"I have some good news and some bad news," Dr. O'Brien said. She was the first doctor I'd seen in six years, and I remember not trusting doctors in the past. But Dr. O'Brien had some Gatsby qualities that made me want to trust her. Her smile felt like a fireplace and she smelled like a bookstore.

"Give me the good news first." Under different circumstances, I would've preferred the bad news first to console myself with the good one afterward—like any other human being. But that day I couldn't stop touching the brand new ring on my finger; I thought nothing could bring me down. Dr. O'Brien placed her hands on the desk over the files. Trent reached for my hand; I wanted to keep feeling the ring but I guess holding his hand would do.

"The good news is we found the cause of your heart attacks." I tightened the grip on Trent's hand. "It's not your heart's fault, or really any organ's. It's a part of the costal cartilage that connects your sternum to the ribs. As you breathe, this may obstruct your heart and lead to a heart attack. And it has in fact done so thirteen times."

I started a deep breath until I thought about the heart and stopped it midway. "Why were they never able to tell this was the problem?" I asked, a hint of accusation in my voice.

"Well, when you're growing up some doctors tend to overlook certain anomalies, thinking they will right themselves when you come of age," Dr. O'Brien said, still wearing that smile.

"That's ridiculous," Trent said. I turned to look at him. It wasn't often that Trent spoke, so he must have really felt the need to say it. "Absurd is what it is, I'm telling you. If those scrubs had done their job the way they should—"

My free hand joined the ones we were holding, patting Trent's. "It's alright," I said. Not that I didn't agree with him. As a matter of fact, I would've made even more of a scene. But I was too happy and tranquil to let anything bother me.

Dr. O'Brien slowly took her eyes off Trent to come back to me. "That bit needs surgery," she said.

"I see." I was still in a good mood, though the thought of surgery did shift it a little. "Not right now, I hope. I need some time to get psychologically ready for it."

I heard Trent chuckling beside me. This time, he patted my hand. "Silly, it's already done," he said.

I let go of his hand and looked inside my shirt. To my surprise, I found a small bandage attached to my chest. "So it's all good now?" I asked, anticipation in my voice.

Dr. O'Brien tilted her head. "That brings me to the bad news. You see, your heart tissues are severely scarred from all the heart attacks. In short, Alice, your heart isn't long for this world. I want to enlist you for a heart transplant."

A heart transplant. I sighed. My hand was cold in Trent's grip. I was to be put under several examinations, Dr. O'Brien continued, physical, psychological, internal, external. My ears were ringing ever so slightly. My weak little heart had to go. I found the mere thought of changing heart unnatural, repulsive, perverse.

"If that's what it takes," I said, still sighing. "If that's the only way I can live happily, then let's do it."

A flapping of wings echoed in the room before Dr. O'Brien could say a word. Then more flapping. I turned to Trent and saw him wrestling something to his knees. Dr. O'Brien jumped to her feet and shrieked. "Sir, what were you thinking bringing that animal in here?!" she shouted.

"Animal?" Trent replied in a rather calm tone, still steadying his hands to his knees. But he couldn't keep it down for long and eventually, the duck got away from his grip. Dr. O'Brien screamed her lungs out as the duck flew from one corner of the room to the other, often banging against the window. Someone opened the door behind us.

"Dr. O'Brien, I heard scream—" The intern didn't even finish his sentence when the duck flew over his head, her leg caught on the stethoscope, and out the door. Trent and I rushed to our feet and out the door, knocking over the intern. In the hall, a bunch of doctors flapped their clipboards in the air to fend off the duck, three patients in their fifties coughed and rolled their magazines and ran back and forth, trying to catch the flying threat.

At once, the duck flew over one of the patients's head and stole his hat. The angry looking man swung the rolled magazine menacingly in the air. Unable to see where she was going because of the hat, the duck slammed against the operating room's window, causing it to crack—I caught the surgeons inside jumping. After that, the duck came flying back our way—Trent extended his arms in the air, ready to catch her—but then decided to turn back. The hard part of the stethoscope knocked the bald head of one of the doctors as he was examining the crack, and he went flying face first against the operating room's window. This time, the glass completely shattered. He lay prone with his head in the operating room and his ass in the hall. The duck let go of the hat and it sat perfectly on the unconscious doctor's ass.

The duck was now in the operating room, through the insistent beeping of machines; surgeons swinging scalpels and knives and saws and whatnot as the patient lay dormant and oblivious. None of the surgeons could stop the duck from biting on the heart lying on the metallic plate and flying away with it.

"Out of the way, out of the way," two men in black suits shouted as they ran through the hospital holding a cage between them. They sat the cage down and opened it. A white rabbit darted out of it and scanned the room behind his fluffy ears. When he acquired his target—the duck—he jumped six feet in the air, but the duck dodged him. The rabbit was back on the ground and, as the duck flew above his head, blood dripped from the heart in her mouth and stained his cotton-like fur. He jumped again, but the duck ducked him. He kept jumping and jumping all over the hospital trying to reach the duck in the air.

