13. Brian (V)
The
baby was crying again. Brian followed
the sound down the darkened hallway and into the colorful nursery. He crept toward the crib in the corner, where
the mobile twirled a menagerie of animals around in a slow circle, tinkling the
notes to a familiar tune. His memory
added lyrics to the melody:
“Imagine all the
people, living life in peace. You, you
may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you join us, and the world
will live as one.”
His eyes drifted upward, following a trail of
stars to the ceiling, where a round mirror hung like the full moon in the sky,
reflecting the red face of the screaming infant in the crib beneath it.
He reached down into the crib and plucked a plush
toy out of one corner. It was a stuffed
octopus, pastel-colored, with eight legs and a smiling face. He held it out for the baby to see, shaking
it a bit to make the legs wave about, but the baby’s cries only escalated.
Sighing, he took a step backward, away from the
crib. He could feel the blood rush to
his pounding head, as his heart began to race.
His fingers tightened around the octopus’s head, slowly squeezing and
releasing… squeezing and releasing… squeezing…
“Brian?”
Brian blinked, and suddenly, Becci was standing
beside him, her hand on his shoulder. He
looked down into the crib, and Calhan wasn’t crying anymore, but sound
asleep. The mobile was gone. Calhan hadn’t had a mobile over his crib
since he was a small baby. Bewildered, Brian
turned to Becci. She was staring back at
him, her brow furrowed. The concerned
expression on her face was all too familiar to him; he’d seen that look too
many times over the past year not to recognize it.
“Are you awake?” she asked.
"Yeah,” he said, frowning.
“Are you okay?”
He stood still, assessing his condition. Up until then, he’d felt fine, but at that
point, he became aware of a fluttery feeling in his chest, the familiar
sensation of his heart beginning to pick up its pace. He raised his hand to the side of his neck
and felt his pulse pounding beneath his fingertips. It was fast, but strong and steady. “I think so,” he said. “Was I dreaming again?”
“You were sleepwalking,” whispered Becci. “I woke up, and you weren’t in bed, and I got
worried, so I came looking for you. I
found you standing in here, just staring down at Calhan with that bear in your
hand.”
Brian looked down and found that he was holding
Calhan’s teddy bear. “Oh.” He held up the bear in confusion, turning it
over a few times in his hand. Then he gently
lowered it over the crib rail and laid it next to his sleeping son.
“Come on,” Becci said, squeezing his
shoulder. “Let’s go back to bed. I don’t want to wake him.”
Brian nodded and followed her out of the room, his
heart racing. “I was dreaming,” he
whispered to Becci in the hallway. “I
remember now.”
She looked back at him. “The same dream as before?”
He nodded.
“The one with the crying baby.”
It was one of several recurring dreams he’d been
having for three months now, although this was the first time it had caused him
to sleepwalk. As far as he knew, he’d
never done that before. Usually, he woke
up in his own bed, where he’d wait for his heart to start racing and gradually
slow again, as the rush of adrenaline worked its way out of his system. He was used to the sensation by now; it had
become almost a routine and was no longer scary. Still, the dreams themselves left him feeling
unsettled.
Becci seemed equally unnerved. She waited until they’d climbed back into bed
to ask, “Has something been bothering you, honey? I mean, sleepwalking’s a sign of stress, and
these nightmares you’ve been having… maybe it’s an anxiety thing? Are you worried about your appointment
tomorrow?”
Brian considered the question. He was scheduled to go to the heart institute
in the morning for his three-month check-up, where they would test his heart
for signs of rejection. The procedures
weren’t pleasant, but they were a necessary evil, and he’d become used to them
by now. Besides, he’d been feeling fine –
better every day, in fact – and hadn’t experienced any symptoms of rejection so
far. There was no reason for him to
worry. “No,” he answered truthfully,
“not really.”
