1. Brian (I)
Brian Littrell had heard it said that
a person’s heart is an ocean full of secrets.
In fact, he had heard it said at least a hundred times, because he was
pretty sure that line came from Titanic,
and Titanic was his wife Becci’s favorite movie.
But there was nothing secret about his
heart. Not anymore. It had been scoped, monitored, recorded,
x-rayed, scanned, and catheterized until his cardiologist knew every beat,
every murmur, and every thing that was wrong with it. There were no secrets. The test results told only grim truths: a congenital defect had worsened; Brian’s
heart was failing; and if he didn’t get a transplant soon, he was going to die.
There was no time for secrets.
At first, he’d told only the necessary
people: his wife, of course, and his
family – Mom, Dad, his older brother. He
and Becci had even tried to explain to Calhan, who
was, after all, only a year old and much too young to comprehend how sick his
daddy really was. But then the necessity
had extended to others: his boss, his
coworkers, and, eventually, the students at West Jessamine High School, where
Brian had been employed as the choral director for a decade.
The last brought him full circle, for
it was in front of his students that he had almost collapsed one day last
winter, in the midst of rehearsing for the annual holiday concert. At the time, he’d made light of it, using his
sense of humor to clown around his embarrassment. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I
always tell you, never lock your knees on the risers!” He’d earned a few chuckles, but hadn’t missed
the nervous looks the kids exchanged for the rest of rehearsal. Not that he could blame them. The incident had alarmed him too, enough to
send him to his doctor’s office. And
that was where it had all started: the
scoping, monitoring, testing process that explained why he was now here, at
home in bed, sucking down oxygen from a tube when he should have been using his
own supply to teach a bunch of teenagers how to sing.
Brian inhaled a little deeper and
released the pure oxygen through a sigh, lifting the remote in his hand to
change the channel on his TV. He didn’t
understand the appeal these soap operas held for the average housewife. Every one he’d tried to watch seemed to have
about fifty different characters, yet moved so slowly that a single
conversation between two of them took the whole episode. In essence, nothing happened, and yet, over
the course of a week, ridiculous things happened. It was all too melodramatic for him; who
needed poorly-scripted drama when they were dying? That was real drama, and Brian had plenty of it. Yet there was nothing else on TV in the
middle of the afternoon.
He gave up and turned off the set with
a click. The picture on the screen faded
to black, and a faint crackling dissipated into a heavy silence. Brian’s gaze moved to the window. In the summer, while he was out of school, he
never watched TV during the day; he was always outside, playing with his
family, or doing yard work, mowing the fresh grass, planting, watching things
grow. But the greenness of summer was
long gone now, and sometimes, Brian wondered if he’d ever see it again. Through this window, he’d watched the leaves
turn to the vibrant, golden colors of autumn, then fall from their branches and
curl upon the ground, dull brown with death.
In another month, the trees would be bare, the grass frosted over until
it, too, was dead and brown. The school
choir would be rehearsing for the holiday concert, and for the first time in
ten years, Brian would not be there to lead their rehearsals.
He’d been well enough to finish out the
last school year, six months after his fatal diagnosis. But in the peak of summer, when the days were
at their longest and the cool nights a pleasant relief, his decline had
begun. By mid-August, he was on home
oxygen therapy, and teaching music classes seemed out of the question. With reluctance, he’d requested and was
granted medical leave, allowing someone else to take over his two choirs. He’d stayed away from school, wanting to send
the message to his students that this new director was the director, and there should be no confusion over that. Yet he hoped to make the holiday concert, if
he hadn’t gotten a new heart by December.
December would mark a year since his
diagnosis, a whole year that he’d been slowly dying. He wondered how much longer the process could
last. At what point would his weakened
heart decide it couldn’t force another beat and simply stop? Would it be before Christmas? After the new year? Without a new heart, could he make it to his
birthday in February? He’d be turning
thirty-four. Almost middle-aged, by all
accounts, but if you looked at the big picture, a thirty-four-year-old heart
was still young. Hearts three times the
age of his beat with more strength than his heart beat now.
