Be still my breaking heart

‘Amy…Amy…. Amy honey, they need an answer!’ Amy felt her mother’s touch bring her out of a dissociative state.

‘We were just all together…’ Amy chocked on her own tears. She tried to bring her right arm to her forehead and winced as a shooting pain rushed up her forearm. For a second she had forgotten that her arm was broken and that there was a temporary cast on it as she refused to leave her husband’s side. A broken arm could never match the gravity of the situation she was dealing with right now.

She looked at David. Her husband looked so small and helpless in that bed. All of the tubes and wires and machines littered the room. Amy, still in a state of shock, got up from her chair and kissed David on the cheek. ‘You hang in there you hear me? Just don’t go to the light…you’re needed too much here! Know that me and Joey love you! You need to show Joey what it’s like to be loved by his daddy just a little bit longer.’ Amy accepted the box of tissues her mother handed her to wipe her eyes as she was dripping mucus onto David’s pillow. ‘I know its hard baby, but they’re still so little and I don’t want him to forget about the best father that ever walked the planet, because that is what you are!’ She kissed him on his bruised cheek and returned to her seat just as the doctor entered the room.

‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ Dr Jackson says empathetically. Amy chooses to keep her eyes on her husband, the tubes and wires created a kaleidoscope of butterflies in her stomach.

‘He’s going to wake up…. right?’ Amy asked the doctor as he was in mid-sentence trying to explain to her that he was a prime candidate for organ harvesting. He had the signed organ doner card in his wallet. Amy was suddenly transported back to the room after their first sonagram appointment with their two-year-old son, Joey. When they saw the little sack and heard the baby’s heartbeat for the first time, they held onto each other unable to believe that after three long years of trying, they were finally pregnant. Right then and there Amy knew how much love little Joey was going to receive.  Afterwards they went to the beach. She could feel the salt water spray onto her face as the waves crashed into the wall she was standing on top of. She leaned into the railing with her arms out as wide as she could reach, David behind her, his arms touching her stomach and they screamed the words, ‘we’re pregnant!’ in unison for the whole world to hear. She was quickly brought back to the room by her mother’s touch once again and looked at the doctor blankly as he was shoving pieces of paper at her.

Amy felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder as she began to sob uncontrollably, her whole-body convulsing. ‘Sweet heart, I know this is difficult but they need an answer!’ her mother pushes.

Eventually Amy looks at her mother blankly. ‘We were all just together,’ she cries. ‘We were trying to sing 99 bottles of beer on the wall, you know, trying to help Joey with his numbers……’

‘I know honey, but he’s gone!’

‘Don’t!’ Amy puts up her good hand in protest. ‘He’s still warm and he’s still breathing!’

Dr Jackson buts in, ‘I’m afraid your husband suffered a severe brain bleed and is brain dead. The only thing keeping him alive are these machines. Once we turn off the ventilator, he won’t be able to breathe on his own. I’m sorry to say that he is dead and if you let us harvest his organs as he wished by signing the back of the donor card, he could save so many people who are going to die. He could be those people’s only chance of living!’

‘But he can come back from this…miracles do happen!’ Amy said, the tears rolling down her face like a cascading waterfall.

‘I’m so sorry Mrs. Murphy, but there is absolutely no chance of your husband ever getting better. He is dead and we have a small window of opportunity here where we could, with your consent of course, harvest his organs.’

‘So, what, you you you want my husband to die so you can cut him up for parts? Is that what you’re asking of me?’ Amy rose from her chair, the whole room getting heated. She pulled away from her mother as she offered her another tissue and flung the flimsy chair across the room, shouting as she did so. She was frustrated beyond belief.  

‘Honey,’ Amy’s mother goes to the corner of the room her daughter had chosen to cry in. She looked her square in the eye and held her by the shoulders trying to convey the devastating news to her daughter once again, ‘David is gone now. You need to let him be free. Keeping him on these machines is just prolonging everyone’s suffering…. including David’s!’

Amy looked up at her mother doe eyed. ‘He did nothing wrong! That driver crashed into us! We were quite happy counting the bottles on the wall and that drunk drove straight at us!’ Amy fell onto her honkers and her mother joined her with a loud creek as her knees complained.

‘I know honey, and he will get punished for that, but now is David’s time. Isn’t it better for everyone if his death brings life to countless other people? I know he would have wanted that! He would never be the type of man to live off a machine! He loved you and Joey very much and now it’s time for you to let him be free!’

