‘Wow.’
I just find it funny
that’s she’s paid us for this,
and that
something so boring
could ever
make it to TV.
A Postcard
I love it here.
All we do is DANCE!
Don’t make me come back to New Jersey …
Love, Dragon
xxxxxxx
Snow
The brown, yellow, and red leaves of fall
have disintegrated to dust.
The white sky opens
and snow descends.
It is winter.
Collapse
Lumbering across the quadrangle on our way
to French,
it is
Tippi who collapses,
hitting the gravel
hard
and
I spill right on top of her.
Caroline gasps
and Paul drops the camera,
which cracks against the ground.
I wait a few seconds.
I wait
for Tippi’s eyes to open—
for her to shoo Caroline away with a casual
‘I’m OK,
I’m OK.’
But those words do not come.
Caroline seizes my shirt.
‘I can’t find her pulse.
Why can’t I feel her bloody heart beating?’
and
‘For Christ’s sake, someone call an ambulance!’
Shane phones for help.
And help arrives.
We speed along the
highway
in the back of an ambulance,
wires plugged into us both
and beeping like an alarm
in the background.
My heart pounds
and I wait.
My breath thins
and I wait.
I wait
for Tippi’s eyes to open.
But they do not.
Because this time
we are not
OK.
Hospital
The walls of the room are white and clean—
all signs of yesterday’s sorrows scrubbed
away with bleach.
The lights are bright and above the quiet
bulky TV set in the corner
is a painting of a poppy field.
Perhaps it’s meant to be soothing,
but for some reason
it makes me think
of war,
of teenagers running into a field at dawn
then falling down dead,
red blood blooming beneath their bodies.
Someone close by is sucking on a sweet,
the hard sound echoing in the small room
along with Tippi’s quiet breathing.
I want to speak,
say that I am ready to get up and go home,
if she is.
But I am so tired
I cannot talk.
I close my eyes and
darkness reclaims me.
In the Darkness
I wake again.
Tippi’s eyes are wide and on me.
‘What’s happening to us?’ I say.
‘We’ll figure it out,’ she replies,
and holds me.
Testing
Mom, Dad, and Grammie are dozing in
armchairs when an orderly strolls in,
his rubber shoes squeaking on the
linoleum.
‘Let’s go, girls!’
he says
in a thick Jersey accent
and whistles while he
wheels us down the corridor,
as if we are going for a couple of pedicures
and not being taken for testing,
where doctors will scan and probe and
devour our privacy.
I cross my fingers on both hands for luck,
like that could alter the outcome.
The Visitor
We’ve been
transferred to the Rhode Island Children’s Hospital,
so Yasmeen and Jon
cannot come to visit.
Instead they text a million times a day
and send pictures
from The Church
of themselves drinking, smoking,
pretending to kill each another,
which make us laugh
and long to be better.
Our only visitor
apart from Mom, Dad, and Grammie
is Caroline Henley,
who comes every day
and secretly brings things no one else will
let us have,
like chips and soda.
Paul and Shane do not come with her
and she doesn’t mention
the documentary
or all the money she’s paid to peer at our lives.
I want to be suspicious,
but Caroline,
it seems,
cares.
Decency
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ Tippi says
when Caroline opens our window
to let out the smell of the morning’s bacon.
‘You paid a lot for full access and now,
when it gets exciting,
you don’t even want an interview.
No one can be that noble.’
Caroline pulls a Kleenex from
her bag and blows her nose
hard.
‘I’m not noble,’ Caroline says.
‘But I am a human being.’
‘A very decent human being,’ Tippi tells her,
and smiles.
Me
Mom is carrying an old Scrabble box
and a bag of clementines.
‘Where’s Dad?’ I ask.
Mom points at the window.
‘He’s parking the car,’ she says.
‘Why? Did you think he might be at a bar?’
I shrug.
Mom sniffs.
‘Good God, Gracie,
it really is time
you started focusing
on yourself.’
Results
Dr Derrick’s office doors open
and we are pushed inside in an
especially wide wheelchair.
I hold Tippi’s hand tightly and wait for the verdict.
But Dr Derrick does not put it simply.
He displays scans and diagrams
and talks
and talks
and talks,
galloping through explanations of the
MRIs, echocardiograms,
gastrointestinal contrast studies,
and all the other big tests
we’ve been put through this week.
I stop listening to watch a bird on the tree outside
hop along a branch and
peep
in the window at us
like a regular paparazzo.
Finally Dad raises a hand,
stops Dr Derrick dead,
and says, ‘And what does this all mean
for my daughters?’
Dr Derrick taps his forefingers together in time
to the wall clock ticking above him and says,
‘The prognosis together is not good.’
We are silent.
He continues.
‘Grace has developed cardiomyopathy
and Tippi is supporting her,
supporting her and a very dilated heart.
We can’t repair the damage.
The only course of action
in the long term
is to replace the whole heart.
If we don’t,
Grace will get sicker,
they both will,
until …’
He looks at a graph like the terrible answers
are buried in its lines.
‘I have to recommend a separation.
We would keep Grace stable with drugs and
a ventricular device until she’d recovered.
Then she would go on a transplant list.’
I do not know how to hold
everything Dr Derrick is saying in my head
all at once.
It is so much.
It is too much.
It is more than I could have imagined.
And it is all my fault.
All my stupid heart’s fault.
‘Separation at this age is tricky and very unusual,’ Dr Derrick goes on.
‘It isn’t without massive risks and costs,
but it looks like the only option
we’ve got
left.’
He pushes papers at us—
step by step instructions on how to
carve
a space
between
two people
before ripping
out the heart of one of them.