In the silence, as he lay against his
pillows, head turned toward the window, Brian could hear the beat in his
ears. It was syncopated, uneven, and it
raced with a tempo that was too fast for a person just lying static in bed. “Stay with us. You gotta feel the beat,” he’d urged his
percussionists in the orchestra he’d conducted during his student
teaching. Instruments weren’t his forte
like vocal music was; he could tinker on the piano, strum chords on a guitar,
and work the valves on a trumpet, but that was about it. If there was one thing Brian Littrell knew,
though, it was rhythm. Rhythm was the
backbone of music. Without the steady
beat of the bass drum, the rest of the orchestra would collapse. That was what he’d told his bass drummer,
Freddie Collins, after school one day, as they stayed late to practice quarter
notes, drumming out an eight count that lasted until Freddie could keep the
beat without Brian stomping it next to him.
Now, it seemed, the drumming of Brian’s heart was worse than
Freddie’s. It rushed ahead, then skipped
a beat, as if to keep itself in check, and when Brian thought of the blood
slogging through it, he felt light-headed.
He remembered how Dr. Robert had
explained it to him: “Your heart is, of
course, a pump,” the cardiologist had begun.
“Newly oxygenated blood enters the left side of your heart from your
lungs and is pumped to the rest of your body.
It comes back to the heart on the right side, which sends it back to the
lungs. But your heart has a defect, a
large hole between the left and right ventricle. This means that every time your heart beats,
some of the oxygenated blood in the left ventricle sloshes over into the right
ventricle and is pumped straight back into your lungs, even though it already
has oxygen. Therefore, your heart is
having to work harder to get enough blood to your other tissues, and over time,
this has enlarged and weakened it. The
left ventricle has started to fail; it doesn’t have the strength to keep
pumping blood as well as it once did, and now you have a back-up of blood that
it can’t bail out. The murmur I hear
when I listen to your heart is the blood leaking into the other ventricle.”
He thought he could hear it now, the
muffled whooshing that accompanied each sickly beat. It was like the ticking of a time bomb, one
which had no visible clock. He couldn’t
count down, because he didn’t know what number he was starting from, yet he
knew that each passing second, each rush of blood in his ears, brought him
closer to death. Just as the bomb would
explode, his heart would eventually stop, and there was no guarantee of being
able to reset the clock. Listening to
the death march of his heart made him feel woozy, and as a clammy sweat broke
out on his forehead, he lifted his head from the pillow and took a deep drag of
oxygen from the thin tubes in his nostrils.
He felt weak, drained, yet he couldn’t let himself lie down again. He felt like the madman in Poe’s “The
Tell-Tale Heart” – hearing the heart beat was going to drive him insane.
So he sat up again, adjusting his
pillows behind his back, and resignedly turned the TV back on, grateful for the
noise. Martha Stewart was on now, which
meant Dr. Phil was next, and then Ellen DeGeneres, at which point Becci would come home from work and flip to Oprah to see if
her show was more interesting that day.
It usually was, by Becci’s standards – she
liked the serious topics, while Brian preferred the much funnier Ellen.
Two more hours, and Becci would be home, having picked up Calhan on the
way. Brian couldn’t wait to see his wife
and son. These dying days were so long,
yet the weeks seemed so short. To think,
Becci had already been in school two months. Two months, and still no heart. They’d both hoped it would come over the
summer, while they were both off work, so she wouldn’t have to take time off
from her teaching job. But although
Brian had moved up on the transplant list with the summer’s decline, no heart
had come, and Becci had started the year with a new
batch of fourth-graders like usual. Her
school knew the situation and was prepared to hire a long-term sub after the
transplant, when she would be needed at home to help care for Brian. But first, there had to be a heart. And there was no timing when the right person
might die.