“Well, I want you to mention this to Dr. Robert,”
said Becci, giving him a stern look. “The
sleepwalking and the nightmares. If
they’re stress-related, I’m sure he’ll have a suggestion for how to stop them,
and if they’re just another side effect of your meds, maybe he can make an
adjustment to them.”
“Aw, Becs, it’s not that big of a deal,” Brian
protested, feeling that she was overreacting.
She had a tendency to do that, especially where he and Calhan were
concerned.
“It is a big deal!” she insisted. “To me, it is, anyway! If you could have seen how you looked when I
walked into Cal’s room just now, the way you were just standing there with this
vacant stare on your face… it was creepy, Brian! It freaked me out. And whatever’s causing this, whether it’s
stress or anxiety or whatever, it can’t be good for your heart. So promise me you’ll talk to him tomorrow,
please?”
She gave him a pleading look that Brian was unable
to resist. “Alright,” he agreed,
nodding. “I promise, I’ll tell him. But I can’t promise he’ll have any answers
for us.”
“Just talk to him,” Becci repeated. “I’ll feel better if I know that he knows
about this. If he says it’s not a big
deal, then I won’t worry as much.”
“Anything to keep you from worrying. You worry too much already.” He leaned over and planted a kiss on the tip
of her nose. “And like you said, all
that worryin’ ain’t good for your heart. We gotta make sure yours lasts as long as
this one.” Winking, he pressed his hand
to his chest, where he could feel his heart starting to slow down.
Becci returned his wink with a sad smile. “It’s not mine I’m worried about.”
***
“I wish I was going with you,” said Becci
wistfully in the morning, as she got ready for work. “It feels wrong not to.”
Brian was sitting at the kitchen table, where he’d
laid out his morning dose of medications.
Looking up from the line of brightly-colored pills, he said, “Well, we
both know you can’t afford to miss any more work.”
Becci had gone back to her teaching job the week
before, after taking the maximum twelve weeks of medical leave to care for
Brian. “It’s like coming back from
maternity leave all over again,” she’d told Brian after her first day back.
“Except, instead of having a little bundle of joy
at home, you’re stuck with me,” he’d joked.
“You mean I’m blessed to have my big ol’ baby back
home,” she’d corrected, grinning. Then
she added, “But seriously, it’s like just it was when I came back from having
Calhan – everyone’s always asking about you, and all I can think about is
getting home to you again.”
Brian knew she still worried about him while she was
at work, but it was different now: he
wasn’t dying anymore. He was getting
better, and by the time school let out for summer in another three months, he
would finally feel normal again - as normal as a heart transplant recipient
ever could. He couldn’t wait to get back
to the life he’d left behind fourteen months ago, when the diagnosis of heart
failure had brought it to a screeching halt.
More than that, he couldn’t wait to feel like his old self again.
“Don’t you worry about me, babe,” he reassured
Becci, plucking up a few of his pills and popping them into his mouth. He washed them down his throat with a swig of
water, swallowing hard, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ll be fine.”
“What’s with all this ‘babe’ stuff nowadays?” she
teased him, crinkling her nose. “Don’t
you go getting all cocky on me, Brian Littrell.”
Brian shrugged, not sure what had possessed him to
use that particular term of endearment.
“How could a guy not get cocky after scoring the most beautiful woman on
the planet?” he replied, flashing her a cheeky grin.
Becci threw back her head and laughed so hard,
even her hair bounced. “I love you,” she
managed to say, breathless from laughing, her eyes bright and her cheeks
rosy. In that moment, she had never looked
more beautiful. When she bent down to
kiss him goodbye, he savored the moment, tasting the flavor of mint toothpaste
mixed with vanilla lip gloss as she pressed her mouth against his, inhaling the
scent of her perfume as she pulled away.
“I love you too,” he said back, wishing she didn’t
have to leave and that he didn’t have to, either. He wasn’t looking forward to what the day had
in store for him. Reluctantly, he scooped
up a second handful of pills and forced himself to swallow them. When he set his water glass down on the
table, Becci was still standing there, watching him with an odd expression on
her face. “What?” he asked, wiping his
mouth again.
