—even if I have half a heart.
That’s what got me here.
“I was a status two. Not sick enough to get the first heart out of the gate. Not even sick enough to get the tenth, really. And my parents, brother, and I spent a year getting called into Philadelphia, from our home in Delaware, for false hope and rejections. All for a surgery and post-op treatment that we couldn’t afford in the first place.”
“I got scared—plain and simple,” I shrug. “I was fifteen at the time, almost sixteen, and looking at a black hole. I couldn’t get excited for things like driving or prom or the Friday-night football game. My girlfriends were all growing up, getting boyfriends, figuring out who they were, but I knew who I was. I was too busy being both frightened and hopeful of moving from status two to status one. That fear consumed me, and it could have paralyzed me. Instead…I wrote a letter.”
“I don’t know how many letters Dr. Miranda Wheaton gets. All these years, I’ve never actually asked her,” I say, turning to face my saving grace, my brow pinched as I shake my head at her in question.
She raises her shoulders as she smiles and whispers, “It’s a lot.” I laugh to myself, turning back to my podium.
“She says a lot,” I say, garnering a few chuckles from the crowd. “Well, I don’t know what it was that convinced her to open mine, read it, and then fly all the way to Delaware to meet with me and my parents in person, but I’m sure I’ll never be able to repeat the magic of those words in my letter again. I hope I never have to.”
“I was Dr. Wheaton’s twenty-first donated surgery. As she said when she met with my family months before it actually happened—the wait for a new heart would still be long. And there would still be false starts. But Chicago was where I needed to be.
“So we moved. And I homeschooled for the first few months in the city while my parents looked for work, and a suburb we could afford. I spent those early weeks waiting for the call—for a heart—at home. But part of being a status-twoer, is not being sick enough not to want to leave your house—or, if you’re a teenager, to be somewhere with friends. So I went to school, and life…it went on—the safety net of hope that Dr. Wheaton swore would come there to catch me when I fell.
“On November first of my sophomore year of high school, that net…it worked,” I smile, no longer registering the fact that I’m in front of anyone at all. “There was a heart, and it wasn’t right for anyone above me. But it was perfect for me. I was pulled from school, and in surgery in less than three hours.”