Brian’s eyes strayed again from the
TV, this time to the small, black pager that lay amid the prescription bottles
on his nightstand. When it happened, the
pager would go off, and Brian and Becci would make
the drive into Lexington to see if there was a match. So far, the pager had been only silent and
still. Brian tried not to get his hopes
up over the first time it might vibrate.
Over the summer, when he’d still felt well enough to sit up at the
computer, he’d scanned enough transplant support forums to know that there were
often false alarms. Indeed, sometimes in
the plural. He might rush to the
hospital only to find that the donor heart was not viable after all. Antibodies might keep it from being a perfect
match. He might have a fever or the sniffles;
even the slightest sign of an infection would be enough to postpone the
transplant and give the heart to someone else.
But there had been no heart at all, and the pager remained as static as
the day Dr. Robert had handed it to him.
No heart…
Dr. Robert…
Dr. Phil…
The scattered thoughts blended into
one, as Brian dozed off to the drone of the television, his head lolling to one
shoulder. He awoke with the sound of the
front door closing, and his chin snapped up from his chest as he looked around,
suddenly alert. Ellen was dancing across
the TV screen; it was four o’clock. Becci was home.
She swept into the room, balancing
Calhan on one hip. In one smooth
movement, she bent to kiss Brian, plopping the toddler down on the bed. As his wife straightened up, the faint scent
of her lotion lingering in the air, and as his son crawled into his lap and
clumsily patted his face, Brian smiled.
This was the best part of his long, melancholy days: when his family came home, and the three of
them could spend time together. Each
moment was more precious than ever, under threat of the ticking time bomb with
no exact number.
“How was your day?” he asked Becci, as she began to move about the room, changing from
her school clothes into her sweats.
She paused in front of the large
dresser to unfasten her jewelry. “Long,”
she sighed, flashing him a tired smile in the mirror. He smiled back at her reflection. She was pretty in an old-fashioned way, not
stunning by today’s standards, but sweet-faced, with a fair complexion that
flushed easily, expressive gray eyes, and dark brown hair styled in a short
bob. In the ten years he’d known her,
she had never treated her hair; it was always soft, always silky. She was forever running her fingers through
it, as she did now, tucking back a lock that had fallen into her eyes as she
lowered her head over her wooden jewelry box.
“The kids have been keyed up all week,” she added, carefully stowing her
earrings and necklace in their proper compartments. “I wish Halloween would come and go already…
and the week after, too. Nothing like
twenty-five ten-year-olds who are all sugared up on the candy they ate for
breakfast and brought in their cold lunches.”
Brian chuckled, shifting Calhan in his
lap. “Aw, c’mon. You love Halloween.”
“I loved Halloween as a kid. I love Halloween with my kid. I do not love
Halloween with a bunch of other people’s kids who I’m expected to teach,” she
explained in her matter-of-fact way, a smirk tugging at the corners of her
mouth. She pulled her sweater up and
over her head.
He watched her undress, admiring the
curves of her body as she turned her back toward him. She was not a slender woman, but she had a
classic, hourglass figure that he found attractive. It was wider on bottom ever since she’d had
Calhan, and though she complained about wanting to lose the rest of her baby
weight, he didn’t see her ever going back to the same body she’d had when he’d
married her. But then, her breasts were
larger now too, and so it all evened out.
She unhooked her bra, sighing with relief as its loosened straps slid
down her shoulders, and he saw the red marks on her back where it had dug into
her white skin. Shoving the bra into her
top dresser drawer, she took out a sweatshirt and pulled it on to cover
herself.
“Much better,” she said with a smile
as she crawled onto the bed beside him.
She snuggled into him wearily, resting her head on his shoulder. “Your mom said Cal’s discovered a new
game: catch the kitty!”
Brian laughed. “More like ‘chase the kitty,’ I bet. I can’t imagine Missy would actually let him
catch her.”
Becci laughed too. “No, but not
for a lack of trying. Grandma said you
ran all over the house trying to grab her tail, didn’t you?” Her voice lifted as she spoke to Calhan,
chucking him playfully under the chin.
He giggled, squirming away, and Brian smiled, watching him.
