Chapter 9

Icheck in at the front desk for my appointment with Dr. Parikh and have a seat in the nondescript waiting room. I refuse to admit that I’m actually anxious about this and pretend I’m totally cool, flipping through social media posts, randomly liking but not reading any of them. Although, my body can’t convince my mind of my supposed calm demeanor, betrayal in my foot shaking back and forth, palms sweating profusely.

Aunt Joanie’s been texting me every day for the past three days, making sure I attend this appointment. I was told I’m going to have an EKG, ultrasound of my heart, and stress test. I don’t know what these things are, and the unknown adds to my worries. I watch the second hand tick in circles around the brown-and-white clock on the wall for a few minutes before a nurse in pink scrubs and a black cardigan calls me back.

She introduces herself to me, but I’m too tense to remember her name. I can barely follow her directions to remove my clothes from the waist up and put on the blue hospital gown, yet I smile at her before she leaves the room. I wiggle my fingers, hoping to stop their tremoring, and remove my top and bra, only to replace them with the loose cotton material left for me. I button up the gown and wait again.

This time, it’s much longer. By the time the doctor enters the room, I have myself worked up into a ball of nerves, bouncing around the room, literally unable to sit still.

“Cassandra?”

I drop the stethoscope on the counter, caught red-handed in my exploration. “Yes.”

“I’m Dr. Parikh,” the black-haired woman says in introduction. “How are you?”

I hold my gown closer to my body. “I’m okay.”

She nods at me, in that way people have been for weeks, slightly tilted and with down-turned lips. She gestures to the table, and I follow the cue to sit down as she says, “I’m sorry to hear about what happened. I’m friends with your aunt.”

“Thanks for squeezing me in,” I say.

She waves her hand nonchalantly. “Anything for Joanie.” She asks me some general questions, covering what the nurse did, my age, activity level, drug and alcohol use, and types notes on an iPad. “We’re going to run a full battery of tests to make sure you don’t have the same heart defect as your brother. It’ll take about an hour, but you won’t leave without seeing me again, okay?”

When I agree, she opens the door to call out two names, Tina, the nurse from before, and Patrick, a baby-faced physician’s assistant who appears to have just graduated. “You’ll be in good hands,” Dr. Parikh says and waits for me to meet her dark and reassuring eyes. “It’ll be over in an hour. No sweat.”

When she leaves, Tina and Patrick go to work, sticking pads and wires to my chest, and swiftly strap me to a small machine that measures the electrical activity of the heart. It only takes a few minutes.

“See,” Tina says, probably sensing my panic. “Painless.”

I force a smile at her as she helps me to sit up and move off the table to a treadmill in the corner.

“We’re going to have you run on the treadmill to observe how your heart does when it’s forced to work hard,” Patrick explains.

“Torture,” I deadpan.

“Oh no, we wouldn’t,” he says seriously as he readies the machine and types on a laptop. “It’s against our oath.”

Tina laughs indulgently at him while throwing me a look as she stands next to me. She presses some buttons on the treadmill. First, it’s a leisurely walk.

“We’ll gradually speed up. You tell us when you’re going as fast as you can,” Patrick directs, scratching at his red hair.

Tina presses an arrow to increase the speed a bit.

“You’re so young to be taking these tests,” Patrick says after a few seconds, and I think, you’re too young to be giving these tests. “What brings you in for them?”

Tina pushes the arrow again, and my arms automatically start swinging at my sides as I force my legs to move faster. “My brother died of a heart attack last month.”

“Oh.” Patrick practically chokes on that syllable as I choke on my breath, and Tina speeds up the treadmill once again. “I’m so sorry,” he says.

“It’s okay,” I pant. “It’s becoming harder.”

“Can you go thirty more seconds?” he asks.

I don’t answer, concentrating on keeping my pace without falling off. I haven’t moved this fast in a long time since my favorite form of exercise is finger yoga while I shop online. I gulp down a big breath, wondering what my heart’s doing at this exact second. Probably wheezing and coughing.

“Good. Very good,” Patrick says, and Tina slows the treadmill down to a stop so I can step off, waving the hospital gown around my body to cool off. She pats my back and tells me to lie back on the exam table. “Patrick and I are done. I’m going to send in the ultrasound tech, and she’ll finish up the last test. You’re doing great.”

A short Black woman with a Caribbean accent and braids introduces herself as Sherry and turns off the lights, getting right down to business in taking internal pictures of my heart. She doesn’t speak as she moves the wand thingy around my breastbone. It’s awkward when she pushes it under and over my naked breasts, searching for different parts of my heart on her gray screen. I want to make a joke, something about being a cheap date, but Sherry looks too professional to even crack a smirk. Instead, I focus on the circular pattern of the wallpaper next to me. Sherry finishes after about fifteen minutes and turns the lights back on, instructing me to dress.

I do as I’m told after she leaves, and when Dr. Parikh finally returns, she’s smiling. “All your tests look great, nothing abnormal.”

“I’m fine?”

She nods.

“Completely fine?”

“With a genetic defect, we can never be sure who will inherit it, but you show no signs of heart disease whatsoever. I’m happy to answer any questions you have. Take a business card from the desk on the way out, but I do have to get to another appointment.” She shakes my hand, patting it gently. “There is no reason you shouldn’t live a long and happy life.”

And as soon as she leaves the room, my smile drops.

