He Put My Heart in Her Chest

I died the day Isabelle's heart gave out. The crash smashed me to pieces. A nurse searched my body and found an organ donation authorization form.

Roman read the report — it was a match — and wept with joy. "Thank God — Izzy's finally going to make it!" He wasted no time putting my heart into Isabelle. I was happy too.

After all, now I could live on as the one he loved most. Chapter 1 The operating room was bright. I floated above the table, looking at my own shattered body.

Both legs had been crushed into angles that made no sense. My whole face was pulped. I looked gruesome. Even I could barely recognize myself.

Roman stood there in his gown and mask, nothing showing but his eyes. "Status on the donor?" "Severe trauma, motor vehicle accident.

Braindead." The nurse answered while she sorted out the IV lines, her face full of pity. "No ID on her, and her phone was smashed.

Police are calling it a hitandrun — no cameras on that stretch of road. We still don't have a name, and we can't reach any family." Roman's hand paused halfway through the chart.

He frowned. His eyes moved to my face, studying it. I was nervous. Roman. Are you about to recognize me?

But he looked away again almost at once. "Draw blood for the cardiac crossmatch first." I drifted in front of him and reached out, shaking, to touch his face.

My fingers went straight through him. No warmth. No resistance. Nothing solid at all. Right. I was dead. I had died on the way to the hospital. "Dr. Devlin!

The match came back!" A nurse practically rammed the operating room doors open as she rushed in, her voice shaking with excitement. "It's a strong match!

A rare, ideal match!" Roman was scrubbing in, the water running over his fingers, the knuckles standing out sharp. When he heard it, his eyes filled with a wild kind of joy. "Hurry.

Prep for surgery." He was so excited his voice had gone hoarse. "This time I'm operating myself." "But, Dr.

Devlin—" Another doctor stepped forward, hesitant, keeping his voice down. "We haven't reached the family yet. Protocol says—" Roman cut him off. "Whatever happens, it's on me.

Izzy can't wait that long!" Roman pulled on a fresh pair of gloves. I couldn't stop staring at his hands.

Those hands had held mine as we walked the oaklined path across our campus. They had rubbed my stomach, clumsily, when I had cramps.

On more nights than I could count, they had gently undone the buttons of my shirt.

Now they were holding a blade, and the blade was aimed at my heart. "Don't be scared." Somewhere in the haze I heard Roman say it, low. His voice was unbelievably gentle.

Except for one thing. He wasn't saying it to me. He was saying it to Isabelle, in the next operating room.

The mic hooked over his ear carried his voice to her clearly, to settle her nerves during the surgery and give her courage and strength. And I was just a dead woman.

The blade came down. The moment the scalpel opened my skin. I shouldn't have been able to feel anything, but somehow it was like ants, hundreds of them, chewing.

Packed tight together, sore and stinging. Roman was the youngest chief of cardiac surgery in the city, and it showed.

His hands moved easily, one motion flowing into the next, nothing wasted. When my chest came open, I actually heard the small crackle of my ribs being spread. I leaned in, curious.

Chapter 2 So that was my heart. Dark red, the size of a fist, curled deep in my chest, still beating faintly. "BP?" "Donor pressure still dropping.

Sixty over forty." "Push the blood faster. Get bypass ready." I looked at Roman's profile, all concentration. There was a fine sweat at his temple, but his eyes were perfectly calm.

His gloves were covered in my blood. Dark red. It fell onto the sterile drape, drop by drop. My heart was beating slower and slower. Every contraction looked exhausted.

I thought suddenly of the last time I talked to Roman. It was three days ago. I had just signed the organ donation authorization form and come out of the hospital.

I wanted to see him so badly. Even just to hear his voice. The phone rang for a long time. Long enough that I thought he wasn't going to pick up. "Roman…" He finally answered.

My voice came out thin and weak. "I'm downstairs at the hospital. Could you come see me?" "Eloise, I'm busy." His voice was flat and far away.

Behind it I could hear monitors beeping and nurses' footsteps. "Izzy's heart acted up. They just got her stable. I'm sitting with her.

Whatever it is, it can wait." "I have something important to tell you, I—" "Eloise! Can't you be reasonable for once?" He cut me off, plainly out of patience. "I told you already.

Unless it's about the divorce, we don't see each other. Stop calling to bother me." He hung up on me without a shred of mercy.

I crouched down outside the hospital entrance, arms around my knees, and sobbed out loud. I had wanted to tell him I was dying.

I wanted to tell him I'd signed the form, that I was willing to give my heart to Isabelle. I wanted him to remember me, even if it took something cruel.

He never gave me the chance. "Turn her." Roman's voice again. "I want to check the back for adhesions, make sure we don't damage anything else when the heart comes out.

Fortyfive degrees, gently — her chest is open, don't knock the bypass lines loose." Two nurses stepped in, practiced and careful. The table gave a small mechanical sound.

My side came into the light of the surgical lamp. There was a surgical scar there.

Slightly raised, like a centipede. "Oh my God…" A young nurse couldn't help herself. "She looks like she's had a kidney transplant!

Look where the incision is, look at the closure…" Roman's eyes followed the scar slowly down to the end of it. There was a small red mole there. The size of a grain of rice.

As bright as a drop of blood. So small. So easy to miss. And Roman had kissed it countless times. Back in the years when we were still renting.

The heat in that place was bad in the winter, and my lower back always ached.

He would pull me back against him and lay a warm hand over my side, working his fingertips gently into the skin around that little red mole.

