The Heart

a short story by C. Wrenn Ball

They gathered in the center of the cabin, away from the world, the four of them talking about their family’s heart. She would drive her son South on 321 to Charlotte, early on a Saturday morning. By the time they reached the highway, her husband and daughter would have offered excuses around town. A trip across the country. Some time together, before her son’s wedding. They’d return like nothing had changed, if they were lucky.

The discussion had been short and to the point, her husband and daughter had not argued, despite the danger, the illegality. Her husband was too old to receive the organ, her daughter too young and was, of course, without a lover. The organ was naturally tender, already pressed to its limit, so they were resolved to tradition. Her daughter had not betrayed jealousy, and over the course of the night, her son had not uttered a word.

She had a doctor’s number, passed between pages in a book that was three generations old. Stored in a bedside drawer, a key to her cardiovascular system. She’d been staring at the faded ink for months. Borrowed time, borrowed, borrow. Then freely given, while fear reigned in her body.

Before they cut open her chest cavity, she had to know that her son would not waste the heart. She cornered him on the couch, the night before their drive down the mountain. They sat together, discussing the secrets of the universe and their family’s illicit organ, while she searched his eyes for doubt.

“Do you think that you love her?”

“That isn’t a fair question.”

She knew that he was not capable of love. What she feared was uncertainty.

“I know that she loves me. She moved across the country, to our woods.”

“That’s a gift,” she admitted.

“I will wake up with her. We will marry, then work, eat and sleep together. Every morning, every night, no matter...”

She allowed him to trail off, taking a breath to slow her pulse rate. To remain composed before unknown pain. “Respect, honesty, kindness. These are things that you repay, because we know that they are worthwhile. The feeling of love… It can only be offered.” She saw that the shifting in his eyes had passed away.

“They preach this message in school. We pledge allegiance to regimens of pumps and steroids, to maintain lower crime rates. We act out of duty to friends, family. To a system. You know how many aorta tears last year? How many suicides?”

She knew the answers, but remained quiet, watching his practiced passion.

“Divorce rates are low, and we live longer lives, without happiness. I want her to know that my love is more than action. That I can feel it in my bones.”

She recognized something like yearning, and that’s when she knew. That her grandmother’s heart, the muscle that had resided in her cavity for thirty-five years, would not be hers for long. She feared the experience of emptiness, flooding her chest. Beyond that, she feared what this would do to her son.

He had considered his mother’s plight, that she would be left with less than she had before. Still, he chose feeling, taste, and actual passions. He chose the heart.

Her husband prepared breakfast, grapefruit from the supply, blackberries from the garden, milk and extra strength aspirin. He clutched her in bed, a socially determined reaction to the exterior system. He should be worried, and so he held her tightly.

“We’ll still be able to… You know. Screw.” Her attempt at humor, while his grip remained tight upon her back.

“The Redsons, the Artisans, the Deveins…”

“By all accounts the Redsons were blatant, the Artisans were feuding, and the Deveins lived in Kansas. I’m surprised you know their names.”

“Everyone knows their names.” They were lucky to have a heart, and so her husband scrolled for news of illicit organs. Personal possession made her calloused, as if she could take feeling for granted.

“How many impounded hearts, across the country? Three, four in a dozen years?”

“The Redsons had a farm. The police slaughtered the animals. They say the Devein’s surgeon stole their organ.” He would not meet her eyes, the practiced concern.

“Don’t believe everything that you read online,” taking his chin in her hands, a curve to her smile, “we are smart, more careful. This family is not torn apart. Besides… Your son wants to love. Who am I to stand in the way?”

His hands remained on her back, she felt trapped, but knew that he was trying to impart closeness, even comfort.

“He wants to get off…” Matching her humor, his fingers crawled up her spine. “He has an idea of what it might be like, but he doesn’t understand. How could he?”

“He’s strong, he’ll handle the pain,” she hoped.

“And if he can’t?”

She finally stood, ready to dress. “I’ll have the sense-memory. I can help as much as he’ll let me.” She ignored the analysis in her husband’s eyes, which looked so much like skepticism. Doubt.

“What do you actually feel?”

“Only love,” she lied.

“You’re not afraid?”

“The procedure is painless.”

“Not the procedure. Of giving it up… ” The old questions, what is it like to feel? Will you miss it? Was it worth it?

“No one keeps anything forever,” she was buttoning her blouse, “and after so many years of feeling, a retreat from the enormity of it, the exhaustion.” She stopped. What did her husband know of exhaustion?

“Make sure that he’s memorized the rules,” he watched her dress, “Danny Devein is going to die in Pasquotank correctional.”

“Yeah, well, Danny chose a shitty doctor.” She returned to kiss his lips, “we will be safe. It will be mostly painless, and then we’ll live almost exactly like we are, right now.”