“Just… don’t forget the promise you made to me
last night, okay? Make sure you talk to
Dr. Robert about the nightmares.”
He nodded.
“I will, I promise.”
Her face relaxed, the creases on her forehead
ironing out flat. “Thank you. Alright, I guess I should grab Cal and get
going. Good luck with everything
today. I’ll see you this afternoon?”
“See ya later,” he confirmed, smiling. “Have a great day at school.”
She smiled back tightly. “I will,” she replied, but he knew she would
worry about him all day.
He choked down the rest of his pills while she
went to collect Calhan. When she came
back into the kitchen, carrying the toddler on one hip with the diaper bag
slung over her opposite shoulder, she leaned down to let Calhan kiss his father
goodbye, and then they were gone, out the door, on their way over to Brian’s
parents’ house, where Becci would drop off Calhan before continuing on to
school. Alone in the house, Brian
finished his breakfast and wandered back to his bedroom to get dressed for the
day, knowing his ride would be there soon.
His cousin Kevin arrived promptly at eight o’clock
to pick him up, and they left for Lexington right away. “Hope traffic’s not bad,” said Kevin,
glancing at the dashboard clock as he pulled away from the curb in front of
Brian’s house.
Brian laughed.
“Relax, Kev, my appointment’s not for another hour. We’ll be there with plenty of time to spare.”
Usually Becci accompanied him to the heart
institute, but now that she was back at work, they’d had to make alternate
arrangements. Brian was allowed to drive
again, but not after undergoing a heart biopsy, one of his regularly scheduled
procedures, for which he would be given a mild sedative. Luckily, the appointment correlated with one
of Kevin’s days off, so he had volunteered to drive Brian to and from the
hospital.
They made small talk on the way, chewing over the
weather, the family, and their plans for Valentine’s Day. Kevin, whose mother was the older sister of
Brian’s father, was a commercial airline pilot who flew a regular line between
Lexington and Orlando, Florida. He still
lived half an hour from Lexington in the town of Harrodsburg, where he’d been
born and raised, but he had a crash pad in Orlando and, apparently, a girl
there as well. “Yeah, I’m flying on
Valentine’s Day, but Kristin and I’ll do something Saturday to celebrate,” he
said in his slow drawl, staring straight out the windshield as he drove up
Route 68. “You got anything big planned
for Becci?”
Brian grinned.
“I’m gonna ask for a copy of my chest x-ray so I can turn it into a big
card. It’ll say, ‘My old heart belonged
to you, and my new one does, too’ – somethin’ like that, anyway.”
Kevin took his eyes off the road long enough to
look Brian’s way. “You serious?” he
asked, the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Brian shrugged.
“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s creative, though, ain’t it?”
“I’ll give ya that one, cous. It is creative,” Kevin admitted, chuckling.
Brian spent the rest of the car ride thinking
about romantic things he could do for Becci.
She had done so much for him over the past few months, so many things
that weren’t romantic, that the least
he could do was show her how much she meant to him. He was still scheming when Kevin pulled into
the hospital parking lot.
Brian led the way to the heart institute on the
first floor. The front desk where he
checked in was decorated with red and pink paper hearts. As he signed his name on the necessary
paperwork, he could sense Kevin still standing behind him. “You don’t have to stay here the whole time,
you know,” Brian said over his shoulder. “Like I said, it could take a few
hours, so if you wanna go drive around or whatever, I can just call you when
I’m done.”
Kevin returned his apologetic glance with a
patient smile and held up a book. “It’s
alright; I came prepared. I got nothin’
else to do today.”
So they sat down in the waiting area together,
until Brian was called back for his exam.
He left Kevin and followed the nurse to a private room, where she gave
him a hospital gown to change into, checked his vital signs, and drew his blood
for the necessary labwork. Then she sent
in his cardiologist, Dr. Robert, who peppered him with questions as he listened
to his heart and looked at the scar left by his healed incision. Was he diligently checking his pulse, blood
pressure, temperature, and weight each day to watch for signs of
complications? Was he sticking to his
diet? Exercising? Had he experienced any shortness of breath or
irregular heart rhythms?
