Tin Heart Read online

  ‘Oh my god, Marley. You’re back.’

  ‘You didn’t tell us you’d be back.’

  ‘You should have told us.’

  I know they’re not sisters, but they look identical – same haircut, same blue jeans, same white sneakers. I can’t remember their names because honestly the sum total of our relationship before today is five seconds of conversation and a get well soon card. It doesn’t help that I’ve always mentally referred to them as Cerberus. But, like, a fairly nice Cerberus. Well, as nice as a three-headed dog-beast can be.

  ‘Tell us everything,’ says head number one.

  ‘Every detail,’ says head number two.

  ‘You’re famous,’ says head number three. ‘Everyone’s talking about you.’

  The truth kicks me in the stomach – beyond an encore performance of The Dying Girl (otherwise known as The Transplant Girl) I don’t stand a chance of holding their interest.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ I say. ‘I got a new heart. I’m better.’

  They look at me, waiting, expecting – they want gory details and I’m holding out on them. How many bones do you have to throw to appease a three-headed dog-beast? I don’t know, but they’re getting nothing from me.

  ‘I like your . . . shoes,’ I say, pointing at all three sets of white sneakers.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Head number one looks over my shoulder, scanning the crowd for a new distraction, a better distraction, something a three-headed dog-beast can really sink her teeth into.

  ‘Do any of you have English with Mr Laidlaw?’ I ask.

  The three heads share a look.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Their eyes grow dull with disinterest.

  ‘You’re shitting me,’ squeals head number one. She bops up and down on the spot, grabbing the other two by their arms. ‘Kaitlyn what’s-her-face has a fugly new haircut. I have to see this.’

  And then they’re gone, quicker than you can say ‘confetti vomit.’

  ________

  ‘This must be overwhelming,’ says the principal, a flat-faced lady with an asymmetrical bob and one of those arty, flowy dresses that could double as a bed-spread. She says it with a sympathetic smile and points to a beanbag in the middle of her office. Yes, a beanbag.

  I hover in the doorway.

  ‘Sit. We’ll have a cuppa and a chat.’ She watches me cross the room and sink into the beanbag. ‘I just wanted to say welcome . . . Welcome back, I mean.’

  I nod.

  She waves her hands, scrunching up her nose. ‘It’s all a bit strange, isn’t it? After so much time away. Trying to fit in again, finding your feet, meeting a bunch of new classmates.’

  Every time I shift, the beanbag makes a crinkly crunch like someone loudly unwrapping lollies in a movie theatre. I fold my hands in my lap and roll back my shoulders.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say. Except did you know you had a three-headed dog-beast running rampant in your school grounds? That has to contravene several occupational health and safety laws.

  She leans down, slapping her hand over mine. ‘Marlowe? I want you to know I’m a friendly ear any time you need it.’

  I picture her as a giant, grinning ear wearing a bedspread and large, loopy red earrings and that helps. It really helps.

  ‘Now,’ she says, clapping her hands. (Ears with hands? Hilarious!) ‘You have your timetable and I think you know most of your teachers already and . . .’

  I look out the window while the Friendly Ear blabbers on about how daunting this must be for me and how I shouldn’t feel embarrassed about my age compared to the others, a sentiment she repeats enough times to make me feel like a grandma trying to squeeze into her granddaughter’s cut-offs so she can pick up boys at the skate park.

  This welcome meeting sucks.

  I tune out and think about the letter in my backpack. It’s to my donor’s family. Legally I’m not allowed to know the person who owned this heart before me – not even a name. I only know it was a teenage boy. But lately I keep wondering: was he brave? Was he mean? Was he full of laughter? Was he in love?

  Right now the only thing I can do is write letters. So long as I don’t tell the family who I am or say anything personal.

  I’ve written four letters over the last year. I can’t send them direct to the family (obviously I’m not allowed to know their address) so the letters go through the hospital and then the family can write back that way too.

  Except they haven’t written back yet.

  I’m waiting.

  I’m hoping.

  ‘Marlowe?’

