Sing

CHAPTER 43.

JONATHAN

I heard a fire alarm, but apparently, it was on a lower floor. Nothing to panic about. My family laughed with relief, even my father, who I believed didn’t actually understand levity. I stayed still and silent because I didn’t have the wherewithal to do anything else. A room crowded with people who loved me, and I never felt so alone. I wanted Monica to come back. I felt childish wanting her so badly, but I felt scraped down to a nub, without habit or discipline, no expectations or social cues. Just the core wants and revulsions, unfiltered by a personality built up by half a lifetime’s worth of experiences.

I was scared to die.

My body was uncomfortable.

I wanted Monica.

Past those three overwhelming sensations, I had only sensory inputs and petty feelings. Even the slight excitement that followed the end of the faraway fire drill didn’t move me. Some happy news amongst my family, like an unlikely Dodger win or an upcoming wedding. People scurried in sage green and pink, shouting orders. My mother came to me, smiling and kissed my cheek, stroking it until Dr. Emerson, the silver-haired one who came in and out of my room seventeen times a day, pulled her away. Her face was replaced with his.

“We have a heart. It’s a match. We’re prepping you for surgery.”

They handled my body like a jacket they were mending, and I felt humiliated and shut down, but hopeful.

“Monica.” I choked the word out to a nurse I didn’t recognize. She looked up and past me, to someone I couldn’t see. There was a conversation I couldn’t make out, then she said to me in a voice designed for clarity.

“We’ll let her know.”

“Where is she?”

“We don’t know. Just keep still now.”

She lifted my head and strung something around my neck. This was happening too fast. I’d already let Monica walk out of the room. I’d let it happen because I was weak and now I’d lost control of the situation entirely. That couldn’t happen. They couldn’t wheel me away and cut me open again without me seeing her. They’d done it last time, and look what happened (yes, make him believe she is his good luck charm)

“No!” I swung my arm, and it must have been truly pathetic, because they just strapped it down, easily, as if I was made of bone and rag.

I said her name to myself, over and over, but she didn’t appear.