“No,” said Brian to the last question, shaking his
head. “I’ve been feelin’ great.”
“And your heart’s sounding great,” Dr. Robert
replied, smiling, as he slipped the stethoscope out of his ears and draped it
around his neck. “We’ll do an
echocardiogram and get a chest x-ray and tissue sample for biopsy to check for
signs of rejection, but it seems like you’re doing very well. Any other concerns you have, before we get
you set up for the echo?”
Remembering his promise to Becci, Brian shifted on
the exam table, causing the paper covering to crinkle loudly underneath
him. Embarrassed, he said, “Well, there
is this one thing… My wife wanted me to
mention it.”
“And what’s that?” asked Dr. Robert with a knowing
smile.
“I’ve been having these weird dreams lately… ever
since the transplant, I guess.” Brian
paused, struggling to put his experience into words. “There’s not much to them, nothing really
that scary, just vivid images and feelings… I always feel scared in the dreams,
and then I wake up and feel like I’ve just had a nightmare. I’m panting and sweating, and then my heart
starts to race from the adrenaline rush.”
Seeing the concerned look come over Dr. Robert’s face, he forged ahead
quickly, “The first time it happened, it really freaked me out, but I’ve gotten
used to it by now. It doesn’t happen
every night, but often enough that I’ve almost come to expect it. I always check my pulse and everything when I
wake up, and it’s always steady and slows back down to normal after awhile, so
I don’t think it’s really anything to worry about… but last night, Becci found
me sleepwalking, which I’ve never done before.
She wondered if it could be a side effect of one of my medications or if
it’s just stress.”
Brian stopped talking at that point and looked to
Dr. Robert for a reaction. The
cardiologist was frowning, his lips pressed tightly together. “Hm…” he said, stroking his chin. “Your wife may be right. Stress and anxiety can certainly cause
nightmares or episodes of sleepwalking, but some medications are thought to
trigger nightmares as well. If it’s something
that’s really been bothering you, we could try lowering the dosage of your
blood pressure medication and see if you notice any changes in your sleep.”
Brian shrugged.
“It’s not really that big of a deal.
I mean, like I said, the dreams aren’t even that scary.”
“If you don’t my asking, what are they about?”
“There’s two recurring ones I keep having. In one, I’m just running… running away from
something, I think, but I never know what.
The other one is about my son. I
can hear him crying, but when I go to his crib to get him, he’s not there. Only sometimes he is. He was there in the one I had last night,
when I was sleepwalking, only it didn’t look like his room.” Brian shook his head. “My wife Becci used to have nightmares like
that right after Calhan was born, where she dreamed he was crying and she
couldn’t find him. I think it’s probably
just anxiety.”
“Have you been feeling anxious lately?” Dr. Robert
wanted to know.
Brian shrugged again. “I guess I worry about my heart and my
health, you know, but no more than anyone would in my situation.”
Dr. Robert nodded.
“You’ve been through a traumatic experience. It might help to talk to someone about how
you’re feeling. I’ll have the transplant
social worker get in touch with you.”
Brian didn’t see how talking to the social worker again
would help, but he nodded and thanked Dr. Robert anyway. They proceeded with the echocardiogram and
chest x-ray, both of which were painless, and then Dr. Robert left Brian to be
prepped for his heart biopsy, which was the part he always dreaded most about
these check-ups, since it involved the doctor threading a catheter into his
heart through a vein in his neck and snipping off bits of heart tissue to be
examined under a microscope for signs of rejection.
He was lying flat on the table, wired to a heart
monitor and with the sedative already kicking in, when Dr. Robert burst in and
said, “So Brian, I was discussing your case with one of my colleagues, and she
reminded me that sleepwalking has been linked to arrhythmias. When we’re done here, I’d like to send you
home with a Holter monitor, so we can keep an eye on your heart activity for a
twenty-four hour period and see if there’s any changes while you’re sleeping.”
