Jennie
#19. Think of someone else's needs first.
Mama flipped the page of her Southern Living magazine and sighed for the twentieth time in the last hour. When I didn't respond, she tried another tactic. "What are you reading?"
"Not much." Everything. When I'd first Googled "Lisa Manoban," nothing had come up but hockey scores and highlights. But when I entered "Pranpriya Bruschweiler"? A whole world opened up.
I needed to keep my mind off V's phone call. The one that told me to be kind to Lisa because she'd bombed her flight today and scored a zero on the test this afternoon. She'd failed. Because of me. I'd become the one thing she'd tried to avoid—the worst kind of distraction. She'd be able to bounce back, I was sure of it. But not when I was dragging her down.
"Well, it must be interesting. You've had your head in that thing all day, and that's saying something seeing as it's going on supper time." She flipped another page.
"Why don't you head home? There's nothing you can do here, Mama." I finished another story, this one speculation on where Pranpriya and Rosé Bruschweiler really were, directly questioning Senator Bruschweiler's request for privacy so his children could live free of the public eye.
She peered over at me with a look that withered lesser women. "Oh, no. I'm sitting right here. There's no chance I'm headed home to that sea of piranhas."
I gave up, powering off the tablet. My left thumb hovered over the little pain clicker, and I wished it made my mother disappear as easily as the pain in my ribs from the break. "I'm sure it's perfectly fine. No one is out to eat you up."
"Oh, no? You are well aware that Sue Ellen Watts has told everyone, and there will be dozens of messages to return. She never could resist a good piece of gossip." She flicked another page. "Besides, I'm not about to let you sit here all alone."
God, I wish she would. I shifted my legs in the sheets, stubble catching on the smooth fabric. I needed a good shower and a razor. I changed tactics as I adjusted my oxygen tube. "Mama, go home. Get some sleep. I won't be alone. Lisa should be here any minute." I'd been telling myself that every minute since the clock hit five p.m. It was going on six thirty now.
"Hmm. Yes, about that girl." She looked over the pages of her magazine.
"Lisa is where I draw the line. Not a single word."
"Don't you mean Pranpriya?" The magazine landed in her lap, right with my patience. "I mean, really, Jennie. What kind of a person hides the fact that she's a senator's daughter? Maybe if we'd known that from the beginning, we wouldn't have been so against you seeing her, seeing as she's a Bruschweiler."
"Mama, who she's chosen to be is so much more than what she came from. I'd actually prefer not to have your approval of Lisa based on her father, and I'm not kidding. She's not up for discussion." I never wanted to hear that name again. She was Lisa Manoban, and that was all there was to it.
"Well, if that's how you feel. I wouldn't want to do anything to upset your heart…like bungee jumping or anything, before you get this pacemaker put in." She kept her voice sweet and level.
"Those are matters you know nothing about." Heart attack or no, there would be no pacemaker.
She stood, smoothing the lines of her slacks. "Hospital bed or not, don't you dare sass me, Nini. How about I get you some ice?"
I swallowed the messy emotions I knew she wouldn't want me to voice. "That'd be nice, thank you."
"How about I escort you to the machine, Mrs. Kim?" Daddy asked her from the doorway. He winked at me. "Hey, darling. I'm going to steal your mama away and give you a second with this one I found wandering the halls."
Lisa stepped around my father, dressed in faded jeans and a ringer tee just tight enough to make me want to peel it off her, if I was ever going to be allowed to have sex again. "Hey." I smiled, my heart already breaking.
Her smile didn't quite reach her eyes as she leaned over and kissed me lightly. "How are you feeling?" Tension radiated from every line of her body.
"Better now." I tugged the oxygen tube from under my nose.
"Hey, you need that." Lisa looped it over my ears and pulled Mama's chair closer so that she could hold my hand. "So what now?"
"Wow, right to it, huh?" I joked. "No 'how was your day, dear?'"
"Where are my manners?" A corner of her mouth quirked up, but her usual grin didn't appear. "How was your day, my dear?"
"Oh, you know, mostly spent it being lazy and getting waited on hand and foot."
"Sounds like a dream." There was the smile. "More of the same tomorrow?"
My smile fell. "I'm being transferred to Birmingham tomorrow, so it should include a glamorous three-hour ride." My attempt at humor fell flat. "My cardiologist is there. I have to…make a choice now."
