Paint it Red

Meryl was thirty-two years old, no children, never married, but with the heart of a literal stranger beating inside her. Not literal the way kids use it today, I literally died. No. No, you most certainly did not. She hadn’t either. Thanks to the heart of a stranger who had. She could not stop obsessing over the heart. She could not bring herself to say her heart. The heart belonged to someone else. Someone who no longer needed it, yes, but it wasn’t really hers. Where was her heart now? Incinerated? In a landfill? She made a mental note to look that up.

It had been almost five months since her transplant. Meryl was getting more of her energy back. She was able to run errands on her own and would be returning to her job in a few days. Still, she felt she had so many unanswered questions. She lay in bed as they tumbled in her mind.

The heart in her chest beat wildly. It was too loud, too aggressive, and maybe too big. Had the doctors measured the heart to be certain it would fit before stitching it up inside her? The proper owner of this heart, the person born with it and who grew along with it, may have signed up to donate it. But surely they did not want to be taken up on the offer, given the implications.

Does the heart know it lives now in a different body? Did the original owner of the heart ever say to a lover, I give you my heart? Would they have said that, if they had been able, to her? Famous last words, indeed, she thought. Or, would they have questioned whether or not she had merited their heart? Had they had someone more deserving in mind?

Had the heart’s owner ever used the phrase my heart bleeds for you? Meryl thought about the many phrases that invoke the heart:

1.     Wear your heart on your sleeve.

2.      To break someone’s heart.

3.      Cross my heart.

4.      Follow your heart.

5.     Learn by heart.

6.     Have a change of heart.

7.     Lose heart.

8.     From the bottom of one’s heart.

9.     My heart melted. Jumped. Stood still. Skipped a beat. Pined…

10. To steal someone’s heart.

Had Meryl stolen someone’s heart? Or maybe she had,

11. Won someone’s heart?

She mused that no other human body part has been attributed to so many emotions, actions, and platitudes. You warm my spleen. I am young at ear. Getting right to the uvula of the matter. No, she thought, the heart has the idioms quite sewn up.

She wondered how long she had been heartless. That is, when her Pluto'd heart vacated her chest, leaving the only home it had ever known, as she lay on a cold hard table, chest open, awaiting its new tenant, this heart of a stranger, to simply move in and take its place.

The strange new heart kept beating far too hard, too fast, too strong. Maybe it was the heart of an athlete. One of those tragic stories you read about where a young man or woman, in perfect health, drops dead in the prime of their life, mid-game, in the middle of a sports field. That would explain its over-arching need to burst out of her chest. Its drive to pump at full tilt and pound out its frantic rhythm against the bony frets of her startled ribcage.

Meryl could not sleep. She could not calm her thoughts against the constant thumping of this heart-like-a-bird, scared and throwing its small body against the bars of its cage over and over, unceasingly. How long could it hold out at this pace? Meryl closed her eyes in the dark of her room. Behind her eyelids, she could see only red.

She got up and found some red construction paper in the bottom drawer of her desk. With scissors, she cut little paper hearts from several sheets. When she had used all of the construction paper up, she counted one hundred seventeen small hearts. She used the tines of a fork to punch little holes in each red paper heart. Using sections of red and white striped baker’s twine, she strung the hearts together in groups and strewed them around the house like Tibetan prayer flags.

After preheating the oven, she gathered flour, sugar, baking powder, butter, eggs, and vanilla. Mixing it all by hand, Meryl added in some red food coloring. She floured the counter and rolled the dough out. She rummaged in a drawer and retrieved a box of cookie cutters. Pulling out the heart-shaped cutter, she cut the dough into two dozen cookies. The raw cookies looked more pink than red.

While they baked, she mixed up some buttercream frosting, adding too much red coloring this time. When the timer went off, she removed them from the baking sheet and onto a serving platter. Meryl felt she could not wait for them to cool, so she iced the cookies while still warm to the touch. The bright red icing melted down the sides of the cookies onto the plate and oozed, dripping onto the counter like blood.

“Eat your heart out.” She said aloud to the empty kitchen.

She did not have the heart to eat them. Instead, she found a bag of M&M’s in the pantry. She opened it, dumping the whole bag on the counter. She separated the red ones and laid them out in the shape of a heart beside the plate of cookies. She stared at the heart vignette she’d made. She did not want to have to brush her teeth again, and she wasn’t hungry. Meryl stood and turning her back on the blood-red cookies and the red candies arranged in a heart shape, she left them untouched on the counter.

Meryl went back to bed. She managed to fall into a deep sleep, but woke after about two hours, to a fluttering in her chest. She lay awake, thinking she would call her doctor in the morning. Maybe he would prescribe something to help her sleep. Maybe something to calm the pounding of this heart.

Then Meryl wondered if more medications would be bad for the heart. She was on three medications to prevent rejection of the foreign heart, and three to prevent infection as the anti-rejection pills lowered her immune system. It scared her to think that anything might harm her new racehorse of a heart. Suddenly, she was overcome with compassion, with the thought that she needed to care for this heart that was living inside her, fighting for their life. Her heart.

She lay still in the darkness, aware of its movement in her chest. Noticing, witnessing. Meryl slowly, tentatively moved her hand toward her chest. She gently laid it over the place where she could feel the heart beating. In the dark of her room, she whispered a promise to the heart that she would love and care for it,

“with all of my heart.” The heart drummed steadily against the palm of her hand, as though in reply.

Just before falling back to sleep, Meryl decided she would go to the hardware store in the morning. She would buy a can of red paint. Tomorrow, in honor of her new heart, she would paint her front door a bright, shiny red.