Page 95 of The Love of Our Lives
Emily.
This isn’t what was supposed to happen.
It’s not supposed to be me waking up.
It should be Emily.
‘I need a mirror,’ I say hoarsely, my old voice shocking and reassuring me in equal measures.
‘Oh, Maggie,’ Mum sobs, her face a mixture of joy and trauma, ‘you’re speaking. What did you say, dear?’ She turns to Dad. ‘What did she say?’ But he looks just as lost and worried as her.
‘I didn’t quite catch it, dear.’
‘She said she needed a mirror,’ Jess says with some confusion, even as she starts rummaging in her handbag. Her face is tear-stained, and I realise in this moment how terrified they all must be. And I already know in my heart what I’m going to see in the reflection.
I just have to see it myself.
‘Here you go,’ Jess says, handing over her scruffy compact.
And as I hold up the little circle smeared with the boy’s fingers I love so dearly, I see her.
Me.
Maggie.
I drop the compact, even as the tears start to run down my face, into my long red hair.
Doctor Peterson arrives in the room at that moment and everyone steps away from me, as the doctor steps forward.
‘Good to see you awake again, Maggie,’ he says, his pale-blue eyes tired but happy at the same time.
‘What happened?’ I say eventually. Because right now, I’m just as lost as anyone, in so many ways. Images of Adam come to me unbidden now too – his kind eyes and lopsided smile. And I wish more than anything that he was here with me right now, holding my hand, telling me it was all going to be OK.
Tears stream from my eyes again.
‘We don’t exactly know what happened,’ Doctor Peterson says now, gently. ‘As you know, everything was absolutely fine at your last check, there was nothing to . . . indicate that this would happen. Ultimately, we think perhaps your body temporarily and very inexplicably, rejected the heart. You were lucky your family was close by.’
It didn’t work.
I try to think about that last moment before I blanked out in Emily’s flat.
But nothing happened? Nothing fell on me or hurt me. I just . . . went away.
But oh god, Emily – the baby in her belly.
‘Maggie,’ Doctor Peterson says now, looks at me. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I . . . I don’t know,’ I say now.
But maybe there’s a chance – she could still be alive too, right? Her and the baby growing inside her.
They can’t just be gone.
Maybe in some way I’ve managed to change something, knock something off-course.
‘When . . .’ I say to Doctor Peterson, through my tears, ‘when did I get my heart transplant?’
He looks at me oddly, but then he says, ‘The twenty-fifth of July. One year ago today.’