"You're getting a pacemaker, right?"
I jerked back reflexively. "What?"
"I spent some time on Google today." Her eyes shot to where my tablet lay next to my hand. "I'm guessing you did, too. Anyway, I did some research."
"I thought you had a test."
"Yep. I took the test, and I researched new pacemaker technology."
My stomach turned, but I couldn't be mad since I'd spent my day researching her, too. But how much had she learned? "I'm choosing septal myectomy. End of discussion."
She paled. "You want them to shave down your heart?"
Apparently a lot. "It's not as bad as it sounds."
She sucked her breath through clenched teeth. "I need you to explain your thought process."
Logic couldn't keep my hackles from rising, and besides, wasn't this what I wanted? "I know you deserve an explanation, but you're going to have to watch your tone. Nothing gets me madder than someone bossing me around when it comes to my heart."
The chair creaked as she shifted her weight. "Do you love me?"
"Yes," I snapped.
"Do you want a future with me?" Her eyes lit with the same fire that had drawn me to her in the first place.
"Yes." Which I can never have.
"Then stop acting like you're alone in this, and explain your choice. I'm not saying I'll agree with you, and I don't have to, but we're at least discussing it."
She wasn't V or my parents. She wouldn't bully me against what I knew to be right. "I just have this feeling…and I don't want to be here again. I want the septal myectomy, because then it's done. Other than monitoring, I'm not sentenced to a life of…this." I gestured to the monitors. "It isn't just a Band-Aid, it's a fix."
"It's got a five percent mortality rate over six years, it's only eighty-five percent effective, and it has a huge rate of bundle branch blocks afterward. The pacemaker is proven to regulate your heart and seems like the most logical first step before you ask them to crack your chest, especially since you have a family history of SCD. Septal myectomy isn't guaranteed to keep you alive, the pacemaker is."
Ugh, stupid photographic memory. "I don't want a pacemaker." I enunciated each word.
"Well, that's a shitty reason."
"Wait…you…you actually want me to have the pacemaker?" Heat flooded my cheeks and then my ears. "They fail!"
She pushed the chair as she stood. "Yeah, in 2 percent of cases, they do, in which case you get it replaced, no big deal. Those odds are a hell of a lot better than the other."
"And you think you know best?" I sputtered. "I've been dealing with this for years, and in twenty-four hours you're an expert?" Why couldn't I stop the wrong thing from flying out of my mouth?
She threw her hands up. "No. I think that I know how to fly helicopters—that's it. Yesterday around this time I was at dinner with my girlfriend, wondering how to keep my family from blowing up in my face, and today she's making choices about fucking heart surgery. I spent some time on the internet so I could maybe not look like a moron, and what I read scares me more than when you collapsed on me yesterday."
I deflated, my shoulders drooping. "I should have told you. I'm so sorry you found out like this."
"We should have told each other a lot of things." She sat down, resting her head in her hands. "I should have told you about my family, or that I spent that week getting Rosé into another rehab. But the things I kept from you don't change who I am right now, and you…" she looked up, the defeat in her eyes nearly breaking me. "I didn't tell you what happened to me, or what effect it had on other people, but you hid something that's killing you from the inside."
"Most HCM patients are asymptomatic. They never have an issue." Dang it, my defenses were back up.
"But you do. Most HCM patients don't have a family history of SCD. You could have died yesterday." The quiet tone of voice didn't match the intensity of her eyes.
"Then I'm lucky that my lifeguard was there again." My smile trembled.
"This isn't funny, Jennie. None of it. You won't even consider the pacemaker?"
"I want to fix my heart and really live, not manage HCM."
"By taking the most reckless route possible? How long have you been showing symptoms?"
"Since that day you found me in the library."
Her mouth dropped slightly, and her eyes narrowed. I'd never seen that look leveled on me before and would have been quite happy never seeing it again. "You've had months and didn't do anything?"
"It hasn't exactly been an easy decision!" My hands gripped my sheets, desperate to stay grounded as the argument spun out of control.
"Living is a hard decision?"
"What kind of life would that be, Lisa? One where my heartbeats aren't really my own? One where I steer clear of everything that makes me feel alive? The kind of life you would refuse to lead?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I can't be the kind of woman you want, the kind you deserve, with a pacemaker. It will escalate to an internal defibrillator, and then what, you get shocked when we're making love? Do I just stay home while you run off and…swim with sharks?"