Eventually, the rabbit managed to get a hold of the heart with his mouth and bring it to the ground along with the duck. The two animals were now standing in the middle of the room, face to face, in a tug of war with the heart in both their mouths. They pulled and pulled. People stood in a circle ten feet away from them. I saw Trent tiptoeing toward them with his hands upfront; I followed him. We advanced slowly as the animals didn't even notice us—too busy pulling the heart to both sides. When we were a few inches away from them—Trent ready to jump the duck—the heart gave out and tore in two, the animals went flying left and right, and blood splattered all over our faces and bodies.

~

"Did you know ducks can fly?" Trent said to me one day as he was cooking spaghetti.

"Well, duh?"

"I didn't know that. I was sure ducks were confined to water—and that little bit of grass they sometimes lay on. But then a few days ago I saw three ducks soaring in the sky. At first it didn't look right—I thought I was hallucinating. But then I looked it up and yeah, ducks can indeed fly."

"I mean, didn't you see they have wings? What did you think those were for? I don't know why this is so shocking to you, Trent. It's not like you found out rabbits can fly."

He grimaced. "I believe ducks are the perfect species." And there was the old-timey accent. "They can live on land, on water, and—I'll be damned—in the air. The mere thought that certain people kill them, and cook them, and eat them is revolting. They should be sacred."

I shrugged and shook my head. "Okay..."

Trent turned to face me, wooden spoon in hand up to his chest. "Alice, I want to get a duck."

I hissed. "Trent..."

"We both know something's been missing from our lives. Ever since we had to give away Prince, I'd say. We need a pet, Alice."

"How about a dog?"

"A duck's perfect. All we need is a little pond. Maybe some synthetic grass. Man, I'm already excited," he said as he poured the spaghetti into a colander.

"Let them cook more. I like them softer," I said.

"Spaghetti are meant to be eaten al dente, Alice."

Before I knew it, Trent had already bought a small wooden pool and put it in the guest room. Not satisfied enough, he asked me to help him paint the inside blue, for a more "watery-natural" effect; and I agreed. As we sat on the floor, paintbrush in hand, my eyes were drawn to the blue paint and I often disconnected from the world to stare at it. Sometimes Trent brought me back, sometimes the television we'd left on. In particular, the news, "—the 30-year-old woman brutally murdered the children with a kitchen knife. Friends and family described her as a cheerful and lovely woman—" or that one commercial that was so popular about the cleaning product with all the red London buses and the lively little song that went like, "Give me something to do it right, so I can lick my own bathroom." Maybe because of the song, I felt playful at once and I brushed the blue paint over Trent's face.

"Hey!" His eyes looked annoyed but his mouth was smiling. He reached his face with his hand but didn't find anything to clean because something weird happened. The blue paint slid off his face without leaving a trace, onto his hoodie, and it kept sliding off the fabric without leaving stains behind—like slime—all the way to the floor. I painted his face blue again, but the same thing happened; the paint just wouldn't stick to him. So he brought his paintbrush to my face. "Oh, it sticks on you," he said.

"Shit, give me a towel, quick. What is in this paint, alcohol?" I panicked, my hands flapping. The blue paint burned on my skin like shampoo in your eyes. Trent gave me a towel and I cleaned it out.

~

Dr. O'Brien had made it clear that the waiting list for a heart transplant can be very long, and most people die before they can get their new heart. And the transplant itself could go wrong and lead to death; or it could be successful, but then something else could go wrong and kill me. I'd made my peace with that, but I'd decided I wanted to see my dad before either the transplant or death. I hadn't seen him in years; he'd never even met Trent. He still lived in our old house in Oakview—where we all lived up until the divorce. Oakview was a 40-minute train ride away from Okin, and yet I never went to visit him and he never came to visit me. He did call at least once a month, so we weren't totally estranged, but I felt that such a big deal couldn't have been dealt with over the phone.

For weeks, I'd made arrangements to go there but they always fell through for one reason or the other. I always ended up in small fights with Trent because he'd say the truth was I didn't want to go. I'd tell him no, there were reasons and they seemed legitimate to me but not to him. One day, nothing came up before 4 pm—the hour I'd decided to leave—so I thought that was it. I kissed Trent goodbye, got my bag, and opened the door. But then I stood there, staring at the threshold. It was usual of me, when going somewhere, to stand in front of the door and make a mental recap of all the things I needed and see if I was forgetting something, but that day was different. My eyes were fixed on the threshold between the two doormats, the red one inside and the blue one outside. I was drawn to the blue one, but always found myself going back to the red one. A sort of paralysis had struck my whole body. I wanted to take a step forward—and I mentally did several times—but I couldn't.