She left her husband in bed, knowing that he would be thankful to drop the facade and wait upon her return without bated breath.

Her son’s fiancée was on the stoop, watching the forest that gave way to a gravel driveway. Two lovers kissing, their arms intertwined. Her son’s tenderness was rehearsed, while his fiancée’s emotions were genuinely felt. The younger woman had an organic heart. How long had she been looking for a match? There couldn’t be more than fifty hearts on the continent, maybe less. And here were two in the woods of Western North Carolina. What were the chances?

They’d been together for just under a year. Plenty of time to sedate, cut out, then to steal an organ.

As she stepped toward their dusty SUV, the younger woman took her elbow.

“Thank you.”

She offered a weak smile, and hopped into the driver’s seat while her son gave his lover another kiss. For this reason, the two will become one flesh. Studying the interaction, his mother could tell that the younger woman was not afraid, and if she was nervous, it was born of hope. Her son had promised authenticity in the coming weeks, and that produced excitement. How rare, a pair of lovers sharing pleasure at orgasm? Joy and pain at the moment of birth, then fear? All of it, shared. The thought of that intimacy was overwhelming.

Of course, her son felt nothing, even while leaving his lover on the porch, and his family in the woods. Her son felt nothing, though he prioritized a life without his mother. Like all sons had, in the old world.

Would they remember her pain? Her fear? Would they remember the risk, or would they sweep it under the rug along with minor victories?

They joined traffic twenty miles past Blowing Rock, the wind passing through open windows. She considered the ways in which her son had keenly observed her emotions. As a child he’d bring her treasures, fruit, toys, just to engage her. Once he had their heart, he should generously offer empathy, but until then he acted out of duty, pulling her attention from the road, and the depths of reverie. This is what a son was supposed to do.

“What did your mother think, when your grandmother gave you the heart?”

“My grandmother never willingly gave anyone anything…” That sounded callous. “She decided to die before giving it up, though back then, she could have legally transplanted an organ.” The SUV passed a bank of clouds, further down the ravine. “You know why it was me, and not my mother?”

“Because your grandmother hated your mother,” he was matching her tone.

“That’s too simplistic. My father had been gone for a long time, so it was easy for my grandmother to rationalize holding off. I was told that the heart could come to me, but I wasn’t prepared.”

He took her hand, resting on the clutch. Practiced action, but still… It felt nice.

“Then the old woman was dead, and a doctor came to the house. Until that afternoon I wasn’t sure that it would be me. But my mother was not young. No one wants to die, so she left the risk to me. I remember seeing clean sheets on the bed, my grandmother’s body, then I went to sleep.”

“And after?” His silent questions would go unanswered. What was feeling like? How has it been, all of these years? Do you think that you can return to a life without?

“I saw her last night, my grandmother in my sleep.”

“What did she do?”

“She said that she was sorry.”

She raised their intertwined hands to her lips. Her eyes narrowed at the pass, the highway bending around the town of Lenoir, a cop’s cruiser parked beneath an overpass. Her son lowered his hand while her foot remained on the brake, gazing ahead.

“Run through the rules, one more time,” distracting herself, her son.

Her view of the cruiser faded. Why would her hands not cease to tremble?

“Number one, be grateful. Two, guard it. It is illegal to have a heart. They do not want you to question the world and begrudge their power. Third, cry alone or with family. Hearts are rare and we are lucky. Others would take away what we’ve treasured. Four, use the heart with care, and a little abandon. Five, share selectively, but graciously. You give it away only once.”

Her son had chosen to live life with her organ, to take the energy that coursed through her blood. The way that synapses shot between her neurons.

He was ready.

The drive into the city was quick. His first time into Charlotte, and her son anticipated the sounds of the park, the droll of a train, the soft horns of cars and nearby sirens. He would not digest these, lost instead in thoughts of what should come.

A cop on a horse pulled them over between Mint street and the stadium. The horse waited obediently as the cop dismounted, unbothered by the flow of traffic.

Her fingers trembling, she rolled down the window, then offered her license and registration. Her son would not blink. There was little to fear, so long as she could keep it together. Three generations of adrenaline, pulsing through her body. She breathed slowly, trying to remain calm.

“You know why I stopped you, ma’am?”

When she shook her head, he responded that she’d taken too long at the stop sign. Forcing at least two other cars to pass her by. Her son frowned, had it been two cars?

“I’m sorry officer… I don’t have a sense of the city.”

“Boone?” His eyes on her license.

“For over thirty years, between Blowing Rock. Charlotte’s a treat,” glancing at her son. “His first time.”

The cop did not blink at her son’s age, mid twenties and never in Charlotte. He could not feel that she had something to hide. Even with her hands stuffed into her lap, the thought never entered the cop’s mind.