By then, Brian was starting to wish he’d never
mentioned the dreams.
When he rejoined Kevin in the waiting room later,
he was wired with a series of electrodes that attached to a small monitor he
wore under his shirt. He had worn a
Holter monitor once before, in the days leading up to his diagnosis of heart
failure, and although it wasn’t painful, its presence now was a grim reminder
of the fear he’d felt then. For the
first time since he’d come home from the hospital, Brian was worried about the
results of his tests. What if his new
heart wasn’t as healthy as he’d thought?
He couldn’t bear the thought of going through it all over again.
“You okay, cous?” asked Kevin, looking at him in
concern. “That looks like it hurt.” His eyes were focused on the large bandage
taped over the puncture wound in Brian’s neck, but that was the least of
Brian’s worries.
“Yeah… it’s nothing,” he said vaguely, but a voice
in the back of his mind added, You
thought the dreams were nothing, too.
***
When he shared Dr. Robert’s concerns with her that
afternoon, Becci was understandably upset, but she didn’t need to be. As it turned out, neither of them needed to
have worried. When Brian returned to the
heart institute just days later to go over the results of his tests, Dr. Robert
had only good news to give.
“Everything looked great, Brian,” he said. “No signs of rejection found in the bloodwork
or biopsy, and no irregular heart rhythms recorded by the Holter device. Your new heart appears to be functioning just
fine.”
“Thank God,” sighed Becci, squeezing Brian’s
hand. She had been adamant about
accompanying him to this appointment, insisting he schedule it for right after
school let out on Friday afternoon. It
was a relief to know they’d be able to go home and enjoy the weekend,
worry-free.
“In the meantime,” Dr. Robert went on, “I’m going
to adjust the dosage of your blood pressure medication, but I would also like
you to sit down with Joan, the social worker, to discuss these dreams you’ve
been having. If there’s not a medical
explanation for your sleepwalking, there may be a psychological one she’ll be
able to help you address. She can hook
you up with some support groups for transplant recipients or even work with you
one on one, if you’re more open to that.”
Brian did not want to sit down with the social
worker, but of course, Becci piped right up with, “That sounds wonderful, Dr.
Robert, thank you!” He knew then that he
would have no say in the matter.
Despite his doubts about seeing the social worker,
Brian didn’t hold it against his wife for long.
On Valentine’s Day, they put Calhan to bed early and enjoyed a quiet
evening to themselves. Becci cooked
Brian a delectable dinner, and he gave her his homemade Valentine, the X-ray of
his healthy new heart, outlined in red and adorned with the line he’d come up
with in the car with Kevin: My old heart belonged to you, and my new one
does, too. Beneath it, he’d written,
Some things never change. Love you always, Brian. She laughed, then cried, then laughed again
and told him she was going to frame it.
He suggested they burn off the calories from dinner with a good cardio
workout in bed. That night, they made
love for the first time in six months.
“Wow,” whispered Becci, once they’d finished and
were lying beside each other in bed, both of them breathing hard, their bodies
slick with sweat. “You were something
else. I didn’t think you’d have that
much stamina!”
Propping himself up on one elbow, Brian looked
over at her and grinned. “I’ve been
saving it up since last summer, babe.
That’s a long time to go
without sex.”
“Tell me something I don’t know!” she exclaimed
without missing a beat, and they both dissolved into giggles.
It felt good to laugh like that, to make his heart
race with passion and pleasure, rather than pain or primal fear. As he rolled onto his back, relaxing into the
mattress, Brian rested his hand on his bare chest and savored the feel of the
strong, steady beats against his palm.
His chest felt wonderfully light, like a huge weight had been lifted off
it. There was no reason to worry.
But in his dreams, the baby was still screaming, and
Brian woke, panic-stricken once again, and waited for his pulse to start pounding.
***