  The Friendly Ear is holding out a mug of dandelion tea. When she sees me eye the mug suspiciously she smiles. ‘It’s like a hug for the soul,’ she says.

  I hate dandelion tea. Mum used to make me drink it to settle my stomach. All. The. Time.

  It tastes like disappointment. And feet.

  ‘Maybe next time,’ I tell her, and she places the mug on her desk.

  ‘My door is permanently open,’ she says.

  I tell her thanks.

  I tell her I’ll come and see her.

  I tell her I’m fine.

  She slaps her hands on her thighs. ‘Now. I wanted to ask you about assembly.’

  ‘Assembly?’

  ‘We’ll sort the details later but when you’re settled in I thought it would be a good idea for you to do a little speech, tell people about your experience. I’m sure the other students would love to hear your story.’

  My heart thumpthumpthumpthumps because what the hell does she mean, speaking in front of the whole damn school? That will never happen.

  I know everyone gets a bit breathless when they’re nervous. I get that. But I used to live every day trying to keep my heart rate level, knowing there was a tipping point for me. Except not knowing, because you have no idea where that point is and you never know how close you are to falling over the edge and there’s no way back once you fall. So the idea of me, the shyest girl in the history of shy girls, standing up in front of the whole school to talk about my ‘experience’? Is she trying to kill me?

  I shake my head, but I can’t get any actual words out.

  ‘We’ll sort the details out later,’ she says again and writes me up a late slip to show my first period teacher. If by ‘sort the details out later’ you mean burn them in the pits of hell then, sure, we’ll do that.

  I kind of roll out of the beanbag while it tries to eat me alive. And practically run out the door.

  Where I nearly slam face-first into someone I actually know.

  Zan Cheung.

  She’s standing in the main-office doorway, wearing black skinny jeans, a black t-shirt, black high-top sneakers and a black cap. Maybe I’ve died of embarrassment and this is my funeral.

  I mumble ‘sorry’ and try to slink past, but she steps in front of me. ‘You’re back,’ she says.

  Here’s the thing: Zan Cheung is cool. She’s always been cool. The coolest of the cool. She doesn’t have a group, just slips in and out when she feels like it – mostly she hangs out on her own and somehow that only makes her cooler. You’d feel like you’d won the lottery if she even spat in your direction. She’s so far outside the social stratosphere that she’s right at the centre of it.

  So why is she talking to me?

  She holds a mostly empty folder in one hand and a detention slip in the other – it’s the first day of school for the year and she already has detention.

  I want so desperately to charm Zan into liking me, but I’m experiencing a major word shortage.

  ‘I’m better,’ I manage. I pull at the neck of my tee and wait for her to ask for gory details, just like Cerberus.

  But Zan just nods her head and says, ‘Cool.’

  And then we stand there in awkward silence. On a good day I could possibly have scrounged together, ‘You. Me. Friend. Please?’
but now I can’t even open my mouth.

  ‘What do you have?’ she asks finally, because she’s not socially inept like me and she realises that you have to actually speak to have a conversation.

  ‘Congenital heart defect,’ I say.

  She blinks at me. ‘I mean, what class do you have?’

  Kill me. Just kill me.

  ‘Um, English?’

  Any second now her eyes are going to glaze over. She’s going to realise that just being seen next to me will wipe off every one of her cool-person points. She will realise that I have the power to suck the cool from her soul like a really nerdy Dementor.

  ‘Me too,’ she says. ‘See you there?’

  I’m about to say ‘yes’ – who am I kidding? I’m about to scream it at her and beg her to be my best friend and please can we sit together – when everything goes horribly wrong.

  Even more horribly wrong.

  It’s Eddie Oro.

  I vaguely know Eddie in the way you vaguely know all the popular people at your school even if you’ve never breathed the same air as them or made eye contact, let alone gone to any of their parties. You just know them.

  Eddie walks past with one third of the Cerberus. I guess Eddie has a thing for dog-beasts because he has this look in his eye – this I’m-going-to-do-something-to-impress-this-hot-girl look – and then he turns to stare at me.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, laughing, ‘it’s the girl made of dead people bits. How you doing, freak?’