‘Everyone keeps saying that he’s gone, but yet he’s still here!’ Amy stood; her mother mirrored her actions with great effort. ‘Is he really gone?’ Amy asked before burying her head in her mother’s shoulder once more.

‘Trust me honey,’ her mother said as she rubbed Amy’s back, ‘no one wants David dead, but he is and isn’t this probably the best way? Knowing that he can continue to live in the bodies of those who would die without him? It’s comforting, right? It’s such a David thing to do, leaving you and Joey yet helping countless numbers of people at the same time! Think of what good can come out of such a bad situation!’

Amy nodded as her body convulsed with each sob. She remembered the day David signed the organ donor card as she signed one as well. They did it on their honeymoon in Barbados to celebrate Amy becoming a Murphy. They were both drinking champagne beside their private pool on their sun loungers and it was the very first time she had ever signed her new name, Mrs. Amy Murphy. David did the same on his, Mr. David Murphy. She remembers the sound of the clinking of their glasses as they toasted to Amy’s new signature. Amy closed her eyes tight as she remembered the discussion they had. She remembered how passionate David was about never having to live on a ventilator. He said he would much prefer others live because of him rather than he be left like a body in a bed.

Amy wiped her tears away and blew her nose. She approached her husband’s bedside and took a seat on the chair she had just flung across the room. David was such a precious man and before she interrupted Dr Jackson once again, she regained her composure. She simply asked where she should sign.

Dr Jackson was taken aback for a second at the change of mentality Amy showed before he put the forms in front of her.

‘I have one condition,’ Amy said and winced as a pain like a lightning bolt travelled down her fingers from her arm. Dr Jackson nodded, as he encouraged her to continue. ‘I want to know who gets what! I know you can’t give out information about the recipients, but I want to know the first name and the age of everyone who is getting anything from my husband so I can include them in my prayers.’

‘Then that is exactly what is going to happen,’ Dr Jackson smiled and nodded.

Amy fell silent, drinking in the beauty of what was her husband. For the last time, she got up out of her chair and found her face against his. She cherished the fact that this was going to be the last time she saw him alive. She whispered, ‘just so you know my darling, I’m pregnant!’ into his ear and kissed him on the cheek. As the room flooded with nurses and doctors all preparing to move him to the operating room where they were going to harvest his organs, Amy was pushed aside.

‘I love you honey!’ she shouted as he was rolled away. Amy fell to her knees and was began to cry hysterically. When the pandemonium was over and it was just Amy and her mother in the room a nurse approached them and asked Amy if she would like a sedative. Amy divulged that she was pregnant which made her mother gasp. Amy’s tears turned into laughter and after she struggled to get up off the floor, she hugged her mother.

‘I found out a few hours ago when they were doing routine bloods here after the accident.’ She looked at her mother and sorrow filled her eyes. ‘He will never get to meet his second kid mom! I’m going to have to do it all on my own!’ Amy looked around the room, everything was so quiet and peaceful, yet inside she was screaming.

‘I’ll help you sweetheart,’ her mother offered.

‘It just won’t be the same!’ Amy’s eyes began to tear up again. ‘I’m a widow with a two-year-old and a bun in the oven,’ she said as the tears began to roll down her alabaster cheeks once more.

‘Don’t cry my angel,’ her mother said, ‘it takes a village, right?’

Amy nodded.

‘Well, I will be with you every step of the way!’ her mother said before she pulled her only daughter into her bosom and there, they stood crying together for what seemed like eternity.

The next three days were a blur to Amy. She saw people she hadn’t seen years come together to celebrate David’s life. She remembers walking up the steps to the alter and reading his favourite poem by EE Cummings entitled “I carry your heart with me”. It was the same exact poem that he read to her on their wedding day. She felt that it was the perfect end to an amazing relationship.

At the burial, there was a social worker from the hospital who agreed to announce the name, age and what part of David was going to continue to live through them. David had changed not only Amy and Joey’s life, not to mention the new life that was now growing inside her, but also eight other people who will get to spend more time with their families after the successful harvesting of David’s organs.

‘Its what he would have wanted!’ Amy’s mother approached her daughter as she stood on her lonesome looking down at the coffin in the ground. Amy had one hand in plaster, the other on her stomach.

‘God works in mysterious ways,’ her mother starts, ‘he is giving you another beautiful gift, one which I know you and Joey are going to treasure.

Amy looks up at the cloudless sky and says, ‘like a phoenix rising from the ashes,’ with a smile and her good hand on her stomach.