"Alice...?" I heard Trent's voice behind me but I didn't move. He called again and again until he reached me and shook my arm; that pulled me out of the trance. I looked at Trent with watery eyes. "What's wrong?" he said. I threw my arms around him, sobbing. He hugged me back and closed the door. Before I knew it, we were laying on the couch and he was stroking my hair with the gentlest touch, and I would've drifted off to sleep if it weren't for the eerie noise of a distant freight train coming from somewhere far away but somehow inside the house. Then Trent kissed my neck and it felt like thorns being planted in my skin. I pushed him away.

"No, Trent..." He looked confused. My tears wouldn't stop flowing. My head was back on his chest. "Hold me. Nothing else. Just hold me, Trent."

~

On the day when I couldn't remember one of Sinatra's songs and it kept playing a loop sequence in my head without going anywhere, nearly driving me mad, Dr. O'Brien called saying they'd found my new heart and I had to go to the hospital immediately. Just like that; no warning, no time to meet my dad or to do the last few things I wanted to do in my life. Now I had to rush to the hospital and be ready to either die forever or start a new life with someone else's heart inside me.

Trent said he didn't trust himself to drive under this kind of stress and neither did I, so we took the subway to the hospital. It had been years since my last subway ride so I felt a bit out of place in there. I'd found an empty seat, Trent was standing in front of me. I overheard an old man and a younger woman having a conversation beside him.

"In the future we're only going to eat bugs, y'know?" the old man with eyes pointing different ways said. "Bugs for breakfast, bugs for lunch, bugs for dinner. Want a snack? Bugs. It's a bugs-based diet."

The woman just nodded—her eyes down to her feet—moving only to get a lipstick made of cactus out of her purse and put it on, her lips cutting and bleeding in the process.

As soon as we got to the hospital, Dr. O'Brien helped me into the wheelchair and carried me to the operating room, where three nurses hooked me up to the IV. They told me they were giving me my first dose of cyclosporine, an anti-rejection drug. Dr. O'Brien had told me about this. If all went well, I was to take cyclosporine for the rest of my life because life post-transplant is all about fighting rejection. Apparently, our cells can detect the presence of something that doesn't belong in our body, and they will try to destroy it—to reject it. The intruder being a new heart, we had to defend it from the angry cells at all costs.

I began to feel woozy as Dr. O'Brien said they had successfully harvested the heart; all she told me was that it belonged to a male younger than me who'd died in a motorcycle accident and his parents had agreed to donate his organs. My mouth felt dry. The voices echoed in my ears as I saw a number of people in green enter the room. Trent was told to wait outside; he said something to me before he left but I couldn't make it out. Finally, I dozed off.

The last clear thing I remember is staring at the neon light on the ceiling. After that, I felt my eyes closing but the light stayed in my eyelids, blue. It was the blue screen of death, the blue light I was so used to seeing every time I died. Only this time, a picture formed out of the blue. It was the sky. And it was the sea. I raised my head and took a look around me. I was still on the hospital bed, blue sheets underneath me, but on a deserted beach. The thing that gave me a headache, though, was that I couldn't hear the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. The only sound was that distant and yet near freight train, almost like an air raid siren. But I looked behind and there was no trace of a railroad, or really anything. Nothing but sand dunes in the distance, and yet if I closed my eyes it felt like I was in an industrial area.

"Here you are." A voice spoke. I spun around to find another bed beside mine—red sheets on this one—and a dark-haired man with a green apple floating in front of his face. I couldn't see his facial features, but I could tell he was young from the rest of his body.

"I was waiting for you," I said, when what I meant to say was, "Who are you?"

"It will only take a few hours," he said. His voice echoed in my head and felt as strange as the freight train.

"Will you be there for me?" I said, but the plan was, "Are you the heart donor?"

"Don't worry. I am already dead," he said, stripping naked by taking off his hospital gown, revealing a hole in his chest through which I could see the deserted beach behind him.

"And yet, I live," I said, when I didn't even want to speak. My hands moved on their own and took off my own gown. I gazed at my naked body; there was a zipper made of flesh on my chest.

"I give my heart to you," he said, laying there wearing only that apple in front of his face.

"I want you to fuck me," I said, and I couldn't tell if I meant to. He stood up—the apple sticking to his face—and came over to my bed. He climbed on top of me, his penis already hard, and I felt him inside. He was cold everywhere. And I had the green apple inches away from my face. I brought a hand up and tried to grab the apple, but I felt eyes and nose while I could see my hand grasping the apple.

He made the bed rock as he fucked me harder and, every time he pushed in, tiny sheep came out of my ears and wandered on the pillow. More and more sheep came out, as big as peanuts, crowding my head. Behind the tiny sheep, I glanced at the other bed; its sheets were now blue. And it was only then that I realized my sheets had turned red. I looked back at him. The apple was gone and his face was exposed. But there were no eyes and nose, just smooth skin and a mouth, coughing in my face. He coughed harder until a viscous, bloody heart slowly escaped his lips. My mouth opened wide to receive. The heart made its way from his mouth to mine with squishy sounds and blood dripping everywhere.

I closed my eyes to fight the nausea. When I opened them, I was in the ICU with my hands tied to my sides and an endotracheal breathing tube in my windpipe.