  The Cerberus giggles. ‘Oh my god, Eddie, that’s so mean.’ She covers her smiling mouth with a hand.

  ‘It’s true, but,’ says Eddie.

  Speckles of black and grey and white spark in front of my eyes. They’re like fireworks but not the happy kind. They’re the kind that remind you of when you were little and you touched a lit sparkler and it burnt and you cried and it just wouldn’t stop hurting and I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Because what he said isn’t mean – it’s repugnant. My donor wasn’t some ‘dead person’ and this heart – this gift – isn’t some cast off.

  Eddie walks away laughing like it doesn’t mean a thing. But it does. It means everything. It hurts deep, deeper than any dandelion tea, friendly ear or sympathetic smile can reach.

  ‘Arsehole,’ says Zan. The receptionist calls her name in a snippy tone, but Zan ignores her. ‘Don’t listen to a word Eddie Oro says.’

  I stand there trying to breathe and wondering what to do with Zan’s unexpected words. I look at my empty hands like I should be able to pluck the words out of the air, hold them, inspect them, understand them.

  Thanks, I think. But I can’t say it out loud and she walks away.

  Have you heard the one about a guy who needs a transplant? One day his doctor calls him up and says, ‘It’s your lucky day, Karl. Today you’ll receive the heart you desperately need.’ Karl can’t believe it. ‘You mean there’s finally a heart for me?’ The doctor looks out his office window – it’s pouring with rain. ‘Not long now,’ he says. ‘Not long now.’

  Okay. It’s black humour. Really black. And maybe it’s only funny if you’re a transplant wannabe. Even then it’s not ha-ha funny: getting excited about the weather because rain means car accidents and car accidents mean organs is warped.

  But that’s the reality of needing a transplant. Organs don’t grow on trees or in test tubes. Someone has to die for you to hit the jackpot.

  I’ve been to the Royal Children’s Hospital so many times. It’s about as funny as an organ transplant joke. It’s even less funny when there’s a summer storm brewing and you can’t stop thinking about all the patients looking out their windows, waiting.

  I’m perched on the edge of a hospital gurney when my favourite nurse, Hannah, swishes through the curtains, takes one look at me and declares, ‘You need more sleep.’ It’s Mum she aims the glare at, though. ‘Why isn’t she getting to bed early, Kate?’

  Mum looks scared. She’d take on a bear-sized bogan with a meat cleaver but a Malaysian, five-foot, fifty-kilo nurse? Run for the hills!

  ‘She’s a bit stressed,’ says Mum, fingers combing my long hair. ‘First day back at school.’

  ‘Back to school already? Tsk, tsk.’

  ‘But Professor Kirmani said –’

  ‘Gah! What do doctors know?’ Hannah starts laying out all the sharp, shiny, hurty things she needs to check that my body’s not about to reject my new heart. Or that I haven’t got any of the diseases I’m now prone to. Like skin cancer. Can you believe that? And pneumonia and meningitis and diabetes and everything else.

  Because you don’t just shove a heart in someone’s chest and, hey presto, everything’s a-okay. I have to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of my life and monitor my body and take extra precautions because I have zero immunity. Although this sounds like it might be a superpower – I’ll blast you with my zero immunity! – it’s totally the opposite.

  While Hannah’s laying out her instruments of torture, Mum lists all the things she’s been doing to make sure I’m the picture of health – the diet, exercise, positive affirmations. It’s like a parent-teacher interview about my health. But Hannah’s not listening.

  ‘First day back, huh?’

  She straps the blood pressure cuff around my arm.

  I nod and keep my eyes on the cuff as it expands.

  Hannah hmmmmms at me. ‘So what was that like?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Fine?’

  ‘Fine.’

  And it was. Aside from feeling like I’ve been ripped from my safe little world and rammed into a hostile new environment just dying to spit me out again. Aside from Eddie being a repugnant fathead and aside from my brother making the usual spectacle of himself and aside from a run-in with a three-headed dog-beast and aside from the fact that I’m a friendless loser who spent all her break times hiding in the library and aside from the fact that I didn’t see Zan Cheung for the rest of the day.