Sometimes, while he was still rubbing, the kiss would come, right on the mole. He'd say, "Ellie, how did you end up with such a wellbehaved little mole right here." Right then.

I was curious. Roman. Does any part of you think of me, even a little? Even for one distracted second. Probably not. I thought it, laughing at myself. He hated me that much.

Hated me enough that in three years he wouldn't see me once. Chapter 3 Roman's hand hung in the air with the scalpel in it.

The tip was an inch or two from my open chest, and it wouldn't come down. He stared at that red mole, somewhere else entirely. I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

The room went horribly quiet. There was only the flat [beep — beep —] of the bypass machine. When he didn't move, a nurse said quietly, "Dr. Devlin?

Is something wrong?" That brought him back. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, whatever had been there was forced back down. He shook his head.

His voice was low, low enough that it was almost only for himself. "It can't be her… "It's got to be a coincidence.

She never had kidney surgery… someone like her, how could she…" He stopped. When he spoke again, his voice was level. "It's nothing.

Continue." Roman was himself again, calm as always. But the hand holding the scalpel. It gripped a little tighter than before. Roman was wrong. I'd had kidney surgery.

Three years ago. Back then Roman was a resident, living in the operating rooms and on the wards. After three overnight shifts back to back. He collapsed in the surgical locker room.

The workup came back: endstage chronic kidney failure. Uremia. The damage was irreversible. He needed a transplant. I got tested for a match without telling him.

The day it came back a match, I was so overcome I cried the whole afternoon on the hospital rooftop terrace. The surgery was done in secret. I couldn't tell Roman.

If I had, he never would have accepted it. The man he was, he'd have died before he let me give him a kidney. So I lied.

I told him I was going out of state for a monthlong training program. It was important, I couldn't turn it down, and the hospital had already approved the leave.

Roman was quiet for a long time after that. But he still reached over and ruffled my hair. "Ellie, come back soon.

I'll be waiting." And that was how one of my kidneys ended up inside Roman. A week after the surgery I could finally get out of bed and walk. I couldn't help it.

I snuck off to see him. I put on heavy clothes on purpose and a little makeup, and covered up every trace of how sick I looked. His door was ajar.

I looked through the gap and saw Isabelle sitting by his bed, her eyes swollen from crying. Her voice kept breaking apart. "Roman, you're finally awake, I was so scared.

I thought I was going to lose you…" Roman looked at her weakly. "Isabelle, what are you doing here?" The next second.

His eyes stopped on her side, where a white bandage was wound around her. "You gave me the kidney?" Isabelle looked down like a child caught doing something wrong. "The doctors said I happened to be a match.

Roman, it's all right, don't let it weigh on you.

As long as you're alive, I'd do anything." Roman froze, and his eyes went red, bit by bit. "You… why would you do something so stupid…" I stood in the doorway and went cold all over, like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over my head.

How could Isabelle be so shameless! She was actually going to take credit for this!

I shoved the door open and threw myself at the side of his bed, desperate to get the truth out. "Roman, I gave you that kidney! "Believe me, I have the surgical record!

I really donated it — it was me, not her!" Isabelle stared at me in disbelief, her lips trembling. "Ellie, you…" She lowered her eyes, and her long lashes threw a shadow across her face.

Chapter 4 Then she let out a small sigh. "Never mind.

If you say it was you, then it was you. "Anyway… as long as Roman gets better, does it really matter who gave it?" As she said it, the tears rolled down right on cue. "Enough!" Roman lifted his head and looked at me.

That one look froze the blood in me. There was a disgust in it I had never seen before. "Eloise.

I never thought you were this kind of person." He wasn't loud, but every word was a blade, and they cut until my eardrums hurt. "You're the one who said you had exams.

You're the one who said the training mattered so much. Where were you when I was on the table?

Out chasing your future!" With every sentence my face lost a little more color. "Izzy just gave me a kidney.

She can barely stand up, and you want to steal the credit from her?" "I didn't—" "Enough!" He threw my hand off him.

I lost my footing and went backward, and the small of my back came down hard on the corner of the nightstand. [Thud!] A dull sound. The blood soaked through almost instantly.

Roman's pupils contracted, very slightly.

But it was only a moment's wavering. "You'll really cut yourself open just to sell the act?" He looked at me and laughed, cold, the way you'd look at a bad clown. "Eloise.

How did I never notice how vicious you are?" The pain bent me over. The wound in my side burned.

Every breath dragged at the nerve, and the pain had me soaked in sweat, and I couldn't make a sound. Maybe my face was too much to look at.

Roman frowned in spite of himself and started toward me without thinking. He put out his hand. And then.

Isabelle suddenly grabbed her side and folded to the floor. "Izzy!" Roman spun around, terrified, and the hand already halfway to me changed direction and caught her before she went down.

Doctors and nurses rushed in, everything at once. I got pushed to the outside of the crowd. All I heard was a doctor, grim. "Patient's missing a kidney.

Heavy bleeding from the surgical bed. She needs blood now!" My head was buzzing. Isabelle had just had surgery too? It was only later that I found out.

Around that time Isabelle had run up a big highinterest online loan, and the collectors had backed her into a corner. She needed cash fast.

She went through a broker and sold a kidney at some underground operation, and the aftercare was so bad it got infected.

She was brought into the hospital for treatment — and that was where she found out Roman had just had a kidney transplant. And no one happened to know who the donor was.

I put the thoughts away. I looked at Roman, steady. The surgery was down to the last step. One cut through the great vessels and the heart would be free of my body for good.

He raised the scalpel and set it against the vessel that was the last tie to my life. And then