long lost love.

Dianne

When I wake up, it takes me a moment to remember where I am. Like everything these days, my memory is starting to slip away and the blank white walls that surround me are no help. It’s the smell that eventually jogs my memory, that lingering scent of sanitiser and grief that used to make me feel sick but now I barely notice it.

I look around the ward. Bessie has gone. So has Jack. I can’t remember if they’ve gone backwards or forwards, to home or somewhere new. I’m still here though. Just with a new accessory attached to my heart, reminding me that I can’t even live without machines anymore. That’s not just me though. All these young ones running around the place cling onto their machines, snapping pictures and swiping on strangers, naïvely unaware of just how quickly time will fly before they are the ones lying in the bed in a clinically blue hospital gown. 

I slowly try to sit up and get a better view of my new roommate. This is the one good thing about coming back to the ward, meeting new people with long stories to tell. Every conversation reminds me of another chapter of my own story, a character who I had long forgotten or a plot twist that has now been resolved. I sometimes wonder if someone were to write it all down would it make any sense? Or would it just be a mismatch of places and faces without a clear beginning, middle or end?

The other patient sits up too and there’s something familiar about his face, like a memory I haven’t made yet. Or maybe another one that I have forgotten, erased and replaced with bus timetables and medical advice on which pills to take when. 

And then I remember.

Tommy

When I wake up, I instantly remember where I am. Like most things these days, the room fades in and out of focus yet I just about manage to cling onto the details. The smell in this place is awful, like someone has removed all traces of happiness and I wonder how the nurses don’t choke on it everyday.

I look around the ward. It’s only me and one other patient in the far corner. This is what happens when you get old, the world starts to get smaller again, people start disappearing and never coming back. I’m still here though. Just with a brand new heart, reminding that despite looking old I am still, technically, young at heart. I don’t think I would survive a night out or a road trip across Europe anymore though. I am not that young. 

Cautiously, I sit up and try to figure out my new companion. Years of working behind a till have taught me that everyone has a tale to tell even if some are more boring than others. In fact, I think I might like the boring ones more, they remind me that life doesn’t have to be like a novel or a movie to be worthwhile. I wouldn’t say that my life has been a particularly good story. The love interests have all gotten away and the villains have at some point or another given up and found something better to do. 

She sits up too and a part of thinks that I have seen her before, like an echo whose source has been long lost. I try to flip back through the pages to find the face but they’re all too young or too old, the smiles looking back at me no longer exists anymore. 

And then I find her. 

Dianne

Tommy Price. The first boy I ever loved, back in the summer of 1965 when the world moved at a slower pace but it felt just as fast. He was the first boy I ever kissed, the first boy I brought home to meet my parents, the first boy to slow dance with me and the first boy to break my heart. 

He looks older now - don’t we all - fifty years of living marked on his face in sharp wrinkle lines but the sparkle in his eyes that drew me to him all those years ago hasn’t changed at all. I try to remember him as a boy but now it’s this strange man sat in the opposite bed who acts out the scenes. We’re dancing at our prom, two old aged pensioners amongst a crowded hall of teens. We’re sat in his car that looked so modern then but now looks unsafe to drive. We’re sat in the meadow, tears falling down my face as I struggle to get up, arthritis replacing anxiety as I run away and forget to look back. 

I get a sharp pang of jealously in my chest, or perhaps it’s just my heart reminding me that I am no longer fifteen. I bet he has a wife now and children, probably grandchildren too. I can’t shake the feeling that that was supposed to be me standing beside him at the end of the aisle, in the maternity ward, at the christening but now we’re here, two separate lifetimes between us and a million memories that never got to be made.

I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. If my teched-up heart is going to let me do one thing, it will let me talk to Tommy Price again. 

Tommy

Dianne Holloway. The first girl I ever loved, back in high school when a kiss was as big of a deal as an engagement ring. She was the first girl I ever made love to, the first girl I took to my secret meadow hidden in the woods between our houses, the first girl I ever whispered those magic three words to and the first girl whose heart I was forced to break. 

She looks the same despite the grey hairs and the creases decorating her face. She still has that smile that made it impossible to not fall in love with her. I will never forget her as a girl, so full of life back then and even more now I’m sure of it. The way she used to pass me secret notes in class, making sure that the teachers never caught her. The way that she would play with loose strands of hair when she was nervous, plaiting them over and over again. The way that she walked away from me and never looked back. 