His son was him in miniature; everyone
was shocked by how alike they looked.
Same blue eyes, which crinkled at the corners when they smiled. Same long noses that scrunched up as they
laughed. Same wispy curls, though
Calhan’s were blonder. Brian imagined
they would darken with age, as his own hair had. At his parents’ house, where Calhan went for
daycare while Becci worked, there were plenty of
pictures of Brian as a child, and his relatives constantly marveled over
comparing the two.
“Uh-oh… better watch out. I don’t think Missy likes having her tail
pulled,” Brian warned Calhan, grimacing as he imagined how his mother’s elderly
cat would hiss and spit if the baby did manage to get hold of her switching
tail. But he wasn’t really
concerned. He knew his mom wouldn’t let
the “game” go that far; she was as protective a grandmother as she was a
mother, and she doted on her grandson.
“Maybe we should get a cat of our own,
so we can show him how to treat one,” Becci said
off-handedly.
“Or a dog. A small dog,” he added, smiling. They’d never been able to agree on the best
pet; Becci was a cat person through and through,
while Brian preferred dogs. Maybe they’d
wait until Cal was old enough to have a say and let him cast the deciding vote.
“Ha.
Never mind the pet. What do you
want for dinner?” she asked, swatting his thigh as she straightened up,
swinging her legs over the edge of the mattress to get up again.
“Whatever you feel like fixing. Want some help?”
“I’d love some company, if you feel
like it,” she returned his offer with a smile.
“Definitely. I need a change of scenery,” he replied,
sitting up straighter himself. Becci nodded. She
scooped up Calhan and set him down on the floor, then extended her arm to
Brian. He took it, holding on to the
oxygen tube with his free hand to keep the line from tangling as he got
up. He moved slowly, fighting the
light-headedness that accompanied even the slightest exertion. She was ever patient, standing by until he
was ready, steadying him when he finally gathered the strength to stand. She picked up the small oxygen tank that sat
next to the bed and carried it with her as they walked up the hallway at the
pace of a couple of ninety-year-olds.
It had humiliated him, at first, to
have to depend on her like this. He was
the athletic one of the two; he’d always been in shape, active, full of
energy. He’d coached girls’ basketball at
the high school for eight seasons before Calhan was born. He’d never imagined that a mere two years
later, just walking to his own kitchen and back would seem as tiring as running
ten suicides. He hated the sedentary
life he’d been forced to adopt, but there was no way around it. He no longer had the stamina to be up and
about very often; fatigue and vertigo were his constant companions. And Becci, who had
taken on the role of caretaker to a husband as well as a baby without
complaint. When he got his new heart, he
vowed to make it up to her.
He was breathing hard by the time he
sank down onto the kitchen chair Becci pulled out for
him, and once again, he felt the erratic thrumming of his heart in his ears, as
the rush of blood brought color back into his face. He sat back to visit with Becci
as she made dinner, keeping an eye on Cal, who pushed a toy car around his
feet. A few months ago, Brian would have
been on the floor with him, making the cars crash with lively sound effects
that made his son shriek with laughter.
But now, he could only watch.
When he got his new heart, he would
make it up to Cal too.
When… it was all a question of when.
And the question became more crucial with each passing day. A long wait for a heart, which had once seemed
feasible, no longer seemed so. Brian was
getting weaker and sicker every day, and although he’d been bumped to the top
of the waiting list, there was still the matter of waiting. How much longer would he have to wait? Another day?
Another week? Another month? Or just until the time bomb in his chest
ticked down to its very last second?
Waiting game over. Final score:
zero.
A cold sweat that had nothing to do
with exertion broke out on his skin, and he felt the blood drain from his face
again. He sucked in deep lungfuls of oxygen to slow the numbered beats of his
palpitating heart. Then he closed his
eyes, and there, sitting alone at the kitchen table, he prayed. He prayed swiftly and silently the same plea
he knew Becci, too, made to God each night when they
went to bed: that the answer to the
question of when would be soon.