Raymond’s heart attack was a total fluke. The guy who worked out all the time and drank a protein shake every morning died. Ramen in a cup is one of my main food groups, but I’m still here.

Survivor’s guilt is a whole other kind of suffering.

I’m not sure how to process it. Surprise, surprise.

Sitting in my car for a while, I stare at the text thread I have going with Vince. He’s been checking in on me for the last two weeks. Usually it goes something like:

Vince: How’s it going?

Me: Fine.

Vince: Need anything?

Me: Nope.

Vince: Let me know.

Me: Okay.

Then it all starts again the next day. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he actually cared about me. But I suspect he feels bad for me. Like he did back when we were kids. Back when I was the clinger little sister and he felt guilty because Ray was ignoring me. Vince always gave me this look, like he knew how badly I wanted to hang out with him and usually found a way to make it up to me with stolen moments that made my teenage heart flutter. Eating ice cream together right out of the container late one night or tugging on my ponytail as he ducked out the back door to go hop in the car with Raymond. Always checking in with me.

And he’s doing the same thing now. Making sure I’m not ignored.

Warms the cockles of my cold, dead heart.

Enough that I contemplate texting him. Telling him I need him. Need someone to talk to about my appointment, but I shove away the idea. We aren’t kids anymore.

The last month has thrown me headfirst into adulthood, and I can’t put my head in the clouds over texts from the boy I used to love. Instead, I head home and crack open some windows to let in the unseasonably warm spring air.

As usual, Mom’s in bed with the curtains closed over the windows, while Dad is tucked away in the office, doing I don’t know what. So I leave for work without saying goodbye to either of them, and at quarter of eleven when I get home, not much has changed since I left except Dad has moved to the living room, where he’s lounged with a glass of vodka. I only know it’s vodka because the bottle is next to his feet.

I drop my purse by the door where I deposit my shoes. “Hey, Dad.” He doesn’t acknowledge me, but I sit on the couch opposite him anyway. “I didn’t know you drank vodka.”

“I don’t.” He rotates his glass upside down, showing me it’s empty. “I’m going to go to the store,” he says, standing up with a wobble.

“How much did you drink?” I ask because I’ve never seen my dad drunk before. I’ve witnessed him have a beer or two in the summertime and a glass of wine here and there, but that’s it.

“I don’t know,” he mumbles, moving toward the closet, his gait loose like he’s trying not to melt into the floor.

I easily beat him to the closet, blocking him. “What do you want? Everything’s closed now.”

He blinks owlishly at me. “No, I need to replace the bottle. Your mother’ll be mad.”

“She won’t even notice,” I say, and when he reaches around me, I step in his way again. “Really, you don’t need to go out.”

“No, Cassandra. Move.”

He nudges me out of the way and opens the closet for his coat, which he clumsily puts on.

I hang on to the sleeve. “Okay, well, how about I drive you? Where do you want to go? I’ll take you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t need you to take me anywhere.” He coasts his unfocused gaze over me. “Especially dressed like that.”

With St. Patrick’s Day coming up, the work uniform has altered slightly from a white top to a green one with shamrocks placed strategically on my chest. I changed into yoga pants before I left work, but apparently it’s still not appropriate for my drunk dad.

He pats his coat pockets for his keys, and when they aren’t there, he studies the space around him. I skid past him to the kitchen, where a catchall woven basket is on the counter, and I snatch his keys out, hiding them behind my back. Dad eventually lumbers to the kitchen and shoos me out of the way. When he discovers his keys aren’t in the basket, his face changes from tipsy annoyance to intoxicated anger while staring at me. He silently holds his palm up, his fingers curling in to gesture for the keys, but I’m not backing down.

“You shouldn’t drive like this,” I tell him.

“I will drive whenever I goddamn well please.”

“No.”

He attempts to grab them from behind me, but I hop out of the way like we’re playing some kind of game.

“Cassandra, you don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“Right now, I do. I can smell the vodka on you. And believe it or not, you don’t get to drive like this.”

He lunges for the keys again, but his balance is all off and he isn’t anywhere close to my hand. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I am your daughter,” I say slowly.

He sidles up to me, the closest he’s been in a long time. He didn’t shave today, and his shadow of a beard is white, his irises rimmed in red. He doesn’t say anything while he wraps his arm around my torso like a boa constrictor. I try to wiggle away, but he doesn’t stop until his fingers wrap around my wrist to take the keys out of my hand.

He shows them to me as if he’s won some sort of victory, and the fight drains out of me. The past few weeks, he hasn’t been around to check on Mom or even cared to ask how I’m doing, so if he wants to kill himself driving because he’d rather be dead like his son, so be it. But he’s not going to kill anyone else either.

I hold up my cell phone. “I’ll call the cops if you drive like this.”

He stares at me in a standoff. We each wait for the other to flinch. I move my hand, ready to dial 9-1-1, and he gives in, slamming the keys back down on the counter next to me.

“I’m going for a walk.” He practically spits the words at me, and I exhale as he stalks away. A few seconds later, the front door slams shut.

I know my father’s not himself, hasn’t been since last month, but I can’t find the sympathy in me to forgive him.

I don’t bother going to my mother. She’s probably been asleep for hours. Instead, I find a spoon and the jar of Nutella that I splurged on during the last grocery store trip. Without consciously making the decision, I flop on my bed with my cell phone and start typing.

I snap a picture of the spoonful of Nutella, post it, and then proceed to devour the entire fucking jar.

The post is one of my most popular.