  Aside from that it was peachy.

  The blood pressure cuff squeezes tight around my arm, like it’s holding its breath. Hannah stares at me until I look away. The arm strap deflates.

  ‘Hmmmmm.’

  Mum’s head jerks up. ‘What was that noise? I don’t like that noise.’

  ‘Blood pressure’s a little high,’ mutters Hannah, making a note.

  A breath catches in my throat.

  You don’t go through an organ transplant without hearing the worst-case scenarios – rejection being top of that list. I spend a fair bit of my time imagining every little twinge or tingle is the first sign of my brand-new heart exploding in flames. So high blood pressure? Yeah. It’s enough to freak me out.

  As for Mum, she never met an anxious thought she couldn’t turn into a tornado of panic. ‘Lavender,’ she says. ‘And passion-flower tea and green veggies. You don’t eat enough veggies. I’m making a big pot of broccoli and kale soup the second we get home.’

  ‘Nothing to worry about, Kate.’ Hannah keeps scribbling in my notes. ‘Because it’s only a little high and because Marlowe had a stressful day at school. Blood pressure fluctuates like that.’ She shoots me a smile and a wink, the same smile and wink she used to give me when she smuggled me Snickers bars when Mum wasn’t looking. ‘But we’ll have you back for your next appointment within the month. That’s sooner than we expected, but we need to keep an eye on it. And we’ll need to talk about you moving on to the Alfred. You’re eighteen soon.’

  The backs of my calves bump the gurney’s frame as I swing my legs. I can feel the sharp pricks of anxiety zizzing through my fingers.

  Hannah places both hands on my shoulders and looks me in the eye. ‘You’re okay, Marlowe. Better than okay. You had a rough start with a few rejection episodes and a bad case of meningitis but it’s been six months since you’ve had any issues. That’s amazing.’

  I bite my lip and try to focus on her eyes. Those smiling, calming, truth-telling eyes.

  ‘You’re safe,’ she says and playfully
flicks my nose. ‘You’re our shining success story. You hear me?’

  I nod. Because when Hannah tells me I’m fine I know she means it. Because that’s why she’s my favourite nurse – honesty quickly becomes your favourite personality trait when you’ve spent your whole life being fed euphemistic half-truths by adults who don’t want to worry you about things you have every right to be worried about.

  Hannah always tells it like it is.

  So for a moment I allow myself to feel her words, to breathe them in and savour their cooling touch against the anxiety that’s always trying to start fires inside me. Anxiety is a total pyromaniac.

  But Hannah says I’m fine. So I am actually fine. I am not going to die.

  I bite back a smile.

  Mum frowns and tsks and places the back of her hand to my forehead. Hannah’s words never have the same calming effect on Mum as they do on me. She hovers, tucking in my dress tag, picking fluff off my shoulder. Her free hand is combing through my hair because apparently my body is public property and anyone can poke or prod; they can cut it open and peer inside. Sometimes I think I’ll scream.

  But whatever. Today I don’t care. Because I’m fine. And soon I’ll get a letter back from my donor’s family and I’ll be better than fine – what’s the next word up from ‘fine’? Good? Great? Super? Awesome?

  Hannah swabs my arm, preparing to draw blood.

  ‘Hannah.’

  ‘Yes, monkey?’

  I watch the needle pierce my skin and the syringe fills with blood. It’s always a darker red than you’d expect.

  ‘Is there a letter from my donor’s family yet?’

  I ask this question every time I come in for tests. And each time I ask, Hannah tells me I’m worse than her nephew who starts asking about Santa in May. And then we laugh and she tells me to be patient. A patient patient.

  But not this time.

  This time, Hannah squints hard and doesn’t answer. She swaps out the syringe when it fills up.

  ‘How about broad bean and brussels sprout fritters?’ says Mum. She’s gripping my free arm, maybe doing her own blood pressure test. She won’t look at either of us because she hates blood. ‘I read somewhere that brussels sprouts are good for heart health.’