"Swim with sharks? Do you seriously think I'm so shallow that any of that matters to me? I've got nothing to prove and no list to mark off—I only want you."
"You wouldn't want me like this! I would hold you back." Don't let me.
"I wasn't the one jumping ATVs or begging to bungee jump. That was all you, with zero consideration for your own life while you marked off this stupid list." She lifted her hips, pulling the folded list out of her pocket, and tossed it on the bed. I would have felt less exposed if she'd read my diary.
I snatched the paper and ran my fingers over the worn folds. "It's a bucket list. People put crazy things on them. Isn't that the idea? To stretch your boundaries?"
"Sure, if they were things you really wanted."
Goose bumps raced along my arm. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that you've been so busy trying to live for your sister that you nearly died for her instead." Her eyebrows lifted in a challenge I couldn't meet, not when she knew what I'd worked so hard to keep to myself.
"How did you know? It doesn't matter. I don't expect you to understand why I have to finish it for her."
She jumped out of her chair again, pacing at the foot of my bed. "Oh, no. You don't get to pull that card on me, like I don't know what it is to sacrifice for a sister. I walked away from my entire life for Rosé, and I don't regret it. When my father cut her off, left her to rot in a crack house in Boston? That's when I emancipated myself. It wasn't just to get away from him, it was so I could get control of my trust fund and pay for her rehab when he wouldn't—when she became worthless to him."
"Your sister is still alive. It's different. You can still talk to her, ask her questions, hug her. Finishing that list is all I can do for Irene." She didn't understand. No one did.
"Maybe Rosé is still here, but she's buried under so many layers of her addiction that I'm not sure I'll ever have my Rosé again. She's been in rehab thirteen times, Jennie. Thirteen times I've tracked her down and admitted her. Thirteen times she's begged me to stay, and a couple of times I did and nearly lost myself in her world. I missed deadlines for term papers and hockey games because I was flying to Seattle, or Texas, or wherever she'd followed the latest boyfriend. I swore when I started flight school that I wouldn't be distracted by anything…or anyone, that I'd put my goals first for once." She braced her hands on the footboard of my bed, the muscles in her arms flexing as she gripped the plastic. "And what happened when she turned up in Chicago? I missed a week of flight training and went to get her again."
"Isn't that the same thing I'm doing, prioritizing my sister's life?"
"No, because when I realized what it was doing to me, that I'd jeopardized my ranking to select the helicopter I'd worked half my life for, that I'd run off to Rosé and left you hanging—that's when I told her that I'll always be there for her, but I can't walk away from my responsibilities every time she does. My life is just as valuable as hers, and yours is, too!"
"Irene didn't get a chance to finish…anything!"
"Stop making this about her. You're the one in the hospital bed. This is about your life now."
I lifted my chin, the words flowing from my mouth like an eruption of acidic lava. "My life. My heart. My choice. I choose to have the septal myectomy, and then I'll finish the list."
"So this discussion's over?" She moved away, her hands in the air like she was under arrest. "My opinion doesn't matter?"
"You don't get a say in what I do with my heart!" The monitors beeped, spiking in time with my breaths.
"That's right. Your heart in your body—"
"Yes! Mine! You don't own it or control it. I do!"
"God damn it, Jennie! You own mine! Don't you get it? I'm in love with you, so fucking wrapped up in everything you are—that we are together—that I'm not sure I can exist anymore if you don't. Every single risk you're taking with your heart, remember that I'm along for the ride, strapped in, because my heart is tangled with yours. Why can't you see what you already have? You're so hell-bent on ripping your chest open for a risky procedure because you think a pacemaker sentences you to a half life where you can't complete these insane little tasks? Am I getting it right?"
"Yes." I hated how she made me sound, how I must look through her eyes because she didn't understand.
"I am that half life. Me. A pacemaker guarantees you me, and if our future isn't a good enough reason for you, then I'm out of arguments." Her eyes pleaded with me to choose her, and I was. She just didn't understand how.