“Welcome, then,” handing back the license. “You know where you’re going?”

She forced a smile, practiced cover, watching as he mounted the horse.

At the gate to the clinic, there was a sign that advertised the lease of storage units. They were waved into the parking garage, and their dusty SUV disappeared underground. Like a clot into the valve.

Before they exited the vehicle, her son offered to turn back. “If you want to keep it…”

She bent to kiss his cheek. “Love is offered. Freely given. You understand?”

They embraced in the dark of the garage, then found an assistant to ferry them to the OR.

On the table, she watched as one tech sterilized the blades, then prepared IVs. Another unpackaged the pump, meant to keep her fluids moving without an organ. She watched as they filed away the serial number. Cautiously, the surgeon washed his hands, while her son held a picture of his fiancée. Imagining a new life as a tech inserted needles into their arms. They would lie down together. As the bag emptied itself of Ketamine and Propofol, she noticed that her fear had faded. She faced her son.

“Put her first… As much as you can.”

“Thank you…” The practiced response, rule number one.

“Look at me…” Their eyes met. He was already drifting off…

Then she went to sleep.

He awoke to so much fucking pain, like a truck had been parked on his chest. He was aware of the tech at his arm, the sudden lessening of that weight that followed his screaming. The next time he awoke, he was crying. Not because the doctor told him that there had been complications. How they’d worked to save her body, how the pump hadn’t taken to her system. He was not crying because his mother was dead.

He was crying because of the tension that shot from his chest, through his nerves. He was crying because of the blood, and his heart, beating by the power of steroids that could move mountains, that kept the flesh young, alive. He chomped on his tongue with every sound that reverberated beyond the window, at every movement made by technicians, the function of machines attached to his body. With every drop of the IV, he could scream. Unable to help for feeling, crying out so that they’d give him pills. Then he slept.

He dreamed that his mother was holding him. As a child, the way that she’d clutched his hand. The way that she’d kissed his lips, and stroked his head. For decades, infants had not been born with heart organs, so he could not understand her love then. He felt it now. The enormity of the planet and everything on it.

It took two weeks for him to recover enough to travel. Two weeks for the surgeon to ensure the heart would pump his blood, like it pumped his mother’s, and great-grandmother’s. He’d spoken to his sister, and to his fiancée on a phone that wasn’t traceable, allowing a few minutes to pass messages along an electrical line. He was feeling better and made the mistake of telling his sister how much it had hurt. She masked something like jealousy in practiced sympathy, then asked him to bring donuts up the mountain. She liked the texture of the sugar powder.

His father had come twice. A close neighbor with tight lips had driven him down for the ashes and the SUV. He drove himself, weeks later, to retrieve his son and their family’s heart.

They stopped at the highway’s food supply, and he smelled mashed protein, vegetables. Customers typically drank sustenance from bottles, blended protein, vitamins. He was able to request something made of greens, magnesium and coenzymes. There were still diets that varied from normal intakes, usually mandated by primary care physicians. The inability to feel did not solve the world’s problems. His father ordered a beef drink.

The clerk behind the counter gawked at his sobbing. His father apologized, describing the side effects of medicine and psychiatric conditioning. They took the donuts to go.

On the way to the SUV, his father broke their silence. “We ruin you. We give you our habits. Our pain and fear.”

“To be so ruined,” a reply, eyes misty.

His father opened the door, and helped him into the SUV. “What does it feel like?”

He didn’t know how to respond, but cried at the taste of vegetables and iron supplements mixed with orange juice. The feeling of an aspirin sliding down his throat, the universe exploding in his mouth. It took him an hour to finish, feeling the texture of beans and vegetables twisted into something heart healthy. What had it been like to drink only for function, to glean energy from protein? To not taste? In the wake of extremity, he could hardly remember.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, the windows lowered, the mountain breeze thrown against his face. A joy like wildfire.

That night, alone in another cabin protected from the world by distance and darkness, his fiancée clutched at his incisions. His awareness retreated from relishing emotion. It was difficult to tell what was new, and what was generational. What had his mother felt? Her grandmother’s sorrow? Their family’s joy?

He began to cry again, and his fiancée kissed his chest.

Finally, they were responding with the sighs of a pair that could feel the other. Two hearts separated only by flesh and skin and air. That would rub together in the quiet and in the calm, like others before them. Fear and sacrifice led to love and new life.

His mother had given him a gift, and he would not waste it.

C. Wrenn Ball lives and works as a writer in Los Angeles, and previously as a camera operator in North Carolina. He fundraises for operas, symphonies, and theater companies, and completed an MFA at the John Wells Division of Writing for Screen and Television at the University of Southern California.