Without it

I can work

            Without it

I can sing

            Half a woman

Surely goodness and mercy

Prevail in a city of sin

As barter for a life

Beats for beats

Breaths for breath

Trade a heart for what’s mine

I can breathe

            Without it

I can see

            Without it

I can sing

            Half a woman

I was leaning my forehead on the steering wheel when I finished. I couldn’t get the rest of the song out. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see through my tears. This sucked. He didn’t have long, I could see it in the doctor’s faces when they spoke with a sense of urgency, like their own careers were on the line if he died. The inconvenience of it would be epic for them.

Meanwhile, I’d die with him.

The phone rang. Fuck it. It wasn’t like I was moving. I picked up Margie’s call.

“Hello?” I didn’t realize how snotty and blubbery I sounded until the last vowel came out in a froggy croak.

“Are you okay?”

“The love of my life is dying, so, no.”

“Well, I called with a little something. Guy just came in with half a brain and a working heart. We’re fighting our way up the list and they’re checking for a match. But he’s the same blood type.”

“Oh, God. Really?” My face exploded in prickly happiness and tears sprung into my eyes.

“Top secret, ok? This is not public knowledge, but I know people who know. Don’t get your hopes up. The family’s going to be an obstacle. Donor cards don’t mean anything without a living will, and they’ve got more hope than Jonathan has time.”

“Is it evil to hope he dies?”

“Yes. You and I both.”

“See you in hell,” I said, with a little less cry my voice.

“I’ll buy the handbasket.”

The traffic broke suddenly, and I was waved through blockade on Beverly and Rossmore.

MONICA

“I sold the house. Thank God, Monya. Cash. At market price.”

My mother had called just as I stepped into the elevator with nine other people. I was just about to tell her I hadn’t made any headway, nor had I found an opportune time to ask for Margie’s help on the house thing, when she blurted out her news like a kid blowing the date of a surprise party.

“That’s great, Ma.” I whispered so I wouldn’t annoy the three people in scrubs who pressed up against me. “Did they say when they were moving in?” I was happy for her. I really was. But the bank was going to have to put all my stuff in a Dumpster. I couldn’t leave Jonathan long enough to move out.

“That’s the good news! They’re okay with the tenant. Okay with your rent and everything. You have to make your checks out to an investment company. ODRSN Partners. The address is One four three, North—”

“Can I get it later? I’m in an elevator. I’ll call you back.”

We hung up, and I molted a few layers of anxiety. I must have bounced into Jonathan’s room, because he smiled when he saw me, the oxygen tubes gone from his nose. The sun shone through the window, and yes he had that auto-squeeze thing on his arm, and yes he was in that god damn hospital bed and his heart was ripped up, but he was in a half sitting position and he was as glad to see me as I was glad to see him.

“I don’t have to move!” I announced, kissing him.

“Good?”

“Oh, God you missed the whole thing!” I blabbered. “My Mom put the house into foreclosure and I thought I was going to have to move out really fast, which, hello I have twenty years worth of stuff in that house, so but some investor came and bought it.”

“Ah, who beat me out?”

“No, uh. Crap, she told me.” I wrestled with the granola bar, until he took it from me and got it open in one move, with a bad heart and IVs sticking out of him. “It’s such a load off. I can’t even tell you.”

He broke off a piece of the bar and held it up. “Was it Ganten Investments?”

I took the piece in my mouth. “No, it was a bunch of letters, like DRM, but five letters and not that. I made it into a word in my head but I can’t think of it.”

“Doesn’t matter, I guess.”

“You have to move faster next time, if you want property in Echo Park.” I took another chunk of granola bar from his fingers. “Oh my God, this thing tastes so bad.” I felt light as a feather, waving my hands at him to indicate I wanted another piece. “It’s like, stinky.”

“Stinky?”

“With a touch of dredgy.” And then I remembered, as I chewed, the rhythm of the words and the taste of the stale barley malt brought it to me. “ODRSN. That was it. It sounded like odorous. ODRSN Partners.”

He was looking down at the bar, breaking another smelly piece, when he froze.

“Did you say ODRSN?”

“Yep.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, why? Is that the competition or something?”

He put the bar on the side table, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It wasn’t very deep at all. He breathed like he didn’t have room for air in his lungs.

I took his hands in mine. “Jonathan. Should I call someone?”

He shook his head, but I didn’t believe him, I believed the machines, which were silent. But for how long? He was struggling, if not with his breath or his heart, with his mind.

“I need you to marry me,” he said.

“What?”

“Marry me.”

“Are you insane?”

“If anything happens to me, I want to make sure you’re taken care of.”

“I refuse to believe you’re going to die. My God, we’ve been together a few months, maybe.”

“These are extenuating circumstances. I could leave you swinging in the wind.”

“No,” I shook my head like I was trying to get a fly out of my hair. “This is crazy. This is not how I want it. I don’t want you to get better then regret it. And it’s not your job to make sure I’m financially stable. What’s come over you?”

Midway through my little speech, stuff started beeping and lighting up. And by the time I was done, I was being pushed out with both hands by a woman in a blue facemask and gloves. I landed in the hall, back against the wall, trying to stay out of the way.

“What happened?” Eileen asked, standing close to Theresa as if her daughter held her up.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We were talking about something.”

He asked me to marry him and I said no.

I put my hands over my mouth when I realized what had happened, and ran down the hall without looking back. Even when I passed the cafeteria on the way out, and saw Declan in his usual spot talking to Jessica, I didn’t stop. I just kept on running.

JONATHAN

That went poorly.

I hadn’t intended to ask for her hand until she said the name of my father’s investment shell. He’d bought her house to save her when I couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Whichever. I simply didn’t and the reason I didn’t was I didn’t know she was in that kind of trouble. I could only know and see what she brought to me, and if she chose to protect me, I was impotent to protect her. I was stuck I inside four walls with things sticking out of me, tied to a bed as much as I’d tied her.

By the time the smoke cleared, she was gone, and I couldn’t explain. I didn’t want to talk on the phone. Couldn’t, actually. My body betrayed me with exhaustion, long breaths, and lost consciousness. I needed to be in her visual field, to see what I was too tired to intuit, to let her experience the long spaces between sentences that would seem like anger or petulant silence on the phone, but were me trying to breathe around my goddamn damaged heart.