"You want a glimpse of our future if I do what you're asking? Look around you, Lisa. This is our future. Hospital rooms, stringy hair, bloody noses from dried-out nasal passages and oxygen tubes. A pacemaker isn't guaranteed to solve the problem. We could be right back here in a year or two, making the decision for the surgery because the pacemaker isn't going to do a damn thing about the obstruction. I will eventually go to an internal defibrillator. I'll wind up in end stage, where I'll need a transplant. That is our future if I don't do this!"
"You're jumping two steps ahead instead of buying yourself time."
"I'm giving myself an 85 percent chance at a normal life with you!" Tears stung my eyes, hot and volatile.
"You're giving me a 15 percent chance of losing you instead of a 98 percent chance of a happily ever after."
The space that separated us was far more than the few feet it measured. "I'm done with people in my life telling me they know what's best for me. I can't control my heart, but I can control this choice, and I will. Irene didn't get a choice, and I'm not going to let mine be taken away because you think you know what's best for me. I'm not a child." I could be fierce.
She laced her fingers behind her neck and looked at the ceiling. "I'm not going to pretend that I knew Irene, but I can't imagine anyone who loves you wanting this for you."
"Well, I knew her," V said, stepping fully into the door frame, "and I can tell you she didn't want this for you, Nini."
Oh, God. Please let this bed swallow me whole. "How much did you hear?"
He leaned against the wall next to Lisa, standing with her more than physically, but also blocking her from leaving. "Oh, you've entertained a few of us out there. Your dad blocked every nurse who wanted to stop this overly loud discussion because we were hoping that out of all of us, you'd finally listen to her."
I sat up straighter, but ruined my attempt at independence by having to untangle my oxygen tube to do it. I'd never felt so alone, or so attacked in my life. They were supposed to love me, right? Then why couldn't they understand that there was something in my soul screaming against a pacemaker? Against an unnatural piece of machinery under my skin, controlling my heart—controlling me? "I can't make you understand. None of you are in this bed with me; you all get to leave this hospital. I don't. I'm the one taking the risks while you two go and fly your helicopters all day. I just…I want Irene. I want to ask her what she would do, because I know she'd have the answer. She always did."
"She didn't have the answer," V interjected. "I was there, Jennie."
"Well, she would tell me not to get bullied into something that I didn't want. She would have known what to do if she'd been in my shoes—if she'd known her heart was a ticking time bomb. Irene never would have given in to what other people wanted."
"And that's probably what killed her, Jennie!" Lisa dragged her hands over her face, then dropped them, her shoulders sagging.
My head snapped like I'd been struck. "Why would you say that?"
"Because she knew! You don't want to see it, but she knew about her heart."
"She did not! She would have told me—told my parents!" My spine straightened until it almost hurt.
"Nini—" V tried to interrupt.
"Taehyung Carter, get out! This isn't a conversation you're welcome to!"
"Seriously—"
"Now!" I yelled, but he didn't budge.
"Use that beautiful brain of yours, Little Bird." Lisa's voice softened, but she seemed farther away than ever. "Why else would she make a bucket list? Why else would she have done all those things the summer before, or handed you that note the last time you saw her? She knew, so stop hiding behind her and that damn list, or what you mistakenly think I need, and make your own choice, because she sure did."
My brain overloaded, caught between trying to process what she implied and knowing that if I wanted to give her what she really needed, this was my chance. I took it. "You want me to make my own choice? Fine. This"—I motioned between her and me—"we're over." The words ripped through me, and I half expected the heart monitor to show it, but it stayed as steady as my voice. "My sister never would have kept this from me, not if she knew it was genetic." Maybe if she had known, she would have kept it from me, needing to spare me the same way I'd tried to spare Lisa. But it was too late for either of us now. I refused to be the distraction that sank her. I felt adrift in a giant sea of uncertainty, and I was pulling her down with me…so I cut her free. "Go find another girl. As I recall your past, that shouldn't be hard to do. We're done."
"We're not done, we're fighting. I might not be proud of my past, but you're the only woman I want. You are irreplaceable, which is why you're scaring the shit out of me with the choices you're making. You're my family, and we are not done."
She was perfect, and I loved her so much that I saw the line and walked right past it, my chest aching with every step it would take to push her over. "The daughter of a drug addict? I should have known better than to be with someone who didn't know the first thing about commitment and real family. You would seriously try to use my sister, my deepest pain to manipulate me? You really are your father's daughter. Get out."