I get a funny feeling in my new heart. She must have a husband now. I bet he’s not as good looking as me. I wonder if she also has kids and if they have kids as well. Is there a whole hoard of little Dianne’s running around, each with a little less of her DNA and each with none of mine?

I call out to her. If I’ve been given a new heart, it’s so that I can talk to Dianne Holloway again. 

Dianne

“Tommy Price is that really you?” I say, suddenly as self conscious as a lovestruck teen again. He chuckles and tells me my own name like I don’t know it. I don’t correct him on my new surname. It doesn’t sound right. It was always Tommy Price and Dianne Holloway. 

“What you doing here?” Last I’d heard - through Polly Clark’s renowned gossip grapevine - was that he’d moved up North to work in the city. Fleetwood Hospital was neither in the North or anywhere close to a city. It was also over a thousand miles from where we once called home. I’ve never been one to believe in coincidences but this might be the day that changes.

“I’ve had a pacemaker put in. I guess both our hearts decided to give up.” I reply after he tells me he’s had a transplant. I feel an uncomfortable sense of superiority. At least I still have my heart even if it is wired up to some machine. 

He doesn’t look at me as he asks his next question and I look down at my feet and my ringless finger as I answer. “Once. A long time ago. It didn’t end well.” He shouldn’t have asked me that. And I shouldn’t ask him this. “Have you?” 

I smile at his reply. “Even after all these years, Tommy Price still hasn’t lowered his standards.” I laugh as a brief memory of a teenaged Tommy returns, his blonde hair making all the girls swoon whilst his green eyes refuse to even flicker in their direction. It’s quickly met by another flashback. The meadow again. Tears blurring my vision. The words “It’s over” playing like a broken record remixed with a thousand frantic “I’m sorry’s”. I feel part of myself slip away. 

Tommy

She asks if I’m really me and I laugh. Of course I’m me, although maybe it’s a deeper question than that. Are you still you if you have a new heart, a new hip and a new set of teeth? “Dianne Holloway?” I say just to make sure. She just nods, not telling me a different name and a slither of hope works its way into my brain. 

Next on her list of questions is what am I doing here. I wish I had a funny answer to that, anything that would make her laugh but I can’t think of one. “Heart transplant. You?” I ask her the same question because I need to know the answer. Surely there’s got to be some bigger reason than fate that we have both ended up in the same ward together after all these years. 

She tells me that she’s got a pacemaker. Her heart was always the stronger of the two even after I broke it. I suppose that this is some sort of twisted karma, fifty years delayed. After an uncertain moment of silence I can’t help but let the million pound question slip out of my mouth. “Are you married?”

I struggle to hide my smile at her misfortune. The way she says it makes it sound like he wasn’t worth Dianne Holloway’s hand and I wonder if maybe that’s because, in her imagination, she was still holding mine. “No. I’ve never been married. Never found the right girl.” I tell her but really we both know that I meant to say “No. I never found anyone who matched up to you.”

Dianne disappears for a moment, the light flickering out as she becomes an old woman again. I want to reach forward and hold her but I can’t move fast enough anymore. A younger nurse rushes in and does what I should have done. He takes her hand and talks softly to her, just too quietly for my ears to hear the words that make her better. It’s been fifty years and I still don’t know those magic words. 

Dianne

When I wake up, it takes me a moment to remember where I am. I don’t recognise the big white room or any of the people around me. There’s a young nurse again sat besides me, explaining about this machine they’ve put in my heart. I think he’s told me this before. I think I’ve heard a lot of things before these days. I look over and the patient in the other bed is smiling at me like an old friend but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. He’s handsome though. I’ll try to remember to talk to him this evening. 

Tommy

When she wakes up it’s clear that she doesn’t remember me. Her eyes are vacant as they wander around the ward. I want to slip into the bed beside her and tell her that it will all be okay. I want to remind her of everything we did together. Maybe if her memory gets worse I could make up a story to tell her. I could create fifty years of make believe memories, a fantasy world where Tommy Price never broke Dianne Holloway’s heart.