Eyes Turned Skyward

“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 Anna 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!”

“Peyton 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?” He moved away, his hands in the air like he 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, Paisley! 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 he made me sound, how I must look through his eyes because he 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.” His eyes pleaded with me to choose him, and I was. He just didn’t understand how.

“You want a glimpse of our future if I do what you’re asking? Look around you, Jagger. 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. Peyton 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.

He laced his fingers behind his neck and looked at the ceiling. “I’m not going to pretend that I knew Peyton, but I can’t imagine anyone who loves you wanting this for you.”

“Well, I knew her,” Will said, stepping fully into the door frame, “and I can tell you she didn’t want this for you, Lee.”

Oh, God. Please let this bed swallow me whole. “How much did you hear?”

He leaned against the wall next to Jagger, standing with him more than physically, but also blocking him 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 him.”

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 Peyton. 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,” Will interjected. “I was there, Paisley.”

“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. Peyton never would have given in to what other people wanted.”

“And that’s probably what killed her, Paisley!” Jagger dragged his hands over his face, then dropped them, his shoulders sagging.

My head snapped like I’d been struck. “Why would you say that?”