She stumbled backward, every feature on her face slack with surprise. Hurt streaked through her eyes, and I watched her heart break as surely as I felt mine rip into shreds. What did I just do?
"Maybe you're right. Someone with no real family can't understand one. But you're right, I am the daughter of a drug addict, so I do know a little something about trying to change a woman who's too stubborn to walk away from her own self-destruction. I love you, Jennie, more than I ever thought possible. You own everything I am, down to the very breath in my lungs, and I'm sorry that's not enough. Not enough for you to treat me like a partner instead of the enemy, and not enough for me to stand here and watch another woman I love kill herself over something she has complete control over."
She was more than enough. She was everything, but I couldn't force the words past the tangle in my throat. "Lisa," I choked out as she made her way toward the door.
"Stop it, Jennie!" V shouted. "Damn it, she's right! Irene knew!"
Lisa paused at the door frame.
Gravity shifted, taking with it everything that had been holding me together. It was one thing for Lisa to speculate, but for it to be truth? She couldn't have known. Not really. "No."
"Yes." He didn't break eye contact with me, and I saw the truth and his embarrassment at hiding it. "She knew for months, since our scuba classes early that summer. She knew she couldn't stay at West Point if anyone found out."
Pain ricocheted through me, scraping every nerve ending raw. I closed my eyes on everything I thought I knew and opened them with tears streaking my face, washing away my anger, my pride, and my certainty. My soul started soundlessly screaming, but I was so hollow inside that I was sure everyone could hear the echo.
She'd been right, and I hadn't listened. "Lisa?"
She shook her head, her eyes hard as she turned around. "Funny thing about families, Jennie. They're not always biological, none of them are perfect, and even if they have all the answers, sometimes they fail the first test they face."
"Manoban," V said quietly.
"Don't," Lisa snapped.
I'll be your family now. My own words cut through what remained of my heart, mocking the way I'd failed her.
She crossed the room toward me, pulled something out of her front pocket, and placed it in the palm of my hand. I couldn't look down, not when her eyes held me captive in my own stupidity and stubbornness.
"I won't be needing this anymore." She brushed a lingering kiss across my forehead, and my eyes slammed shut, fresh tears leaking down my face. She took a deep breath in my hair and pulled away. I looked up at her, but the hurt was gone from her face, replaced by the carefree grin I'd seen on the beach before we met. Only this time it didn't seem beautiful, or sexy, but lonely.
"Lisa," I begged.
"I like to think it kept me safe, and I hope it does the same for you on your flight, Little Bird. I'll see you around." She smiled again, firmly entrenched in the impenetrable shell everyone else knew her so well for. "Carter, I'll see you tomorrow."
My eyes followed her figure out the door, but I was incapable of speech or thought. There was nothing I could say that would erase what I'd said, or how stupid I'd been. But she was free. She'd bounce back. She'd get her dream, but I wondered if she'd ever realize that she'd been mine.
"Nini?" V sat on the edge of my bed. "I should have told you, but I promised her that I'd let you make your own choice."
"I don't want to hear about Irene. Not now." Losing Lisa hurt too much. I released my fingers from the fist I'd made, and the light instantly reflected on Lisa's nickel. "At least she'll get what she's worked so hard for, right? Without me distracting her?"
"That's why you did it—said that crap to her. You pushed her away."
"She deserves better than this. I know how hard she's worked, how much flying that helicopter means to her. She was exhausted this morning and had no business flying, and it will only get worse if she stays with me. At least now she has a shot. She can get her dream." V's mouth tightened. "What? Don't you dare hide anything else from me, Taehyung Carter."
"She's got no shot at top of the OML. She'll be lucky to get into the top ten even if they let her retake the test."
I blanched. I clung to one last hope, knowing the aircraft numbers varied from class to class. "How many pilots?"
"Twenty-three made it through."
"How many Apaches are there for selection?"
"Six."
You just shattered her for no reason. She's not getting one anyway.
I'd done this to her, taken away the one thing her family hadn't been able to. I picked up my cell phone and dialed the number by heart. It rang four times and then went to voice mail.
I waited, and then spoke, my voice stronger than my determination. "Hi there, Dr. Larondy. It's Jennie Kim, and I just wanted to let you know that I've made my decision, so you can go ahead and schedule that surgery. I'll be ready."