My insides harden.
My blood pumps fast.
My head spins.
‘No. Absolutely not.
We’ll take our chances as we are,’ Tippi says.
‘You can knock us both out
and put a new heart in.
Or do whatever it is you have to do.
You don’t have to separate us first.
Don’t say you have to do that.’
Dr Derrick makes his face a rock.
‘Grace isn’t eligible for a transplant while conjoined.
We can’t do anything to help her
if she’s still attached to you.
The drugs alone
would put you in too much danger.’
He pauses to give us time to
think about what this means,
to contemplate our own demise,
and taps his forefingers together again.
We all stare speechless at Dr Derrick, who might as well be God.
I let go of Tippi’s hand
and pull myself up straight
because Dr Derrick is right,
I am the problem,
me and my dying heart,
and his solution is fitting.
‘We should give it a go,’ I say.
And for both of us: ‘Yes, let’s do it.’
Mom goes white.
‘Might be best to think about it overnight,’ she says.
‘Or longer,’ Dad adds.
‘I mean, what’s changed?
How can it have changed?’
Dr Derrick blinks.
‘When I saw you last time
you were fine.
Nothing too worrying at all.
But.
I suspect …
I suspect it was the flu that did it.
A viral infection is often to blame for
cardiomyopathy.
It’s just terrible luck that Grace’s heart reacted as it did.’
Silence seeps into the room again.
The bird outside
flies away with wide wings.
And then Mom speaks. She wants the statistics.
She wants Dr Derrick to tell her
in hard, whole numbers what the chances are
of any number of tragedies
befalling us.
‘I believe there is a possibility we can be successful,’
is all he can say.
And I know what this means.
I have read reports.
I have read old newspapers.
When conjoined twins are separated,
it’s deemed a success so
long as one of them lives.
For a while.
And that,
to me,
is the saddest thing
I know about how
people see us.
‘Give me numbers,’ Mom insists.
‘I want to know what happens if we do nothing.’
Dr Derrick sighs.
He closes the files on his desk
and leans forward.
‘Left as it is,
they’ll both die.’
Mom starts to cry.
Dad holds her hand.
‘With a separation, they have hope,
a fighting chance,
but I can’t put a number on it.
If I did, it would be low.
It would be quite low.’
Mom whimpers
and then Dad does, too.
‘I know this isn’t good news.
But go home.
Take time to think it over.
Until then, no school. Nothing strenuous.
Eat and sleep properly.
And keep away from cigarettes and alcohol,’ Dr Derrick says.
He smiles suddenly making it sound like we
have a choice
and years to figure this out,
when I know,
deep down,
we don’t.
Time is already
running out.
Gratis
Before we leave Rhode Island,
our dirty clothes
balled up in clear plastic bags,
Dr Derrick
pops his head into our room and asks to
speak to Mom and Dad again
privately.
They leave looking ashen
but return with their faces
halved of worry.
‘The entire team will do the procedures for free,’
Mom tells us,
‘if that’s what you decide you want.’
Tippi and I have cost our family
a fortune,
yet the most expensive procedure of all
they will do for nothing.
They needn’t
pretend this is a kindness:
everyone knows that
no matter what happens to us,
an operation like that would make the doctors famous,
and that’s worth a lot more to them
than dollars in the bank.
An Elephant in the Room
On the drive home, Dad tells terrible jokes
that we’ve heard before
but which we laugh at anyway,
loudly,
fearful of what we’d have to discuss if he
stopped.
It’s as though we are a carefree, unbroken family,
like the ones you see in advertisements for laundry detergent.
It’s as though we haven’t been in the hospital,
as though we’re returning from a trip to the beach
and wearing good moods like glimmering tans.
It’s as though we haven’t understood that if we go ahead
we’ll both be left with one leg and hip and be wheelchair bound
for life.
It’s as though no one knows
I’m quietly killing Tippi.
Mom points to a McDonald’s. ‘Lunch?’
Usually I would complain about animal welfare,
about cows kept in fields full of their own shit,
but today I am shamed and silent as
Tippi licks her lips and lists all the
McFlurry flavors.
We pull into the drive-thru
and eat smelly burgers
and thick shakes from our laps,
the traffic blaring by
so we can’t hear each other chew or swallow
or breathe.
And even when we get home and Dad makes coffee
(like he still lives here),
we pretend everything is perfect
and that the elephant in the room who is heaving down our necks
is nothing but a mouse, way more scared of us
than we are of it.
A Heart That Beats for Two
If I were a singleton
I might have dropped dead by now.
Instead
my sister bears the burden of keeping me alive,
of pumping most of the blood around our bodies.
Instead
I freeload.
And she
doesn’t complain.
A Parasite
She makes me look at her,
holding my chin with cold fingertips.
‘We’re doing fine as we are,’ she says.
She says, ‘We’re meant to be together.
If we separate, we’ll die.’
Tippi’s lips are dry.
Her face is grey.
She looks likes she’s
lived longer than
anyone I know.
‘You think we’re partners but really
I’m a parasite,’ I whisper.
‘I don’t want to suck
your life from you.’
‘Oh come on, Grace,’ she says,
‘all this you and me is a lie.
There has only ever been us.
So
I won’t do it.
You can’t make me
have an operation.’
‘But I’m a parasite,’ I repeat,
and in my head say it
over and over.
Parasite. Parasite. Parasite.
All I want now is to save Tippi.
If I can.
Welcome
Caroline Henley is back.
‘Do you mind?
I know it’s a difficult time,’
she says.
Despite her contract,
she hasn’t tried to film anything
or get an interview
in over two weeks.
She has proven she isn’t the paparazzi.